Poorly written game.

[julianwilson71]

Being as close as i can to be a free to play player this game is sooo boring and after a few days unplayable. The developers haven't played the game also themselves as they would know it doesn't work. You gain MERIT mainly by battles that is battling against cities already on the map which can be taken over. This is your own CASTLE LVL specific though. In other words to attack a city that is lvl 6 you have to have a lvl 6 castle. This means when you are waiting for your castle to level up you have ALL your heroes fully loaded with troops but cannot use them. Cannot do anything with them apart from some invasions that are very VERY sparsely added. This means you miss out on the said MERIT which you NEED for leveling your character. When a lvl 6 castle takes 2 days to level up a lvl 5 one near the same time by the time i can get to level 7 castle ALL the townships are taken over and i have been doing nothing WITH MY HEROES OR TROOPS FOR 6 DAYS.

[Kent]

I can see your frustration. You can always play the defensive, defending and there are invasions and monster sieges, morale quests as well where you can use your troops while castle is leveling up.