If battle length was determined by the odds of the troops, we get a much more interesting combat calculator. 

I'd suggest if implimented the combat length calculator be based on 2 things. Max # of troops, and ratio of troops. 

With the right number of troops, someone could create a battle against a much larger enemy and have their allies join the battle midway through to shift the battle in their favor. This seems like a great concept to advance military tactics without altering the current combat mechanics. 

The full potential would be that the first army to attack an encampment/city would not have to suffer 100% casualties every time.  They first army to attack would begin combat, and they would begin loosing troops much faster than the defenders. While combat is still going on additional troops could join forces. 

This seems to heavily favor attackers instead of defenders, so defensive reinforcements midbattle would have to receive additional buffs to compensate. But I think it could be a fun addition to the game. 

Max time for battle resolution would have to be like 2 hours or something. to prevent these things from lasting forever. 

It would be the most awesome upgrades to the game since i started playing 2 years ago. 

if you wanna know the name of the game pm and i will tell you.

Luna

oh well ikariam is the name. might be worth checking into for the devs aswell, to see how they made it and maybe see if its possible for Illyriad aswell to have a more impressive combat system. it sure kept people at the screen checking in to see how the battle was going :)

Massive lines of attackers encamped on opposing sides, entire fields full of armies... And after a day, nothing. Illyriad would have devastating combat that would diversify conventional Illy war to more than just siege and sit.

Not much incentive to fight these pitched battles though, I suppose many gentleman's agreements would have to be made to see two large armies clashing against each other :P

also i would want the battles to last much over 2 hours if the armies are in the size of 30k vs 30k or around those. also with reinforcements these numbers can grow which extends the time even more.

please learn to read then come back to the forum.

Farming NPCs shouldn't be a problem, if you would send overwhelming army poor animals would loose in the first round. But for large more even sided battles many rounds sure sounds more fun and more strategy. Multiple attackers would join in the next combat round to form a larger army... 

50 well coordinated small players could kill big defending army and each would share the troop losses. In current combat system 50 small players can kill large defending army, but many of attackers loose their entire armies and commanders. Using commanders with more hit points would also make more sense in round based combat system. Messengers could also be used to retrieve attacking army before next combat round...

Great suggestions. 

Would be quite an ineresting improvement... but as battles take time, it brings a real issue imo: it's about diplomatic relations between amies. Imagine player A defends a spot with large armies, Player B who has no Diplo relations with A can attack him. Player C is in Confed/NAP with A and B but decides to help A defend for exemple... here there's an issue because with current diplo mechanics, he can help none.

If Devs are willing to make some PVP battles non-instantaneous, the diplomatic relations system should be first reworked to avoid incoherences. Like someone in a goup of confeds can't be as well in NAP/Confed with an enemy his group is at war with. Currently, to take the exemple of the current war, any Consone alliance could be confed with H? or Dlords while still confed with the rest of Consone.

In the interaction exemple i gave, it's a hard case as B has no relations with A, and C is Confed with A and B. As B attacked A one solution would be to automatically change diplo status of B with C from confed to without relation or War. Same way, C could have an option to chose to defend A or to attack A, which would be seen as a betrail for B or A and change his diplo status automatically. 

Though, this means 1 player would make his whole alliance change automatically diplomatic status with an other alliance, if he supports one or the other side. And here it's an exemple with 3 players from 3 different alliances... sounds like a nightmare if more alliances with various diplo relations fight on a same spot.

An other idea though, would be to let alliances change their diplo status first, before being able to do anything. In my exemple, alliance of player C could first manually change its relation with B from Confed to War/no-relation in order to let player C help player A. But here the interaction exemple is just between 3 alliances... how does it work between more alliances battling on a same spot, and with various diplo intereactions?

I personnally think non-instantaneous battles would need to first re-view the current diplomatic relations system (which has to be re-viewed anyway, imo), it wouldn't work with the current one.

Player B wouldn't even need allies - a token force could be left behind, not meant to win battles, but to hold off attacks until the relief force returns home. This would be possible with long battles.

I don't think it would be more time consuming, if you aren't able to send commands to a fight in progress.

But it would alter strategies of timing armies, i.e. when to send them.

And it would make sieges easier (and far more realistic) to break. It has been a major lack in combat, for defenders ganging up, while attackers can't...

9 squares around a city where sieges can be placed. Nine :P

I've only ever seen eight.

To dream on further and add to what Janosch suggests about tactical options, one thing I would love to see in some far removed hypothetical update was the possibility of setting formations for your armies. 

Imagine a grid resembling the battle field: You could place speartroops in the front if you expect to be met with cavalry, have units of cavalry placed on the far sides of the field, ordered to use flanking manouvres ect. All this would ofcourse be set before sending the army off to battle. This would not only allow tactical minds to battle out in a whole new way, testing wits with opponents on the best army formations, but also create an incitement for using mixed troop armies.

As it is now, the only sound strategy is to focus on one troop type per city and churn out as many as possible. An army comprising only archers is hardly realistic, even though I fully accept that realism is not the key in a game like this :)

I know this is far fetched and not likely to ever be implemented, but just think of the possibilities!