temporaily link/merge/join forces with another account

idea:
different players have different strengths -- team up at a cost

The idea is that the two players involved can join forces -- merge their armies into a bigger army -- just like the Huorns helping out the Rohirrim to finish the Battle of the Hornburg. The forces are put in harm's way, so there may be losses (for simplicity of implementation, I would evenly distribute losses across linked accounts). Plus, there are costs: at a minimum there are logistical expenses to move the forces to the right place, supply lines become more complicated, not to mention communications, etc. This would be useful to boost someone's defense, offense, covert, and maybe assassins or even income.

I imagine one way to do this is to add something after Realm Alert Level on the Base page. Maybe something like this:
Merge Army with ID |______| [Link]

Linkable stats (maybe straight up numbers of military units) are summed between the two players and divided by two -- each player getting identical numbers of military units -- (or maybe just link the desired units using a dropdown). If the link was stat specific, it could look more like:
Merge Army link |Choose Stat [v]| with ID |______| [Link]

When one player does this -- the other player gets a message on their base screen:
[Player] has requested to Merge with your Army (in stat) [Accept] [Decline]

Once the second player has Accepted, both players see something like this on their base page:
Merge Army with ID |_1234_| [Unlink]

The link is effective until one player Unlinks. In the meantime, linked parts of their armies have joined forces.

So what happens when forces are linked? I had two separate ideas on that.

1. For the linked stat(s) (let's just focus on Covert here), the two players' armies join forces. The number of Spies for each player is summed, then divided by 2. Each player ends up with an equal number of Spies in their armies. The player that needed help and had fewer -- now has more than before. The other player now has a decreased number of Spies.

2. More along the lines of the spirit of my Hornburg reference, maybe the forces joining in to help out someone else all head over that way. In this case, the player getting the help (the player that initiated the request to join forces with someone else) will just get all the Spies from the other player. While linked, the player getting the help has both players' spies in their army. The other player has none available to help their own realm because they all left to help the other player.

In either case, each turn the players are linked costs something. Maybe Covert turns in this case, and/or supply/attack turns. Maybe it just costs kuwal. Maybe there can be a Realm Alert-like Motivation that can run out and needs to be replenished (Morale?) -- possibly in addition to other costs.

In either case, if any units were lost, the losses are evenly distributed between the two players rounding in favor of the helper, not the helpee.

There are lots of ways that this linking idea could be implemented -- I provided these specifics just to illustrate the idea.

This idea has been talked about in many games, and no unabuseable form has ever been hammered out. I hope we can but just for reference I'll share some of the crippling downfalls discovered in the past.

1. Imagine the top 2 accounts merging.

2. It also gives more power to someone whos online more. So the active guy and the semi active guy merges to make the active guy way more powerful knowing the semi active guy is a target due to his inactivity.

3. Will be used when someone "goes on vacation", or leaves for a day or two or what ever.

4. During war times all inactives/semi actives will merge with the most active to better there military strength (see point 1)

5 The problem with merging ALL of a set force be it covert or defense or what not, is an account with NO covert is a sitting duck and can be wiped clean with practicly no losses to the attackers. If discovered they can be sabbed and assassinated to nothing.

I'lll try to find some of our old threads on this discussion and try to get the best and worst points to bring here.

Oh, another is merging to do covert attacks and then unmerging before the "defender" can retaliate, so a time committment will be required or you will see 1 turn mergers for the sole intent of being able to sabb/assassinate and give all ???

Those are really good points and I hadn't thought of most of them. Here are of my thoughts on them:

1. Maybe the number of a player's units merged should be inversely proportionate to how much they exceed the global average number of units. This would make this more valuable to smaller and mid-size players, and much less so to larger players -- possibly to the point of diminishing returns.

2. Good point -- but the semi active guy would have to be active enough to build up a strong enough account. The turns would not go over, just the units. Maybe this alone would be a good incentive to seek and destroy less active players.

3. The link would have to be mutually agreed to on the spot, so official vacation would be out (and should break an existing link). I would think it still could be used if the player who's not active for a day or two would log on to confirm the link. Another option would be to require a reaffirmation of the link each turn the link is active -- but that would be pretty extreme (but possibly a good idea).

4. Yeah, I think that would happen -- hopefully some of my ideas above would mitigate the negatives.

5. Yes -- but I like this as a side-effect/risk of doing this. Good incentive to only do this for a short period of time. On the other hand, this might be a good reason to do something other than 100/0 or 50/50. Maybe proportionate to the delta between the two players -- or just some other arbitrary percentage.

As for your last point, if the "defender" can retaliate in time, they would probably be better off retaliating against their opponent's link-mate since they will be of decreased power. If the "defender" does not retaliate while the link is active anymore, they might have better chances since presumably the attacker would have their power decreased again. Regardless, this makes me think that the fact that a player is linked and with whom should show up on their page (just like PPT and SS).

Well making the merger public would change things, but the "short term" merger is still a bad idea.

Example

You and I are warring. I "merge" with a guy with the rank 1 covert, giving me rank 1 covert. I then do as much damage as possible with this "bloated" covert. Then we unmerge and you having suffered greatly can not retaliate against either of us at full power. I just see it as far to exploitable, and it kills lone wolves even more then they are now.

Just to make sure I understand the short term concern:

Are you saying that if you were to merge against the rank 1 covert player -- then attack me and unmerge before I retaliate -- the problem is that when I retaliate against you -- I am only attacking your much smaller original force (minus what percentage of your force was lost in your original attack. In other words -- you would have fewer covert for me to attack?

If that's what you're saying I get it. I would say that that is a good reason for the attack logs to reflect that fact that the rank 1 covert player that you merged with should get full credit (at least in my logs) for the attack. That player voluntarily and deliberately sent their forces under your control to attack me.

And with that said, it seems like the experience gained with merged forces should reflect only the proportion of the forces that were actually yours (in other words, if you had 10 spies and you merged with an account that had 90 (assuming that you got all and they lost all for the duration of this example) -- you would get 10% of the experience -- and the other player would get 90% of the experience. Arguably -- a percentage should be docked (or even added) to what the normal experience would have been (as a penalty -- or to reflect the extra experience afforded by the more complex nature of a joint effort).