I have a growing appreciation for the value of raids in providing a source of food for mid-game players. I’d recommend levelling up your farms as a priority, but I now understand that people feel it might slow their progress if stealing were to be eliminated.
Maybe resource-based trophy incentives could replace thievery? Or maybe it’s not necessary.
Thank you, dear.
I am currently leveling my 8 farms to level 17, the level of my stronghold. I always level the farms up first. Because my heroes eat a lot 
So, any source of food is welcome.
And if I have to raid other players for it, I will do even that. Anything to feed my growing family 
And what do you mean by “resource based incentives” please?
Edit:
What do you mean by “thieving” please?
Just something that @Revelate mentioned earlier:
S/he pointed out that unless you are into collecting trophies for their own sake, there is no incentive to try to accumulate them. Offering rewards of food and iron for collecting and keeping trophies might mitigate this.
Well, the chest for raids already has a small amount of the stuff. But the largest stash I ever won in raiding was something like 92k food. My heroes had a nice feast on that day 
To my mind, it all boils down to this: Some players value cups for themselves. Others do not really care. So, there has to be an incentive for raiding. Something that a player needs and wants. Otherwise, why bother?
Heh, exactly correct: and if that incentive (for me: moar food!) is taken away, why raid? Oh yeah, 7dd mandates maintaining 2200 cups; that’s a personal choice to play there or any other alliance has a cup floor for their membership.
The raid chest when it comes to a resource perspective is probably valued at 2 flags when I’m at 2200 cups… it’s 1 flag for my alt at 1200 cups. I can’t quite do this twice a day but for easy and sloppy math that’s only a 16.7% increase over raid income for the main, and half that for the alt.
If it were the only option I had in terms of incentive for raids that’d make no difference to me in the valuation of cups or in most people’s opinion either: lots of players just want to fill the raid chest as cheaply as possible today anyway, I think I’m in the minority who ruthlessly manages cups to try to maximize my food income.
SG is aware of the problem I think; they stated from the AMA that Copper ran that they were looking at adding additional rewards to the raid system… and actually, adding some silly amount of food to the equation probably would be smart from their perspective:
We’d have to do something to fix the players in the first category listed, but that’s pretty easily addressed using a similar mechanic to Titans and loot tiers: define trophy tiers where higher cup values have an increased (yet still small, this is E+P we’re talking about) chance to get ascension items, and at that point pretty much everyone would play as max as possible if they made enough tiers (every 300 cups or similar) and be incentivized to run a real defense 24/7.
Which would make the entire ranking system that so many people ■■■■■ about, not only work from an ELO perspective, but everyone would actually take part in it for the same reasons everyone keeps tapping on the Mystic Vision.
Come on SG, sort it
I like all aspects of this idea.
Nice idea 
Addition:
Please do not underestimate the value - and the scarcity - of food.
Just now, an alliance buddy, level 20, told me happily that she was able to get 200k food today through raiding.
She was overjoyed. And she used the food to increase richard and kelile by one … uhm … step… each. (Sorry, not a native speaker … ) That is a big huge progress. And I heartily congratulated her.
I was reminded of my early days in the game. When I once grabbed 92k food from a single raid, and my heroes had a feast.
To my mind, this ability to get a scarce and badly needed resource is a great incentive to do pvp at all. And to get used to doing pvp. Because it is a way to get something that you want and that you need.
I do not wish to sound critical … but did we, in this conversation, really consider the needs and priorities of lower level players?
At level 20, most people do not care about cups. Why should they? But they do care about leveling up their heroes and getting stronger.
And once they get stronger … and they have an incentive to do pvp … the cups will come, all by themselves
Edit:
And of course, when an alliance member gets stronger, they can do more titan damage. And that helps the entire alliance.
So, I reconsidered. Please leave the raiding as it is. Please do not rob players of this great way of acquiring a scarce resource.
Also about raid, you need to overcome your fear about losing. I will always attempt more than once if I confident that I can win the fight, its just the bad board, or bad calls and bad board, that will usually make me end up losing. Today I’ve attempted 3 times to win a particular fight because I really wanna that 70k food. Yes, like everything else in the game, you need to focus to achieve your goal. Also, power is just in numbers, you would never know your true power if you never try.
I’m more or less sold on keeping food-theft as part of raiding - it’s clearly something players feel strongly about, as you guys have convincingly argued - but not without some misgivings.
Firstly, I’m suspicious of the claim that a player collected 200k food in a day through raiding. I can imagine winning 200k food, but only by spending at least 100k - probably more - searching for suitable targets. I’ve been paying closer attention to my own raiding targets this evening. Highest food was 14,000. Perhaps that’s just a function of where I’m playing, but that seems unlikely. I’d really like to see some numbers.
Secondly, I suspect much of this food-lust is driven by a frankly inefficient use of food. Yes, it’s nice to level heroes quickly, but it’s hugely expensive (foodily) to do so by feeding them 1* fodder. Using 2* or 3* heroes as fodder is far, far more efficient. Training takes longer, yes, but training speed then becomes the bottleneck, not food availability.
I think much of the issue here is driven by the way we learn the game. At low levels we breed and feed 1* heroes to quickly level up. This becomes an ingrained habit, while at later levels, 1* fodder is almost a waste of time, and definitely makes levelling very costly in food terms.
Well, I did not ask my alliance buddy for proof.
However, once collected 92k food in a single raid. I remember it well. Because it made me so happy.
To my mind, this may have to do with playing style.
At your level, and also at my level, we are online a lot. Or we would not be where we are in the game. Thus, we empty our stronghold regularly.
This alliance buddy is level 20, with 842 cups. At that cups level, people are usually not online all the time. Thus … if they make the mistake of increasing their watchtower … a lot of resources can accumulate there, ready for the taking.
I do agree with you on the usage of food in leveling heroes.
I have to admit, though, that patience is not one of my virtues And if I level a hero, then I do that because I want to use it NOW.
Currently power-leveling a 2nd green shooter for the blue titan. And already using cabin boy Peters today on “Manni” the blue mammoth, and he is performing well, although he needs 18 more levels until maxed.
(In German, the mammoth in the movie Ice Age is called Manni )
So, yes, I do agree with you that there may be more (food) economical ways if you do not need the hero right away.
Come down to 1200 cups bud, you pull 20k targets more often than not and if you reroll a few times (like 3) you usually get a 30-50k target.
This is not uncommon for my alt, the alt generates over 500k net most days from raiding.
Oh wow I fell way too low in cups from not playing the alt today, let’s see what I get at 665 cups:
SH 20 so -2000 per reroll
10 rerolls total
225833 - 20000 = 205,833 ham net, from six flags, just over 34k / flag, just right now… I can spend roughly 20 raid flags in a given day without trying that hard, that’s non-trivially over the half a million net I suggested earlier.
Where you’re at bud isn’t comparable, I know this from having played there on my main and frankly the ham income sucked badly. This is the problem I’d like to address with my idea, if we put 20k ham in addition to the watchtower winnings for call it 2000 cup target victories, and then scale up by 1k ham for every 100 cups from there, people would stop dropping cups for ham.
If we put ascension item chance in there, as long as it was better in call it 4 wins vs. the raid chest at some middle tier trophy count (1400ish), nobody would take the easy victories, even if you split 50-50 which you would if people were fully at their natural rankings, you’d still come out ahead.
SG has stated they want to introduce more ascension items in game, it’d be a low chance to be sure, but this is something they can do and with one stroke solve all the raid ladder issues as they exist today.
92k is a nice haul for a food raid, congrats! Best I’ve gotten is about 70k and I was equally as happy. 
Oh … about my alliance buddy using all the food to increase two heroes by one … step …, there may be a misunderstanding due to my lack of the correct word. She did not increase them by one level. But by one of the 4 … steps … that 4* and 5* heroes have.
Not the one on the left. But the one on the right. Which costs a lot of resources.
Sorry about my lack of correct game terms in English. My game is in German.
What is this called, please?
Not level up. But the other one
Edit:
Rats! It is called ascending them, maybe?
Ascend
That 205k on my main would’ve been almost 2 x 10 feeds at 4/58 on Nat for me (a little less) and that would’ve provided 7800 exp off color no less, so probably 8000 which is more than 2 levels… and two levels at those heights on a 5* aren’t to be dismissed lightly from a ham perspective.
Thank you very much, dear!
Also for the correct term.
I am learning the English terms as fast as I can…
Oh, and if you mean “in addition” and not “instead of” , then I still support your proposal, of course
Edit:
Yup. Leveling up those heroes does not come cheap. They sure eat a lot
I forgot to respond to this part of the quote; I would suggest you’re the one playing inefficiently if you aren’t leveling heroes as quickly as possible
At a certain point in a 5*'s levelling curve I start just feeding it 2* and up only, and I throw the 1*'s at a cheaper hero; that said, throwing away 150 exp off color for no reason, nah, 20 of those is still a level up through around 4/55 on a 5*… speed counts a lot when you are still building teams.
In your case where each individual hero is probably not much benefit, I can see that… but in mine where I have another 3 heroes to take to 80, and another 3-4 to take to 70: why do I want that to take 3 months by your path when I can do that in around 1.5 months via mine?
I am of the opinion that most would enjoy raids more if they used a drop team on defense and cared less about actual trophy count. The mission chests are simple and the food is plentiful when you play below your team strength. Since there really is no reward for trophies other than bragging rights, it makes the game more fun. For those who want to be in the top 100, that is wonderful, it just isnt important to me at this point. If they incentivize trophy count, then I may rethink my strategy.
Well, I must admit that, when I can no longer attack and win because I have reached a cup level where that is (close to) Impossible, then I attack much stronger opponents on purpose.
Sometimes I win … and think “duh?”
Mostly I lose. Which is fine with me. Fewer trophies, easier opponents, chest full
… schsch… do not tell that to my mentor…
Oh, and I have come to recognize some of the cup-dropping folks. If the strength of the defense team absolutely does not match the cup level … no thank you, I’ll take a raincheck
