Re: Promoting War
That way, people could still hunt and get bonus treasure etc, but people would have every reason to randomly attack peoples bases.
So Player 1 has troops out to hunt.
Player 2 sends troops to attack player 1 base.
Player 1 troops auto-finish hunting, get treasure that is owed.
Player 2 arrives at base to see defending troops.
Battle plays out.
Now, people could/would start sending 1 troop to force troops home, so I suggest an option that allows player 1 to specify that if attacked by less than X troops, do not return.
Eg: if player 1 has it set at 0,0,0,1000, Player 2 would need to send at least 1000 cats to player 1's base before the troops came home.
The upper bound for X troops could be the total number of troops currently owned by Player 1.
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That said, I think the main problem with the battle is that it is too easy to have the whole army wiped out with zero loss to the other player.
Recently I took out ~8000 cats with only ~12,000 of my own. Zero loss. Yay for me... but hardly cool for the other player.
The prestige formula is such that they want to encourage lower level players to attack high level players. Higher level players usually have more troops than lower level players, so the way that battle works simply does not allow for the purpose of the prestige formula to work.
To my example above: if it was the other way around, if I had 8k cats, I would NEVER attack someone with 12k cats (i know that speed and range play a part, but after ~lvl12 most people are around the same levels of tech)... why? because I have pretty much zero chance of winning.
If I cant wear down a persons army, the only remaining tactic is to try and starve the army.... but then there goes most of the prestige... and it doesnt encourage a battle.