Ahoy folks! I had a post up recently asking for opinions on the value of each citadel upgrade; the responses mostly agreed on the same things:

• Tower upgrades, beyond the first rank of regen, are generally not worth it.
• Gold upgrade can be good if you get just one rank, but the benefit is debatable for ranks 2 and 3, particularly for the person coughing up the cash for them.
• Buffing reinforcements is good in long games, but too cash intensive for shorter ones.
• Experience is kinda cool, but you could probably spend the money better elsewhere.
• Trebuchets are lame, Finger of God is cool but not so great--definitely not worth the insane price unless you're just trying to embarrass the enemy team with your absurd wealth.
• Angels are not nearly as game-changing as Priests, Cats, or Giants; they're basically "that speedbump before you get Cats."
• Nobody ever buys Reduced Death Penalty. Honestly, it's like paying money to encourage your team to die.

Looking at the citadel upgrades, I can see the developers tried to give us a lot of options, but unfortunately, a number of them are generally considered not worth it. I look at the citadel upgrades and say, heck, if they're going to put all this stuff in, it ought to all be things a good player would consider buying in the course of any game. You should look at the citadel menu, and have a dilemma--"What is the best thing to buy right now? These are all good..."--rather than knowing that some of the upgrades--in fact, the majority of them--just aren't worth your time.

Remember, the citadel upgrades are supposed to be viable alternatives to purchasing equipment. In fact, they'll have to be a bit stronger, because they require an individual to forego strengthening themselves in lieu of strengthening their team, and most players struggle to achieve that level of altruism. If a player is generous enough to spend money on the team instead of himself, he should really feel like he made a difference. This will make it that much easier to convince newer players, who tend to neglect the citadel, that working with your team can be rewarding.

Therefore, I propose we start looking at simple ways we could change the citadel upgrade menu, so that more of its upgrades offer high value to the player. Simply put, if most of the options on the citadel aren't worth buying, they shouldn't be options. If the objective of the citadel menu is to offer a diversity of options to invest your hard-earned money in, all options should be of roughly equal value, the difference between them determined only by personal preference or situation-specific stratagem. It doesn't make sense to have some upgrades be "usually a bad idea"; in terms of diversity, being offered ten options, seven of which you would never consider, is just as bad as being offered only three. Auxiliary to this is the fact that there are several upgrade tracks in which only the first upgrade is agreed to be viable--if this is the case, why bother with a track? It ought to be worth the heavy investment to max out a track on the citadel, for every track.

I'll start with some simple brainstorming, to show you what I'm thinking of:

• Get rid of DP reduction entirely. Nobody ever buys it--any other purchase is a better use of money.
• Reinforcement buffs could be combined into a single track, upgrading both attack and defense at each level, because, honestly--when is it tactically viable to only get one or the other? Two separate tracks is just a bit too gold intensive for anyone to want to buy them until the very, very end of a game when victory is almost assured anyway. Combine the two tracks, and possibly increase the gold cost to somewhere between the price of one and the price of both now.
• Combine tower upgrades, and possibly make the increase more noticeable. As it stands, tower attack is almost never taken, and only the first rank of tower regen is taken with any degree of frequency. I don't even think the cost should go up, either. As it stands, if a Demigod is determined to kill a tower, no amount of tower upgrades are going to stop him from doing so--all the upgrades seem to do is prevent people from pestering towers or getting them killed by creeps before catapults.
• Maybe have catapults and Finger of God be the last upgrades on the tower upgrade track, and increase the damage of both. For goodness sake, something as awesome as an orbital laser named the Finger of God ought to be a pretty damn impressive weapon.
• Alter increased gold income--rather than being a slow, passive benefit, how about if it increased the amount of money earned from killing reinforcements? This would reward players on the front lines more, and make it a much more noticeable advantage over the enemy if they haven't bought it yet; if one team was dominating the lanes, it would help them rapidly secure an economical advantage; by having an effort-based reward, you can make this upgrade far more dynamic and interesting, and far more worth its high price tag. Consider that Currency I is a "rival" upgrade as Priests, in terms of availability and cost--it should therefore be at least as valuable as Priests.

As for some new upgrades:

• How about an upgrade track for increasing the rate at which your team captures flags, or perhaps decreases the rate at which enemies can decap yours? This is a key element of the game that hasn't been touched yet, and would be interesting as a potential Rank 1 upgrade, buyable from the beginning of the game.
• Perhaps an upgrade that improves items available in the shop? For example, all consumable items heal/last/etc. 20% more/longer/etc. per rank? It would help combat potions scale well into the endgame, making them an alternative to the powerful potions in the relic shop.
• How about advanced upgrades for each new reinforcement, individually? Kind of a stretch, but might be an interesting twist on the regular "just buy all of them" proposition.
  • Regular Soldiers and Archers can be upgraded so that you get 50% more of them in each wave.
  • Priests can be upgraded to have a passive buff to HP/MP regen to nearby allies.
  • Angels gain the ability to reduce the speed/armor/etc. of enemies they hit.
  • Catapults gain a chance to inflict a brief (~0.5 sec) stun on hit.
  • Giants gain a respactable chance (~15%) to double attack whenever they attack.

In any case, these are just for brainstorming purposes. Any thoughts, comments, ideas, etc. you care to contribute will be much appreciated. Thanks!