Thank you, Jade. It's been quite a while since I've been active on the forums.^^ I've missed everyone quite a lot.
In the interests of keeping this thread alive, here is how I would fix sabotage.
Firstly, I would set a limit per account as to how many sabotage missions can be sent at one time. This will scale with the amount of villages you have to keep the sabotage function relevant in mid to late game battles. For example players with 1 - 5 villages can sent 2 sabotage missions, players with 6 - 10 villages can send 4, players with 11 - 15 can send 8… You get the idea. For every 5 villages, you can send an additional two sabotage missions. This is something that can be worked out to a more exact mathematical equation later, obviously. The point here is just scaling.
This alone will cut the usage of sabotage by a considerable amount. It will not stop entire tribes from coordinating sabotage attacks, but it will eat into their overall numbers to limit the damage.
Secondly, I would tie a buff to the Order of the Teutonic Knights option in the HoO. This may seem like a very unusual place to add this buff, but I assure you it’s the right one when you consider the following: The Order of the Templar Knights gives you Zerkers, these beasts will shred through amazing amounts of units if you send the right combination of zerkers and rams. The Thieves Guild gives you sabotage which is immensely overpowered. The Order of the Teutonic Knights gives you trebuchets…Trebs while great for destroying incoming siege units are completely useless if you have no wall or farm from being sabo’d to death or if you’re being attacked from less than 5 spaces away. So because of their slow support movement and being rendered useless if your farm gets wrecked, add the sabo buff there.
I don’t believe this would change the balance of the game too drastically, however it will change the dynamic in which people break into provinces. Instead of coining a church and some spies, they’ll coin a church and the treb HoO.
Thirdly, if adding a buff to the treb HoO isn’t an option, surely adding a anti-sabotage buff to the church is. This could be a little more interesting in terms of how far we could make this go due to the different levels of the church. Church level 1, 10% buff to anti-sabo. Level 2, 20%, Level 3, 30%. This would apply to all your villages in your church’s influence and could not be stacked with another church to prevent people going to higher percentage buffs.
Finally, morale. Take morale into consideration when sending sabotage spies. I can’t tell you how many times I was asked on US1 while co-playing to attack someone and I would refuse because morale would kick my ass and I’d lose 30 nukes just clearing them. I would immediately refuse and say “I’ll send all my sabs at ‘em though” and with the amount of sabo villages my co-players and I had… The sabos would reduce their villages to almost nothing.
Those are just some of the ways I came up with in 15 minutes on how to fix the sabotage mechanic. They could be garbage or improved upon, but this is what you get from me at 4:30 in the morning.