f13.net

http://www.strongholdkingdoms.com/

Just puttin this out there because Alpha 3 just started.  There is no formal NDA, but they're not "allowing" screenshots or vids.
I alphaed for one evening a while ago during Alpha 1 and then the schedule didnt permit me more so forgive my ignorance (and much has changed since then).  To put it simply, this is not like most other resource/empire medieval pbbgs (mostly because it runs off a small client, but a browser is still necessary). Graphically things are MUCH tighter (overall production quality is very high) and much of the interface is in real-time.  Build locations are also important as is in a few other webgames, but in this title you have a more visceral feel between elements, i.e. workers visually take longer carrying goods, etc.  Pretty much Stronghold, yet online.

What I liked was my empire felt alive as in the other Stronghold titles ('cept this is online).  It's also based on historical/geographic fact.  When you place your kingdom, you can do-so anywhere in the world via a google-mappish interface.  Eventually, I do believe this will translate into the game but for now it's just England.   In-game, the textures are partially photoreal and the buildings cut-away to see their contents, which is nice.  There are also multiple layers to gameplay - from village, castle, to parish, to faction, and so on.  Some things can only be done as a group.   There is what seems to be a more in-depth trade system (stock exchange), but I havent fooled with it yet and there's no literature; it is of course based on trader travel times, capacity and so on.  Being more of an RTS, you may be able to raid a caravan... not sure yet.

Everything moves across the maps in real-time.  If someone sends an attack, you see your impending doom approaching slowly.  When a vassal moves across your village, u see it.  When you attack, u see it... and so on.  This real-time stuff aint perdy, but it gets the job done.

I had trouble deciding which forum to put this thread in because in reality it's a hybrid rts/tbs/MMO, not just a pbbg.  I just figured it'd appeal more-so to the hardcore pbbg crowd.  If you're into your typical relaxing 1 hour/day browsergame, SK is not for you.  It's fairly in-depth... so yah, you can go casual but you'll be severely gimped.  It deserves almost the same amount of daily effort as a single-player empire game does really.  I look at it as halfway between your usual browsergame and your regular castle-sim stuff.

Beta starts relatively soon, but for alpha they're slowly cranking up the heat.  You may get lucky and get in.  

Game will be F2P and RMT will be via "strategy cards" that you collect - yah, there's a bit of CCG in there.  I do believe you'll KEEP these cards though... they dont disappear when you use them, unlike other RMT methods.  You can however only play up to 25 cards per week.  There is rarity and collecting sets may give bonuses.  CCG + empire-building == awesome imo.  Nice touch.

Social sites will be integrated; twitter, facebook, etc.

What I DONT like so far is that most of the UI is largely a textual speadsheet with windows forms font to boot.  Sure, the map and village are nice, but everything else is somewhat bland.  It is an alpha though, and these may simply be placeholders.  Some people grok this style though.  Also might've been nice to choose another genre besides medievel.

For me, SK is the most anticipated pbbg-esque game I've seen aside from HoMM: Kingdoms.    More later...   (cough) and NO, SK is nothing like Travian.

p.s. Yah, I just found the MMOG thread...  didnt come up in initial search.  Merge if necessary.

Finally a sane and worthy submission.  It's VERY interesting.  I just hope it's not a catass to victory game.  Let's hope we can start a Bat Country county.
Any release date?

They've been pretty wracked with delays, which is why I havent posted more on the game till now.  Alpha 3 only JUST started and I've been in Alpha 2 since like July of last year.  Reasons are simple... small dev. team (like 8 people I think) and the realization they've created a monster.  Beta will be "sometime later this year."  In reality, they're pretty close... no reason why they couldnt get a closed beta in by early summer.

I believe a lot of the issues are server-side and in-game balance oriented.  They want to get that stuff right before opening the floodgates as they aim to have pretty large servers.  They also only just now figured out how the payment model will be structured; the cards 'n all.  You'll get cards regardless, just not as many as if you've bought them.

Looks cool.  How do I play?

Alpha 4 is starting soon (http://www.fireflyworlds.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=271&func=view&id=7165&catid=42).

So register here (http://www.strongholdkingdoms.com/) if this still interests you.

Alpha 4 invites went out today.

So far it rocks. Seems to have much more depth than other empire builders i.e. Lord of Ultima / Tribal Wars.

Their NDA is basically limited to "no screenshots - otherwise tell your friends all about it".

Yah, you must forgive my silence on this game as I've had little time to play with it.  Mostly because it's one of those titles that you dont go into "half cocked."  It's fairly crunchy.
If anyone else is playing, please share info.

If only 8 guys created this game, my hat is off.

For a browser based title, the depth seems amazing. I haven't even gotten into the social aspects (Vassalage?). The fact that you actually design & lay out your castle is cool.

Other browser empire builders basically come down to que management...log in, build some shit, log out. This one seems to have some reasons to stay online and play - scouting, raiding, building a castle, figuring out the tech trees. I like it.

The whole trading card thing seems cool too, for a person who has never played a trading card game.

To be fair, it's not entirely a browser-based game... it only hearkens to them.  It runs on a VERY small client, mostly so that people can play on their portable devices.    They designed it to basically be a slimmed down MMO version of their regular Stronghold titles...  more spreadsheet to cut down on graphical assets of course.

Apparently I didn't make the alpha invite cut.  :cry:

Still, this sounds like a lot of fun, and I'll put my name in the hat for the next iteration. Is it close to beta?

Alpha 3 lasted like 130 days, not sure how long this one will be.  It also wouldn't surprise me if they send out more waves of alpha invites.

This alpha is more of a beta than an alpha, relatively speaking.

New emails went out and I did get an invite.  :awesome_for_real:

I'll try this tonight.

I'm in.  No NDA on comments but you can't post any pics.  The production value is really good for a browser game, but as far as i can tell it's still the classic formula : you start with build time in seconds and quickly ends up with build time in hours.  Premium feature are spammed all over the place. I don't mind a premium option and gladly pay it for it when I love a game  but I don't think they balanced it right (shoved in your throat way too much). Strategic cards are very disappointing, they simply boost a specific production for a while.  The research tree looks boring.

I don't see where the appeal is unless mid game trades and fights are really enjoyable.  Already in the grind to fun mode after a few minutes of play.

Meh.

It's slowly growing on me.  I was wrong about the tech tree, I didn't understand how it worked.  There is in fact a huge choice of possible tech. 

I like it so far, but the whole castle defense thing just confuses me. How should you be building your defenses? It just seems to tell you 'ahhhh just make somethin up and you'll find out if it works when we send some army after you.'

Last beta it was spam as many great towers as you can and put a bunch of archers in them.  Not sure if they've changed anything related to castles this beta besides cost.

Last alpha you mean.  This push is alpha 4 yes?

Yeah, this is alpha 4.  Next phase should be beta.

I mistakenly used a card that basically said "gives you a bunch of peasants" thinking more people=better, but now they've got nothing to eat and nowhere to stay.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah.  I haven't spent much time with it, but it seems to be lacking as far as explaining what things do.

Sweet I'm in.  I'll be playing later tonight.

I used a "Big horde of gold" card the other day and got 15000 gold. They nerfed it a couple days later, but it was a huge boon. I also bought and used the 55pt great honor card, and got only 100 honor, which sucked.

For my keep I have basically have a perimeter of 8 wooden platforms surrounded by a triple thick wood wall. 24 archers slaughter anything thrown at me so far by the AI, including groups of 100+ armed peasants & archers.

You can get some decent castle ideas by scouting the AI called the Rat, or whatever AI camp it allows you to scout.

Some ideas tips I've learned so far:

Tools is a great research tree. Maxing it out early is handy.

Go for bows pretty soon to stay ahead of the AI.

Build a strong keep when you have archers to man it. Until then just leave your troops in the barracks to farm wolves. Once you can hold your keep you get great honor by slaughtering AI attackers.

Horsemanship(?) to speed up scouting is great for farming honor along with resources when you are logged out. It's fun to send the scouts romping all over the place while neighboring city's scouts slowly plod along.

If you click on your Parish castle town you get a new menu which allows you to participate in running the parish among other thing.

Nice post Shen, you kinda gave a glimpse at the depth of the game.
Wish beta would start already.

Anyone know if we can all start close to each other and plan to control a parish early at release?  I don't remember having much choice when I started.

I haven't gotten to the Faction part of the game, which I think is the Guild/Tribe/Alliance mechanic.

There could be an advantage for a Faction to be spread out over numerous parishes, and potentially controlling them all.

There could also be a downside to starting in the same area. As the game progresses the villages within each Parish compete over AI spawns and Resource stashes. It becomes a race to pop them first, with the fastest scouts and armies getting the most honor. Spreading out would allow the Faction to gain more honor by having more goody nodes to pop.

I think this is the main reason for having Vassals - to give you bases outside your own "honor gathering circle" from which to farm more honor.

How likely are you to get raped to death in your sleep? I love playing games like this, but I hatehateh̵̥͕̬͕͓͓̜ͯ̒ͥͦ̃å͖͙̯̯͔̪ͅt̵̬e͏͚͓͍̞̹̤̘ḩ̥͉͙̖̱̻̖ͮͦ̎͊ͥͥą̟̳͓̙ͬͮ̂ͬ̈́̚͜ť͚̰̝̖͈̉ͧ͟ͅeͩͧ̃̓͢͝҉̱͖̰͖͓͈̫ḥ̟̃̋͗́͑ą̝̯͙̍͆ͩ̀ẗ̨̻̰̖̥̙͙͒͌͆̌̓̚̚͢͞ẻͤ̏̂ͧ̅̎ͤ҉̙̣̘͈͔͡h͉͇̺͈͚̝̙̗̳͚̫̯̃͊ͨ̔ͥͨ̐̏̀͞a͉̺͖̲̼͎̺̗͚̩̗̣̫͙̗͊̏ͨ͂̈́ͪ͊̔ͤ̍̄́̚̕͟͝t̶̷̡͈͈̦̫̙͉̗̯̣͇͙͍͎͚̼̞̮̑ͨ͂ͩ͝e̴̝̭̯̗̺̖̹͈̯̬̖̲̓̈̽̔͗̽̋̆̓̑ͬͩ̄̑̊ͤ͌͜ͅh̸̜̻̤͎͍͈̤̥̖̬̞̻̗̞͚͕͌̓̋̾ͩͮ̾̓̉̂͆̈́́͢͢͜a̞̫̖̮͔͇̬̠ͯ͆̒̏̐̉͛̆̈́̀͌̐̋͗̊̌́͜ͅt̴̶̨̓̀́ͬ̓̈̄̊̍͝͏̙̬̰͚̝͖̗̺͈̫ȩ̛͕̣̻̬͕̝̟́ͮ͌̆̇̍ͦ̈́̄ͣͣ͗́̚͢͡h̸͎̥̙̮̰̫̬̦̗̭͓̭͉̭̆͑̒ͫ͂͗̐̇̚̚͜ͅa̷̶̛͖̠̮͎͍̹̫̮͑ͧ̐̿ͦͥͭͮͪ̎͒̓̑̔̓͞͝t̶̨ͯ̌̓ͦ̓҉̴͕̠͙̺̻e̶̻͍̰͕̲̗͓̰̮̯̜͙͌̌ͧ̒̈̓̓̋̃͐ͫ̃͒̍ͥͩ̂̀̕͢͠  waking up and finding my beautiful village razed.

Edit: do we just sign up for email notifications to get into the Alpha? Any have friend invites of any kind?

After playing for around two weeks, I have yet to get raped by anything. Is there even a means by which village structures can be destroyed? Towers, walls, and archers are pretty easy to get, and give a strong defensive force that makes attacks by other players very costly. I have been attacked a few times by other players, and usually take very little damage while killing their entire force. The AI attacks 3-4 times a day, and my honor benefits greatly from it. The Pillage mechanic is pretty weak. I don't have any Vault upgrades (protects from Pillaging), and when the AI or another player Pillages me, I kill many of his attackers, lose maybe 1-2% of my resources, and get honor.

Perhaps later in the game it will become more of a PvP game, but right now everyone seems content to battle it out with the AI.

I think the way to get into Alpha is sign up for email notifications. No friend invites that I have seen.

You can have your village captured if the attacker is high enough level to have another village (I think it's rank 12+), they can ransack your buildings which works kind of like pillaging, but you have to do research to be able to do that. They can also raze your village if they're rank 16+. I've seen some fighting going on by where I am but it's mostly just people attacking parish capitals trying to steal flags.

I've been trying it out, but it is rather confusing in the beginning as to what does what. They are going to need a much better manual for the actual release.

Thanks for the warning.

After I got started, I hadn't logged in in a couple days.  I checked in on my village yesterday, and I'd been attacked twice.  Near as I can tell, nothing happened?  Since then, I've beefed up my defenses with a whopping two armed peasants...  :why_so_serious:

I got attacked while peasants were in the barracks and this does nothing? Also, should I build a wooden castle or just wait? I have a fletcher working on arrows, but I don't understand wtf is going on.

If you get attacked odds are an AI castle spawned in your parish and decided to attack you or an enemy siege camp spawned and attacked you. Even if they succeed you'll probably just lose a minimal amount of resources. The reason you'd want to defend is because you can get a decent honor bonus for defeating them. To build archers you need to research the bow-making technology under industry and also the archer technology under military. You build a fletcher, he makes bows, and you convert the bows+idle peasants into archers.

Is there any roads? All my building are side by side and it looks silly.

Just to emphasize my point, here's a screenshot (not from my game, it's already published):

(http://imgur.com/CDvTW.jpg)

So if I place archers in my castle, do they reset at some point? I went back at times and they weren't there. I'm guessing it's a bug, but who knows.

Make sure after placing or moving units around in the castle screen to always click "Confirm". I didn't do this a few times and wondered as to why my just-placed units were back in the barracks.

Yes, I just found the confirm button yesterday. That's rather important given that IT'S NOT IN THE INSTRUCTIONS!

Also I'm not sure what to do with all these peasants. I'm taxing the crap out of them for research points, but I need a bigger army.

Most of your money is from selling to the market. You do need to research it and build a market but it's worth it.. usually you'll have an excess of something (apples I found I always had a ton of) and hopefully the market isn't too oversaturated with what you're trying to sell. It starts out at 150 GP per block of stuff but once you get a lot of it in there it can go down to 30-40 and possibly even lower.

It seems most of the top players max out their scouting techs first.. stashes spawn so regularly that if you have the time to sit in front of the computer and collect from stashes all day you'll have resources pouring in.

Yes, I'm noticing I should be pouring time into Tools and Scouting. These things are good.

Anyone understand the actual utility of goods and food types?  Why start making bread when your apple trees are already so effective?  What will I do with furniture?  I understand I can sell them, but why should I buy them? 

The more food types you eat the higher your popularity is. Right now I have my rations set to x4 and they're eating 4 types so it's giving me +60 popularity. Furniture is a banquet good and is used for banquets. Basically you just take, let's say 50 venison and 50 furniture, that gets multiplied by 4 and you get 200 honor instantly. If you have 3 types of good it gets multiplied by 9, 4 is 16, etc.

Yeah in many cases if your people are eating through double rations but only 2 types of food, you'd be better off going single and letting them eat 3 types in terms of popularity. I've had this happen several times.

Ok, so you want plus popularity or you don't get any honor.  Plus popularity means people move in until all your houses are full.  This means no bonus from extra housing and probably no/less bonus from eating different foods. 

So you want people moving in, but you don't want more people?  Is there a better way of getting rid of people than just using them to fight?  There doesn't seem to be much to fight... or am I missing something...

Also I hope they nerf scouts before release.  While effective, vacuuming the landscape for free resources just seems against the spirit of everything else they've got going on.

You only want 5-10 idle peasants when your hovels are full. You're not going to have the housing bonus to popularity very often. AI camps spawn pretty frequently and the castles can take a lot of troops to take down (but give a LOT of honor when destroyed). You can also attack other people's villages if you want, or steal flags from other parishes.

Thanks.  Seems like I'd need to level up a lot of stuff before I could steal a flag.  I did manage to make it to a rebel camp first.  I lost all but 2 of my army but still won, I don't think it could have gone better.

So my noob bonus is about to run out, I guess I should be building arts and entertainment and making boatloads of food if I ever want to level up again.

In about 2 more hours I'll actually have 1 bow!

My tiny little parish is on the edge of that big mass of red in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and i'm starting to get ingame mails asking for people to vote for them. Our current parish lead seems somewhat incompetent or lazy, so i'm kind of thinking i should probably fall in line at this point.

This is the first game of this type that I have any sort of interest in, I have no idea why.

Much more dept than usual.

I'm a little bit northwest of you, in Lambourn/Winterbourne. I joined the red house. I don't think it really means anything right now though, until a victory condition is set.

Anyone figured any longtime benefits for trades?  It seems to be set up in a way where price can only fall.  I just got commerce and the only place on the map where  the prices are still good for basic food is less developed parish.

It is set up in a way where it can only fall. Every village type can make apples and cheese so there's really no need to buy those. The only place you're going to get a good price for those is like you said, a newer parish.

That's really one of the only failings of the game economy I can see so far. The higher level items will have a market, but the lower ones will just drive the price into oblivion with no end. There should be some removal of items on a weekly basis to establish better trading.

Anyone know what is the troop total and compositiion it takes to kill a wolf lair?

Weak.  20 peasants should have no problem.  Also a good bet against a bandit camp.

20 peasants and 5 archers never failed on any of the wolf dens I hit. Also, I'm liking how expanded food options open up more honor quickly. The banquets honor is badass as well. I am really enthralled by the research depth of this game.

Fair warning, I'm not sure if it depends on the average rank of your parish (like with AI castles), but wolf dens can have up to 50+ wolves (I lost a troop of 30 archers that way). I send a decent compliment of pikeman/archers to take care of them, though if you don't have pikemen yet you can send nothing but archers - they won't aggro all of the wolves at once because they'll sit at range and attack the wolves as they come. You'll have some casualties on the larger wolf dens with that strat though.

You can also scout them from what I understand. Never done that though.

I just may be exploring this further.  The price of apples in my parish has fallen to 27... I an seriously considering razing my 3 orchards and just buying apples every day.  I can use them villagers and that real estate for other things.

So, I'm sort of loosely following this thread but haven't really seen a definitive answer to the only question I have about games like this: is this the sort of game where if you don't join an uberguild and log in as often as everyone else to avoid being booted you end up getting raped in PvP with no way to recover?   Or can you putter around doing your own thing and still have fun?

I believe there is a big penalty for attacking other people in this one, I've heard random talkings about it on the global chat.... but it does happen.

Definitely a game where you can do your own thing tho, I heard one guy just makes and sells food, that's all he does. 

The tech tree is very big.  Merchanting is well done IMO.  The combat is super nifty, building your own castle is a very nice touch.  Lots of crunchy math about max-minning stuff in your village to max your honor gain.

Give it a shot.

You can do your own thing if you lag behind the curve. The penalty is bigger if you attack someone who is lower rank than you, so nobody's going to bother attacking somebody 10+ ranks below them.

So far my impression of the game pace is slow.  There's lots of scouting and selling to do, but its once every 20 to 40 min so you'll constantly babysit the game but its a slow crawl type of babysitting.

Dont see the point of buying premium for a que other than the first day.  Stuff that  you can que, build/research, you'll be starving for points and materials anyhow.

The premium ability to move your buildings is pretty nice tho... especially the stockpile.  Also the foraging while you're offline premium ability.

Trading and foraging while offline is cool, and the premium queues are cool until you are above level 10. Then, it makes almost no difference if you log in twice a day. It would highly depend on how much they plan on selling tokens for. If 100 tokens is $5, I could see this having legs.

So to play this you have to join their email list and wait for an alpha/beta invite?

Yep

Just got the ability to trade in other parishes...

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/91035/CropperCapture%5B1%5D.jpg)

Methinks someone needs to adjust their auto trades...

How are vegetables more than meat? And cheese is more than bread? You live in a very odd parish.

Vegetables can only be made in lowlands and plains, meat can be made in every type of village.  No idea what's up with the cheese though.

Word salad, I meant how is meat more than vegetables. The prices in my parish and the surrounding parishes are usually Apples - 1-25, Cheese 20-50, Meat 80-100, Bread 60-80, Vegetables 100-120.

So is gold mainly used to buy research points?  I'm at 2500g per point now which seems kinda high to me but I'll keep buying points unless gold is really needed later on for something else.

Also what's a good number of quary/lumber yard/iron mine to have?

Gold is used to bribe your people (I have max bribes in all my villages), buy research points, buy banquet goods buildings, buy decorations (statues, gardens, etc), and you need it to train troops. I usually have more quarries than lumber yards (but 10-15 of both), Iron I have 6 in my main village. My engineering is high enough that my resources won't cap while I'm sleeping.

I researched housing capacity, I though it would turn my hovel into hut (I'm talking about the in game sprite).  No luck.  Do they automatically upgrade once you reach a certain level?

My guess is you either have to put more points in it, or reach a higher rank. I'm rank 16 and I still have the same basic sprite with no points in housing capacity.

Yes, Bribe to win!  Also, arts research!  I went from 4k/day to 8k/day(at level 11) just by fiddling with that and building the rest of my dovecotes. 

This game is still in a "closed" type beta where they are not accepting all applications right?  I am pretty sure I dropped an email on their website a while back but not sure if things have changed since then.

It's still alpha 4.  They wont go beta until the game is feature complete.  Unlike other devs, these guys seem to have brains.

They're also still testing major features of the game.  A lot changed from alpha 3 to 4, or so lurking on the global chat has informed me.

Finally getting me a second city.  W00t.

Woah had no idea you can lose all your cities, including your original which I just lost.  They should make it where you cant lose your last city.  Makes military build much more effective with large army and rush to captain to take over nicely built cities instead of buying and building up new ones.

I haven't been attacked yet by anyone trying to take my city, but that would be the obvious endgame.

Is their combat system similar to Travian, where you eventually have to start staying up all night to keep Romanian teenagers from destroying all your hard work while you sleep?

The only difference between being attacked while you're awake and while you're asleep is you can't rebuild walls or place more troops in defense, or interdict yourself to stop attacks.

Those sound like pretty big differences.  That's pretty much what it came down to in Travian as well; if you were online, for example you could dance your troops around, e.g. send your army away to evade the vanguard of a wave of attacks and then bring them back to defend against subsequent weaker waves.  At the "high levels" this sort of thing was pretty much mandatory to stay in the game.  The uberguilds would span timezones and have "sitters" manage the accounts of their sleeping guildmates so that everyone was always "active".  Catassery taken to the most extreme levels possible.

My experience is with Evony and in that game it was impossible to take a city if the owner is online, no matter how crappy the city and its defense is.  You can attack and take all resources but you'll never be able to take the city.  Fastest a mid-developed city can be taken while owner is offline is about 2 hours of continuous attacks to lower the city's morale to 0.

The attack did come last night while I was sleeping but it wouldnt have made a difference, there's no "dancing" around or like in Evony, keep morale up.  He had 150+ archers and 45 swords with a few catapults and a captain.  I havent been in game long enough to have much walls built and my army was 12 archers and 50 peasants.  A single sucessful attack with a captain takes the city.

I guess if there's no way to defend against it, you at least don't have to worry about it, right?   :uhrr:

As far as I can tell, you can pretty much set up the best castle defense and walk away for the evening. Could someone stomp the living shit out of you in a night? I'd say probably not if you were well-defended, unless they had coordinated help.

Later on in the game especially with vassal armies it becomes pretty easy to roflstomp a town.  The only hard part would be having an army with captain nearby that can travel there in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time.  It's also going to be pretty costly honor wise.

Being in a faction or at least being a vassal to somebody in a faction is a pretty good defense against attacks though,  I know that we dislike people even pillaging non faction members of my houses parishes.

The  main difference here is that you are your research much more than you are your town.  Placing down the buildings can be done in a couple few days especially if you have production research in something you can sell for mucho cash.  Build production buildings, sell production, buy wood/stone/whatever, build more buildings...

Or just scout and sell if you have scout research.

As for someone stomping you in a night, yeah it could happen.  If someone has multiple cities all with 500 army they could all attack you at once, esp. if they were all close to you.... but you can make it very unpleasant with the defenses.

Each vassal you have can store 500 troops.  Also at the end of last alpha I just figured I would lose 1000ish troops to any city I wanted to take.  I've already got 2 vassals well stocked (cats need to build faster but otherwise good) and 2 more who I figure will be be full by the end of the weekend.  Don't underestimate how quickly people can stock up on troops.  

The big problem is the honor cost.  You need a real good reason to take the hit it costs to capture and do 2x vandalizes on a city.  I captured my 3rd village because the guy was pillaging neighbors and annoying everybody around and the honor cost was something like 1.5-2 levels at the time.

I'm quiting today.  The progression was fun but the end game is disappointing and repetitive.

I stopped caring 3 weeks ago and quit. Once you get up above level 12, things are long, drawn-out, and stupid.

A big ol' war spices it up.

Also, how so drawn out?  I'm Baron and I still get a level a day just from honor I get from my villages.  That's 3 points of new candy every day, or close to.

I will say that this game definitey has its flaws, like

constantly shipping veggies and fish all over the place to keep up the happiness.
Dumping tons of whatever on the markets to keep bribe at max.  It works but it's not fun to do.
Scouts.  Scouts are stupid.
The card system.  I would never play this game at retail bc of the probable fact that a credit card will buy you instant castles and instant armies, all you want.  bleh.

But it also has its positives, like
the battle system is pretty awesome.  Castle building and strategies and whatnot.
The tech tree is nice, and better than anything else I've seen in a game like this.
The politics is pretty freakin awesome.  Fighting over parishes adds so much to the game.
There are a lot of different ways to get honor, and most of them are pretty viable.  They're putting in quests at some point too, which may be good.

so, yeah, I'm still having fun with it.

For me, I think the economy is completely stupid, and they need to fix that first and foremost. Scouting is also completely inane for the amount of points you have to pour into it to be effective. The fact that not everything can be grown in villages also smacks of silliness. If you can't produce certain goods, the economy has to be more robust to support trade of those goods. Build times get increasingly worse to the point of days in a row before something is completed. Production times on weapons also needs to be a lot faster if that's their gateway to troops other than population needs.

Also, it still doesn't solve the "Get in early and win!" downside of these games as far as I can tell.

The scouting/resource stash mechanic needs to be removed and be replaced...Maybe some small banquet/resource reward from a successful attack on a bandit camp/wolf den/AI castle that scales with difficulty/time.

But yeah, the times and resource requirements were just silly.

Are they going to time/turn-limit servers?

I don't think it's feasible, but I'm not sure. The reality is they need to severely punish high-roller players who want to "farm" lower players for resources. That kind of play is bullshit reserved for Travian. However, the diplomatic and battle system is probably the best I've ever seen in these type of games. It's good they are in an early stage, because there's a lot of balancing they need to rethink.

Game is now OPEN beta.  (shrugthough)