Well, following the puppy-kicking that just happened in Taop, FEI, where the whole continent ganked on a one-city realm (essentially over 30000CS vs 4000CS). feels like the looting mechanics ought to be tweaked.
A few nobles would loot, you'd get a peasant horde form, and then the rest of the 2000 soldiers couldn't do squat. The attackers could have less than 10% of their current forces present, and the looting would go on at exactly the same speed.
This feels wrong. Either the peasants are gatherered in one spot, which should mean that the army can loot everywhere else without problem, or they are scattered, which would make them incredibly easy to crush for the seasonned soldiers.
I therefore propose a tweak to looting: when there are forces defending, but the attackers control the battlefield, looting is no longer prevented. Rather, there is a warning about local resistance and that looting may be risky. People can choose to loot anyways, if they do, it checks how much CS the region owners have, how much CS the invaders have, and how much CS the looter has. It then proceeds with the looting, inflicting immediate losses to the looting unit and the defending units. If the looter has a large elite troop, the invaders are many, and there are just 10 peasants defending, the effect of the looting would basically be the same as if there was no peasants at all. If there are just few invaders, the looter has a small and cheap unit, and there are thousands of defenders, the looter might come back with equal losses to the defenders and no opportunity to loot.
It would make things more realistic and, especially, more fun. It sucks to drag things on because of meaningless peasant units. It especially sucks that they few turn junkies who log in at TC are the only ones who ever get to loot, while everyone else just sits in these regions with absolutely nothing to do.
