Here's an idea that should make raiding more interesting and fun for everyone involved, while at the same time reducing the amount of pain and grief involved in raiding.

Cities and Communes gain a new minister, the Minister of War. This minister can either CALL TROOPS or INVEST WITH COMMAND, allowing that war ministry aide to CALL TROOPS himself.

CALLing troops costs a seriously high amount of power, something well above 5000 Power, give or take. The idea is that raiding doesn't become a rare occasion, but that since it has a much bigger effort, it costs and raid targets have to be chosen strategically.

Anyone who has CALLED troops is followed by a few soldiers; the type of soldier depends on the player's guild. Thus, it's a good idea to invest people of all guilds with command, since each soldier has its own special attack.

You can ORDER TROOPS ENGAGE to tell them to attack (And thus inutilize) guards, ORDER TROOPS CHARGE, which will make them roam an area. You can also ORDER TROOPS PILLAGE, which will make them attack and eventually kill (But not nearly as fast as players can kill) denizens of the area. This only works in villages and enemy territory. Troops lead by the defenders attack enemy soldiers.

The minister of war can CALL RAID ON . This will drastically reduce XP loss for dying in that place only for members of the organization raiding. It also costs Power. You can only CALL troops after calling a raid, or if a raid has been called on your organization.

A new command is introduced, PILLAGE. This represents material damages and has a fairly long balance or equilibrium; the skill used to pillage, and the damage done, depends on your guild. The flavour text reflects that:

CODE

A quiet and happy village home.
You see a single exit to the north.

-PILLAGE
Raising your sickle to the air, you start dancing at a frantic pace; vines lash out from the ground, attacking villagers and climbing up the walls of houses. You stop dancing to the unheard tune, and start dancing to the screams.

A quiet and happy village home.
This area shows signs of depredation.You see a single exit to the north.

Depending on how much PILLAGE-ing has been done, a room can go from 'signs of depredation' to 'clearly, a violent battle has ocurred here; blood covers the ground'.

Pillaging and killing village denizens results in raising the village's war status. This can be seen on POLITICS:

Peaceful
Disturbed
Alarmed
Raided
Besieged
Panicked
War-torn
Devastated

At 'raided', some villagers will take up arms and start killing members of the raiding org. At 'panicked', the village leader, or a named denizen (Whichever is alive) will start sending tells to leaders of the raiding org (Whichever is availiable, in that order: War minister, city leader, city council, war aides, other ministers, guild champions, guild administrators.) At 'devastated,' the raid ends.

Troops ordered to pillage will help pillage rooms and raise that status.

Peace offerings include increasing amounts of gold and commodities (For Commercial governments), Power (For Religious governments) or much smaller amounts of both (For Conquest governments.)

The village will heal slowly; it takes a Lusternian month to recover from each level of war. The more war-torn a village is, the less Power and commodities it generates.

For Commercial governments, raiding will reduce the respect other villages have for them. For Religious governments, it will have no effect. For Conquest governments, it will increase the respect other villages have, specially if you raid to Devastated. Regardless of that, the raided village will always instantaneously hate the raiders, and enemy villages will gain respect.

Mercenaries can be hired, and come in two flavours:

NPC mercenaries cost gold to hire, but attacking exclusively with them and players (WIthout involving any soldiers) greatly reduces the respect loss for Commercial governments.

Any player organization can be involved into the fray (And gain the XP loss reduction) by spending some gold, with HIRE AS MERCENARIES FOR GOLD. A clan leader, guild leader, Orderhead, God, City/Commune leader or Minister of War must accept. This costs the raiding organization Power; how much depends on how much gold is spent (The more gold, the less Power is necessary) and the type of organization. Hiring another city costs much more than hiring a clan. It is possible to hire them for 0 gold at a very steep Power cost, nearly as much as it costs to raid in the first place.

If a city is hired as a mercenary, they have to pay a small Power cost, but can send in their own troops besides players. Also, they can OFFER AID TO and pay a Power cost somewhat smaller than the cost to raid, if their aid is accepted.

Note that both the defender and attacker can hire mercenaries.

Plane raids don't involve pillaging, and soldiers won't attack plane denizens.

And yes, I know this is long and complicated, but I think it would work with a few tweaks.

No one is their right mind is going to waste that much power for their nexus. We already have to worry about 3-4k power per month just for guards, it just isn't available to waste like that if you ever want to gain power.

Power right now is basically a 'My phallic tree is bigger than your phallic stone' kind of thing. Organizations have been gaining Power steadily over the course of the last few game years, and this would give them something to spend all that spare Power on, in sporadic bursts. I really can't see the reason why we need our Nexus filled with several hundred thousand Power when we have a surplus there's nothing to spend it on. Not to mention that there's a new source of Power, siphoning Aetherships. The amounts I gave are probably a little exaggerated, but you get the point that it should be a price big enough so that organizations can relatively often while still gaining Power; it's quite obvious we have a large surplus, as the Nexii are still growing.

No one will do it. You can argue all you want, I'm telling you how it is. I had to throw fits just to argue why we should waste 2000p per village to distort.

A 5000p raid that could go wrong is not going to happen - ever.

I'm afraid I have to agree. The thing is... that we've all got more power than we need, or know what to do with.. but that power was gained with a great deal of Sweat and Tears. Sure.. we don't need it.. but it cost effort.. and no one is going to throw that effort away... And, of course, I intend to use it to become a Vernal God... so I don't want Magnagora blowing it on guards.

Aye, you could adjust the power costs.

It sounds mostly good, but I'm concerned what already powerful characters could do if they can walk around neutralizing/ignoring guards, and NPC's killing loyal NPC's is a nono in my book.

I really like your description of pillage though.

Uh, okay. I suppose that hoarding Power which isn't really necessary to say 'Ooh, lookie, the Pool reached 700K Power' is great, too. I suppose that raids either continuing to be impossible and useless is cool. I suppose that having no outlet whatsoever for PK besides jumping people who can't even put up a fight on the highways is a lot of fun for everyone involved.

EDIT: Yeah, the Power costs are bad examples if you take how much guards cost into consideration. And NPCs wouldn't really kill guards, just 'engage' them, during which time they wouldn't attack players. They would do the ugly job of killing and raping the 'invisible' villagers while those villagers that are actually described with mobs get killed by players. Pillaging would have different effects depending on the skill used; the example I gave might work kind of like demesne briars. Perhaps powerful mages and Druids can pillage through their demesnes? Pillaging could scatter boulders on outside urban rooms, for example. But it would be fluid; an entire village would take a while to fully bring down. Raids would be relatively long events, and would work, in a sense, kind of like a player-started village influences. The benefits would be stealing another org's gold or Power tithe, or (for conquest governments) getting respect. It would be good for complementing the production for small Commercial governments (If they raid only with mercenaries), and it would make being a small Conquest government feasible for orgs trying to gain lots of villages fast (But it can easily backfire if other Conquest governments raid back, or if you raid too many villages.)