I do have one quick idea - if you are thinking of removing Outposts, instead you might considering scaling down the cost in troops it takes to seize even one square. I think there would be more interest in them if it didn't cost an enormous number of troops just to seize something that provides a couple of one resource per hour.
Personally, I don't think there's a need to remove Outposts. A Lv 1 Outpost generally takes 30-40 days to break even on resources, scaling up to 60-80 days for a Lv 10 Outpost, so it's understandable that people don't seize them because they can be easily seized by larger players afterwards. But if you think about it, villages suffer from the same issue as well, but there's not much aggression happening on that front in general. If making RoI on Outposts really becomes a major issue, then we can just have it so that Outposts cannot be abandoned nor attacked by another player for 30 days after being seized. That would give the player who took the initiative to attack an Outpost enough time to conjure up enough defenses for it. If anything, I think we should be getting better incentives from attacking Outposts instead. (And yes, this is a biased sentiment coming from someone who holds a few Outposts scattered all over the map.)
Character Name: RimuruI had been unconsciously using the cost of a village soldier. Let me work it out....
A level 5 outpost produces 10 of one resource/hour. To produce a Pike or Archer costs 50 gold + 1 of each of the 4 resources. If we assume a price of 3 gold/resource (from my experience in the Market), that's 62 gold to produce one soldier. So the level 5 outpost produces the value of 4 soldiers/day, roughly.
I just ran into a level 5 outpost and the dark wizard has 4,270 archers and pike each on it. So that's 8,540 soldiers needed to sieze a piece of land, for an ROI of 8540/4 = 2,135 days, roughly. Six years. The amount of dark wizard troops scales with the production rate, so it's the same for all outposts.
Oh yeah, I see I do get 8,540 resources if I take this outpost. That's worth 413 soldiers per my math above, so knock about 100 days off my ROI estimate above. Still almost six years. That's just too much by an order of magnitude for a game of this type, IMHO, when the outpost can be seized from you at any time.
Just my 2 satoshis,
EnderWiggin
I see what you're getting at, but I'm calculating it differently for the sake of convenience. I'm only calculating the cost in resources and ignoring all costs in gold. That seems like a shortsighted approach at first glance, but gold comes so easily, and I barely notice the passing of time since I can't play as consistently as I would prefer to.
Using the numbers that you gave above, my method of calculation (ignoring gold costs) would amount to such:
8540 soldiers x 4 resources each = 34160 resources invested
34160 resources invested - 8540 resources instantly harvestable = 25620 resources
25620 resources invested / 10 resources per hour = 2562 hours to recover investment -> 106.75 days before RoI
Granted, that's higher than the average amount I've seen on the few samples of Lv 5 Outposts that I've seen (not that I've seen a lot), but it's still not bad, especially considering that the current meta prolly has less than 5 players overall constantly monitoring Outposts. In fact, you can prolly hold an Outpost for that long without anyone else noticing. I've held about 3-4 unguarded for almost 2 weeks without anyone noticing. Since those are mostly Lv 1 Outposts, I'm quite close to recovering my resources invested on them.
All in all, it's easier to recover your resource investment against Lv 1 Outposts. There are also fewer players who'd bother to antagonize you over them if you're higher-leveled or belong to a large clan.
Having said all that, I must remind you that I don't take gold costs into consideration. If you do (as you should), then you'll never make RoI for a long time. Meanwhile, those already holding Outposts are gradually breaking even as we speak.
P.S. I wouldn't mind getting some decent Exp from attacking Outposts though.
Character Name: RimuruEDIT: Please also note that Lv 1 Outposts can have as few as 300 total defenders. I've even seen a rare Lv 4 Outpost with about 1500 total defenders. I don't know if those are poorly defended because they have been attacked prior to me finding them, but no attacks have landed on them since, so I have to assume otherwise. By "shopping around", it becomes easier to get an RoI on the resources that you invested on soldiers. As for the gold cost, well, you'll most likely recover that too if you don't lose your Outpost early on.