Hi guys, i would like to give you my idea about taking a city and/fort:

first of all, to respect the sandbox gaming, there CANNOT be a safe zone, no battle instances and no pre-schedule attack where you have to give a time of attack to let the other tribe gather their soldiers. (has seen on some games).

The only protection would be inside the walls (and to not discourage newcomers, they could have a 24 hrs invulnerability to get to know ''peacefully'' the game or searching for protection. This invulnerability would end before the 24 hrs if they attack someone or even an NPC).

Now, to not have a huge disappointment in logging in and seeing that over the night your fort was taking, thats where all the problem is. When you are not logged in, your toon cannot act for you to defend, so why not give each player a ''sentry'' that he is placing strategically in the fort, and when you log, a sentry or city guard takes the place of the objet i called here as the ''sentry''. It could be like a small wooden sentry statuette that ''comes alive'' when you log. Now those city guards would have to be stronger in my opinion then your character, just to justify that if your city was taken in your absence, then it would've been surely taken even if you were there. The city guards would battle only inside the walls, but covering it all.

If its not possible or the idea not so good, theres an option to this: When you are a tribe with ''X'' amount of members, you can hire up to ''X'' amount of city guards, you can choose between classes (archers, fighters, etc), choose between different quality of city guards (naturally at a diff. price) and place them where you want, maybe even give them some easy orders such as making a round patrol, stay put, etc. and they are effective day and night. I would make it very difficult to take down those guards, towns are precious for a stable economy, thieves and warmongers should represent a minority of the players, not the majority like Mortal Online (thats what deceiving many players of MO). And thats what i think would make the success of Xsyon.

cya guys later
Yz