VOTE FOR SMALLER KINGDOMS / MEMBER LIMITATION

You seem to forget the fact, that dry season was a one-time only thing ... and that Menhirs had its test server. Also, it's not only about bug testing [btw, TG manages to screw up even the simplest of things on a regular basis in terms of bugs], but also about testing the balancing. Is the number good? Is it good at all? Does it was it's supposed to do? Has it unexpected and/or unwanted side effects? Also, creating a poll, which is written very biased and while downvoting opinions against it, yields a very inaccurate result. And, you miss a lot of cons and invent some pros. More people in leadership positions isn't a pro at all. This means, that most kingdoms will be lead by garbage and are just a snack for kingdoms with a good leadership. It's not even remotely less biased, premade kingdoms rarely do exceed 60 members and if they do, they will be much much much more likely to be willing to create a wing for the sake of playing together, thus boosting premades even more. It also won't be more competetive at all. Either there will be lots of wings, or, the good kingdoms are now only X accounts, a number which will exceed the number of decent+ accounts anyway, getting rid of the semiactive garbage, which isn't a big deal to fight off.

Also, in the very same thread, that you linked, someone posted very good cons against it, that you simply ignored: Kingdom member limitation

To sum it up (for the other readers, I'm sure you know the post very well, but just chose to ignore it):

• Hard limits force you to make bad decisions like "do I keep an active, chatty noob or do I kick him for someone who does nothing, but build def"
• This won't work after all, there will just be a wing. In T:L it is like this, main ally only gets the win, wings get nothing. There still are metas. T:L is the living proof, that what you propose won't work as intended at all.
• New players are more or less fucked. You euphemize this by saying "it'll take them some time to get recruited by a top kingdom", but they just won't get recruited at all, get bashed, and get farmed. Either this, or they land in the 17th wing of some random meta.

I dislike kingdoms based on pure mass aswell, which you will know if you read the other thread, but this solution is just not working and this thread and poll is biased as hell ... and there are much better ideas and solutions than hard limits, for the most trivial instance, the one Curtain posted in the post I linked.

Do not apply it. If you want it, let it be like the dry server. A one-time thing.

Quote from SacredLegend

There are so many pressing issues in this game that need to be addressed....I just dont think the member limitation is one of them....not to say that it wouldnt be appreciated in the game, but just so many more things that SHOULD be addressed first, like the fact that you cant dissolve a kingdoms union.....thats fine, but the fact that you can delete.....with an active treasury....and TREASURES!!......thats is just a terrible design!

SacredLegend That is indeed not good. But the foundation problem there is also that the wrong people are in control to the faith of so many other players. Travian Kingdoms do, via the "random in-game" kingdom philosophy facilitates this. This is just another reason why we need "Permanent Kingdom Organisations", where players can seek out a variety of options in terms of teams to join before they enter a server. Such an ongoing kingdom development in-between and across server have a good potential of establishing more organisations among wish less such bad surprises happens. A competitive environment among organisations also outside of servers, I believe, will organically push teams into "shaping up".

The problem with PKO is, that some players play in multiple kingdoms, depending on the round. Not every kingdom starts every round, sometimes the leaders take a break, and so on.

Quote from Be2-e4

More people in leadership positions isn't a pro at all. This means, that most kingdoms will be lead by garbage and are just a snack for kingdoms with a good leadership.

But one must ask the question. Why do you think most people are not suitable for leadership positions? Is it because of they are beyond all help and can not develop some of the skills needed for it? Or is it because they are never given the option to be in this position? Personally I think that more people than are currently entrusted by the larger more well known organisations are capable of at least learning, if not already capable of handling these tasks.

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To sum it up (for the other readers, I'm sure you know the post very well, but just chose to ignore it):

A) Hard limits force you to make bad decisions like "do I keep an active, chatty noob or do I kick him for someone who does nothing, but build def"

B)This won't work after all, there will just be a wing. In T:L it is like this, main ally only gets the win, wings get nothing. There still are metas. T:L is the living proof, that what you propose won't work as intended at all.

C) New players are more or less fucked. You euphemize this by saying "it'll take them some time to get recruited by a top kingdom", but they just won't get recruited at all, get bashed, and get farmed. Either this, or they land in the 17th wing of some random meta.

A) Even under the current system "noob" get kicked and farmed. This is nothing that is completely elusive to a system with a Max Member Limit. If a player ever get kicked from a kingdom in-game and feel unfairly treated.. then truly this player would fare much better finding a better home where new players are welcome and guided properly. In other games it is a common thing with "guilds" that are focused at welcoming new players to teach and train them. In Travian Kingdom these players are instead left to guessing in-game which kingdoms may be suit him and his level of experience and commitment.

B) There may be METAs and Wings in game. But there can never be an agreement of that 100 players in a group will always work for the win of the other 50 (main members) in a 150 man group. And are you proposing that Travian Legends are working worse than Travian Kingdoms?

C) Here we fundamentally disagree. If "Permanent Kingdom Organisations" are supported, I can promise you that new players have more Organisations to choose from than they possibly even have time to evaluate before they have decided to stay in a particular team.

Quote from Be2-e4

It's not even remotely less biased, premade kingdoms rarely do exceed 60 members and if they do, they will be much much much more likely to be willing to create a wing for the sake of playing together, thus boosting premades even more. It also won't be more competetive at all. Either there will be lots of wings, or, the good kingdoms are now only X accounts, a number which will exceed the number of decent+ accounts anyway, getting rid of the semiactive garbage, which isn't a big deal to fight off.

I agree that the Pro/Con list in the original post do not deliver the arguments, just desired effects. The arguments to why Wing-METAs would have a harder time under this system I wrote in the longer text which StarX quoted. Essentially the argument is that players they do feel that they are put on the bench and being done away with will eventually look for a team where they are fully appreciated.

Quote from Be2-e4

I dislike kingdoms based on pure mass aswell, which you will know if you read the other thread, but this solution is just not working and this thread and poll is biased as hell ... and there are much better ideas and solutions than hard limits, for the most trivial instance, the one Curtain posted in the post I linked.

You cannot say for sure that its not working. And if there are better suggestions to save this game we should lift these suggestions up for concrete debate too. Curtain would you have time to formalize it into a new post?

That's definitely more constructive than I expected the responses to be, I like that.

To the topic:

StarX I know it has been discussed in length, I just mentioned the absense of those good points in your con list. I wouldn't even classify it as strategic decision. The strategy is clear. If you want an advantage, take the dude with deff or the dude with the hammer and kick the noob. It's an emotional decision, which is why it is hard. You wouldn't have much of an advantage if you keep both (and thus exceeding the limit by one), at least not in the game. But you could keep a friend who is a noob in the ally, instead of kicking him in favor for a stranger who is good.

To clear things up: I didn't mention those points to discuss them, but to clarify my point, that this poll is heavily biased and non representative, because you euphemize cons and fill pros with meaningless arguments. My post wasn't about the point itself, but the way you post in this thread. That's also the reason, why I mentioned and critized your con-points.

Scorox Leadership is work. You need to spend time in an overall strategy. You need to spend time in off planning. You need to spend time in def planning and can't even chose the time when you do this. You need to spend time in clearing up arguments between members. You need to spend time with your teammates to create a relationship with them. And next to all that, you need to care about your account, aswell. There is the lesser point, that I rarely see people, whom I would trust with my off or with the defense of the kingdom. But the main point is, that not many people are willing to invest this additional amount of time into a game. Even if they would learn how to do it. And those players who know the how-to would probably prefer to play with their comrades, that are also good players, instead of playing with a bunch of noobs, whom they have to explain everything twice to, who may be inactive, or whatsoever. There won't be 15 medium sized, medium strong kingdoms in one world, each of which having 1-2 decent leaders, 4 decent players, 30 average players and 20 inactive trash players. The good players and decent leaders will come together in few kingdoms, just like now, and fight either each other or the kingdoms consisting of average and inactive guys.

The point is, now a kingdom can easily keep average or low average players, who log in regularly, don't build that many troops, need to learn a lot, and so on. If they are forced to decide, those players will be kicked out and only the good ones will be kept. And then they will farm the others. Sure, full retard accounts get kicked and farmed right now aswell, but the kick & farm treshold would increase. Or, like I mentioned, wings would be created.

T:L's member limit system isn't working at all, that's why I don't want it in Kingdoms. In T:L there are metas, wings and so on, despite there being no benefit in being a wing (except for the confed itself). There's no reason for it not to happen in TK. And I read somewhere, that this isn't useful for them, or they'd be dumb to create a wing - but the decision isn't "hm, do we play for victory on our own, or do we help them to get to victory", but "do we accept getting smashed, if we don't help them and delete, or do we help them?". I would chose the latter one, if I was an average player.

And yes, sure, someone would take them, but this will probably be just a random kingdom, that's clicking to kill the time until the pro kingdoms comes by and smashes them.

The main problem imo, why there aren't many good kingdoms is, that there aren't as many good players who are really tryharding and taking the game serious. If there are only a hand of really strong players and a few more decent players, it's hard to form more than 1-2 kingdoms, unless you want to fill up with 70% averagers. I would really like to have some battles like 40 strong players versus 40 strong players, but that's 60 too many accounts required. Not even people, accounts. Strong accounts are usually played as dual or trial, due to time consumption. Not only a problem of mentality (not wanting to basically 5 vs 5), but also a problem of player numbers in total. But whatever, different topic, like I mentioned, I posted here to give some critics on the post/poll itself.

Quote from Be2-e4

To sum ...up the cons...

• Hard limits force you to make bad decisions like "do I keep an active, chatty noob or do I kick him for someone who does nothing, but build def"
• This won't work after all, there will just be a wing. In T:L it is like this, main ally only gets the win, wings get nothing. There still are metas. T:L is the living proof, that what you propose won't work as intended at all.
• New players are more or less fucked. You euphemize this by saying "it'll take them some time to get recruited by a top kingdom", but they just won't get recruited at all, get bashed, and get farmed. Either this, or they land in the 17th wing of some random meta.

I dislike kingdoms based on pure mass aswell, which you will know if you read the other thread, but this solution is just not working and this thread and poll is biased as hell ... and there are much better ideas and solutions than hard limits, for the most trivial instance, the one Curtain posted in the post I linked.

The first one isn't really a con in my opinion, also because it doesn't actually work that way in my experience. In the old days, you would have a core team and then recruit whoever seemed qualified. That is, if you're going for a smaller, more hardcore team. So you would start well below the 60 player limit, and then work your way up. It would very rarely happen that you would actually get in a situation where you would try and kick player x to get a slightly better player y. Instead, you would just kind of keep the team you have and simply put a stop on any new players. For metas, you would do the same except without a player limit, you'd put them in wings and still wouldn't kick player x out for y. So you wouldn't have this problem in either scenario. I think this one is in your head only.

The second point is true - there will just be wings. That's still an improvement on the current situation - turning back design choices from TK to TL, T3 or T2.5 is almost always an improvement - and a good first step, since it's one small, very weak, incentive to not make metas. Implement this first, then work from there. There' s an infinitely high number of mechanics and incentives to be tried, and any result that the devs want to achieve with regards to metas can be achieved in principle. I've been waiting for years for the devs to actually want it, however

About the third one, eh...New players are screwed if a hard limit is put into the game? More than now? Who are you kidding? Nobody attacks anybody in this game! Nobody gets catted off of servers permanently, nobody gets chiefed and getting out of being farmed is easier than ever with the kingdoms system. A limit doesn't change that, how is anyone ever screwed in the new situation? The problem here isn't that people actually get hurt, but that they have some kind of victim mentality. That's what TK was based on - everything should always be safe and cozy. Look at the player numbers...it didn't freaking work! Stop pushing the idea that everyone should always be safe already!! New players will certainly have an easier time than in old versions of the game, now that you can teleport around the map to different kingdoms and are by definition put into a kingdom when you start the server. That should be plenty!

Quote from Curtain

I have said this one before that I am against player limits and other such things you would call "hard" limits. They ultimately don't work, end up making the game worse and if anything they limit the small and middle sized guys more than the big metas.

Story time: One of the big things that did draw me in to kingdoms from legends was the fact that there weren't any member limits. In games that do have hard limits on members as a member I'm always bit stressed by the fact that I could get replaced at any moment be it because i'm not good or active enough or because I hurt the kings feelings or maybe because he needs space to bring in a tactical merge member or his buddy. Meanwhile from the leader side I don't like the fact that I gotta pick the members based on merit. If I got a guy I spawned next to and helped build my kingdom (let's call him Bucky), and bucky always responds to my messages and defends where he can and sheeit but is never truly a top tier player. Then later on my kingdom fills up and now it's time to go for the win. I'm presented with the opportunity to take in a super defender from the kingdom that collapsed next to us, he did nothing wrong and wasn't the reason why his kingdom collapsed (let's say his king left) and he would clearly be a top 5 player in our team. Meanwhile our lowest performer is Bucky but hes always active in chats and been there from the start. Do I do the right thing for the lets say 58 other players in the kingdom and pick up the new good player and kick bucky or do I just stick with what I got and lower our chance of competing. That's the sort of thing I would hate to do.

Now while that is all emotional but still quite valid reasons why member limits are bad, there's also the thing that they simply don't work. Not only will the guys who really want to play together (be it because they are scared meta wuzzies that just want to 5:1 their enemies) or simply group of friends just bit too big for what ever the limit was set. They will just create wings and effectively play together even if it's penalized a bit. If anything splitting like this could make you stronger in current kingdoms since you could funnel all the treasures to just one kingdom hence putting the defense power and treasuries of 2 groups behind just one sets of doors making it much more difficult to attack. Also when the end game comes someones gonna get cut because the best buddy of the king who was set to lead the wing aint staying without a medal so off you go linemember#55 and thanks for your service. Also stuff like the beginner problem and then elite players all pooling into one kingdom are issues that are just made worse by a hard member limit.

Also the big bad meta players are more likely to abuse wings and such to bypass the limitations while the "honest" small guys are punished by not being able to match the big guys in numbers. That is not to even say how big a kingdom should be. 30(60) you suggested in OP is probably suitable for some but many would complain it's too small to house all their friends AND at the same time there would be mid size kingdoms and players who would rather have it be even smaller. Increase it to say 150 and it wouldn't even do much, drop it down to 20 and now all but the most elite members are getting a boot from the "serious" kingdoms. Hard balance to make even without considering premades and different sized servers like national and just quieter coms.

I too would want to see ideally 7 medium sized kingdoms in a slugfest for a win but instead of making limitations (these will only really hurt the guys playing by the rules) you want to switch up the core systems to favor the small guys over the big ones. You want your change to be something that doesn't outright prohibit adding a new helpful player to your team but one that discourages it (especially in the case of non contributing players) and gives rewards for doing thins in a small group

Let's take few examples.

A mechanic that favors the big and creates snowballing is how treasures are generated:

Governor creates treasures -> more governors is more treasures -> more treasures is more VP -> more VP is more attraction to new governors.

No matter how you look at it it's a vicious cycle that means if you are trying to win (which most players are) it's individually the best choice for them to apply to the strongest kingdom making it stronger and for the kings it makes sense to accept every applicant because that leads to more applicants.

A hypothetical (and actually quite bad suggestion) that would favor the small would be something like

Treasures are generated 10 per day at kings capital village -> each kingdom has the same potential to generate VP -> only those kingdoms that fight to steal treasures from neighbors get more VP generation

This obviously would be bad because small kingdoms would just get farmed for their VP (lets not even talk about multis) and people would still apply to the big kingdoms. On paper and in vacuum this a very neutral mechanic however compared to the current system.

Another approach to this could be that each kingdom generates 100 VP per day directly and you need to steal it but you can only steal up to double what the other guy has meaning you can't endlessly bully the small kingdoms for their VP. This would already solve few of the issues with the previous suggestion though generating couple new ones as well.

Another example could be a member tax (lets say at the wonder so the early game is relatively unchanged). There could be a button in the kingdom menu aimed for this and each member could contribute (let's call it decorations for the wonder). The more members you have the more it costs, let's say 50k per level of each + 5k for each governor of the kingdom. This way you could still add more members but each new member would make the decoration cost higher. It's not back breaking high so each new member would be profit so long as they contribute but at the same time it incentivizes the team to stay as small as possible. Legends had something like this in a special server I think, gave bonuses to troop production (or something like that can't remember) so a tax system like this can be literally anything and even hidden behind a buff or a bonus you have to pay for

Hopefully you see my point however. So long as massive cooperation and adding more members is the logically the easiest and most straight forward way to win then that means folks will keep on doing it.

Introducing mechanics that systematically favor smaller teams over biggest ones instead is a way for a truly more balanced game.

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Scorox thats the post from Curtain in the original thread

its a long post but basically the argument he is making is that the reason for the development of big meta kingdoms is the snowball-effect of the treasure mechanic
for example: more members -> more treasures -> more vp -> more members again

so instead of seting a hard limit to kingdom members a smarter solution would be to nerf the effects that keeps big kingomds growing in size over the course of the game:
an other one of the mechanics that keeps meta kingdmos growing is that due to the faster treasure generation they get more treasuries -> more influence zone -> more members ... this way many of the big kingdoms can just cover complete kingdoms and recruit even more players throughout the game ...
one of the possible solutions could be to set a limit to the count of treasuries a kingdom can have... for example a if a kingdom could only get additional 4 treasuries (at 5k 15k 25k and 40k) -> that would lead to "smaller" kingdoms having faster access to new treasuries to be able to recruit players by covering their territory or merge with an other smaller kingdom and overall make the choice of joining a not top-tier kingdom more attractive
this would also be an obvious nerf to "bigger" kingdoms since they wouldnt be able to outgrow all kingdoms in size and cover an entire quadrant with their influnce zone at later stages... this would force leaders of large kingdoms to choose between recruiting new players in new areas and deactivate already populated treasury zones OR sticking to the area where they already have settled and established dominance but not beeing able to recruit smaller kingdoms by covering their zone

also an interesting take on this issue could be making it easier to beat bigger kingdoms:
what i mean by that is that a kingdom could recieve a small debuff on their defensive forces when defending against members of a kingdom that has a lower population by a certain percentage... that way there would be an obvious disadvantage in just mindlessly recruiting a large amount of players... this would also counteract to a big kingdom beeing able to recruit more defense just because of their large playerbase

these are just suggestions that came to my mind so there could be some flaws in them that i didnt think of

Quote from EarlRagnar

....basically the argument he is making is that the reason for the development of big meta kingdoms is the snowball-effect of the treasure mechanic

for example: more members -> more treasures -> more vp -> more members again...... an other one of the mechanics that keeps meta kingdmos growing is that due to the faster treasure generation they get more treasuries -> more influence zone -> more members ... the fact that this way many of the big kingdoms can just cover complete kingdoms and recruit even more players throughout the game ...

Although I do agree with that the that the main effect pushing players into META are the VP system, I see enough other reasons to keep aiming for max member count even if the VP system is reworked or removed (which I think it needs to be BTW). Each new member brings a certain probability of one more late game hammer, or a certain uptick in WW/Treasury def. So the pull to cram in as many members as possible is there even without the VP system as it a tool for gaining the upper hand on your enemy army-wise. Concretely, even without the VP system you would aim for 150 or more members rather than 50.

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one of the possible solutions could be to set a limit to the count of treasuries a kingdom can have... for example a if a kingdom could only get additional 4 treasuries (at 5k 15k 25k and 40k) -> that would lead to "smaller" kingdoms having faster access to new treasuries to be able to recruit players by covering their territory or merge with an other smaller kingdom and overall make the choice of joining a not top-tier kingdom more attractive

this would also be an obvious nerf to "bigger" kingdoms since they wouldnt be able to outgrow all kingdoms in size and cover an entire quadrant with their influnce zone at later stages... this would force leaders of large kingdoms to choose between recruiting new players in new areas and deactivate already populated treasury zones OR sticking to the area where they already have settled and established dominance but not beeing able to recruit smaller kingdoms by covering their zone

Personally I think it was a time when the territory size mattered way more than it does now. Even if you theoretically could cover another Kingdoms members with boarders and invite them today, the inability of Kings to abdicate after Union makes members of other Kingdoms unwilling. So mergers of large Kingdoms into one in-game is much less of a kingdom territory size issue today than it was in the past. The more present issue I see today is kingdom size in terms of members organised into premade teams in discord. With 200 members awaiting a launch of a server in discord, kingdom boarder size is less of an issue.

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also an interesting take on this issue could be making it easier to beat bigger kingdoms:

what i mean by that is that a kingdom could recieve a small debuff on their defensive forces when defending against members of a kingdom that has a lower population by a certain percentage... that way there would be an obvious disadvantage in just mindlessly recruiting a large amount of players... this would also counteract to a big kingdom beeing able to recruit more defense just because of their large playerbase

these are just suggestions that came to my mind so there could be some flaws in them that i didnt think of

Maybe, but reverse engener that formula and you would have a number of troops build compared to population and you would know which members would be a cost and whom are contributors. At least with a hard player limit the lowest performers do not cost you more than the alternativ cost of someone better taking this players membership. But with a soft limit like this there will be a computable performance threshold you need to meet to not be considered a direct loss.

Quote from Starx

Be2-e4 Thanks for that. I am not sure if you know but I'm running a kingdom since 5 servers now and last server we had almost 100 members. So I do understand how hard/ emotional it could get but which leader does not have to take hard decisions ?

Also if I'm aware of this from start I'll make sure that this "active chatty" player does not fall below the threshold.

Let's be honest and realistic, 60 players is still a big number and right now any player below 60 ranks in a kingdom will be either very new or very inactive.

What Curtain mentioned in that post is really great stuff but more like a story explaining the ethical dilemma rather than an exact solution. Can a solution be drafted according to that? Yes, but someone will have to work on it and something like that will requires a hard testing, while this solution can work away with a demo round and evaluating the findings.

I'm against the hard limit of players too because it doesn't actually solve anything, it will possibly even make preformed teams stronger as they can milk treasures from their wings whereas others can not. If you think that not giving out win medals to everyone actually does something, LOL. People will just take turns in being on the winning kingdom every other round. Most folks don't even bother having the medals in their profiles anymore.

I have an alternative suggestion to get more balanced rounds: Don't run so damn many servers at once, and maybe even try actually advertising travian kingdoms instead of some damn rally game First com2 had 10k players and at that point it's impossible to have everyone in your meta, you just can not fit everyone on your borders. For your 500 player kingdom there would surely be couple more 400 player kingdoms ready to fight your ass.

Even for this upcoming "competitive" server people are already hungry to start the round already, even if that means some teams will then have to skip the round I know our kingdom won't join that one if it's not on com2. If there won't be another server before that, all the teams will be forced to join it and there will automatically be more competition.

This thing will just never work no matter how much you spam our embassies with your thread.

Quote from The real lemon

Maybe we should have a chat with devs about it? Not a pa stunt, a genuine discussion with mods and devs about what we want and why they do or do not want to fix these issues

There are 65 votes in this thread and you already want to talk to development team Do you realise there are thousands of people who probably like the game as it is now and don't call for any change? Or because your kingdom wants a change then devs must talk to you? Because so far only Stars are pushing this forward while recruiting more and more players to create the biggest meta ever on the next server That's so funny man.. or maybe sad?

Do you have any stats to prove that there are thousands of people giving up and quiting? There are players quiting every single game just because they run out of time/passion and there are new players coming at the same time. Do you realise that those quiting without raising their voice are probably players who dont participate in a teamplay and would definitely be the first players to leave if they wouldnt make it into top kingdoms?

Quote from Starx

Be2-e4 Thanks for that. I am not sure if you know but I'm running a kingdom since 5 servers now and last server we had almost 100 members. So I do understand how hard/ emotional it could get but which leader does not have to take hard decisions ?

Also if I'm aware of this from start I'll make sure that this "active chatty" player does not fall below the threshold.

Let's be honest and realistic, 60 players is still a big number and right now any player below 60 ranks in a kingdom will be either very new or very inactive.

What Curtain mentioned in that post is really great stuff but more like a story explaining the ethical dilemma rather than an exact solution. Can a solution be drafted according to that? Yes, but someone will have to work on it and something like that will requires a hard testing, while this solution can work away with a demo round and evaluating the findings.

No, I don't play (much) com, only one round. Russians are all I know.

Leaders have to make hard decisions, yes. But they should be strategical, not emotional. One can discuss about soft limits, there are plenty of options. Increasing of required treasures per treasury, kingdom-wide morale malus (instead/in addition to accountwide), make treasure generation non-linear to member count (for instance rarer hideouts for governors of bigger kingdoms), idk, those were random examples, that came to my mind in a second.

Btw, to prevent you getting this wrong: I don't like huge metas, they are somewhat ridiculous. I usually lead a kingdom with low 2-digit member count without any confeds or NAPs, when our last round ended we were 34 members (and won the server with the other two relevant kingdoms having a confed btw). One could say, that my kingdom would likely profit the most from any effective hard caps.

Quote from Starx

I guess low player base on servers is a stats in itself, disagree ?

And yes the limitation could be hard on new or inactive players and that is the reason that point is in Cons in the main post.

Yes, I disagree. TK isn't advertised anywhere (at least I didn't see an ad for it), travian's player count is shrinking since years, for both T:L & TK, other browsergames probably aswell. Just because two things correlate doesn't mean, that one causes the other.