For the last 6 months I have been playing a Hive game called Crownrend. If you haven't played Crownrend, it is a kingdom managing and strategy game. The devs @mrtats and @deathwing have been adamant from the beginning that they don't want this to be just another mindless play to earn game. They want it to be fun. They have put in a ton of time and effort into trying to attain that goal. They have also been wide open to feedback from the community of players and have made countless changes to try to improve the game. Recently, they made what I consider, the most significant change in the game. They introduced consumable items and the building of individual units as opposed to just buildings. I believe the goal is to create more battles and to make the game more engaging. 
Speaking of their being wide open to feedback, here is what I posted in the Discord yesterday
"There are many things I like about the changes. I have logged into Crownrend several times a day since the changes happened. I have put in more hours over the past week than all the rest of the time combined. I like having a reason to buy chests. There is now a rush that I will get a consumable that will allow me to build elite or reinforced units. I like deciding what to build. I like seeing my army grow. I like managing my resources so I break even every hour.
But… I don’t think I will ever do anything with my units. I am only building defense. I’m hoping to build so much defense that no one will bother me. Because if someone attacks me at this point and wipes out my army, I know I won’t want to put in any more time building it back up. It takes way too long to build the army back up (and I don’t mean game time. I mean real life time). This also means there is no way I will risk attacking. Again it is not the resources, it is real world time. I’m not going to risk losing troops on a raid for something that has so little value either in real life or the game. So I don’t even know why I’m really even building defense. I have a feeling the rush of building elite units is going to run out very soon and then there will be nothing to do. Perhaps my game style and what I find fun just doesn’t fit this game. And that is ok. If it is just a farming and resource management game that is cool. Some people like that. But I do believe the goal was to make a battle game. And again, I appreciate the devs and their efforts to do something fun. Hopefully this message as seen as constructive criticism and not an insult. You guys have created something amazing with lots of potential."
Being the cool guys they are, the devs responded with some more improvements they are making like non-PVP missions. They also asked if I had any suggestions.
I figured instead of just posting ideas on a small discord, I'd throw this out to a wider net in case any gamers out there have any ideas.
I have been playing kingdom building and battle games for about 40 years. The one that I keep thinking of for inspiration for Crownrend is a game from 2004 called The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. I played through that entire game probably ten times. Every once in a while I revisit it. In the game, you have missions, build up buildings and have those buildings produce units. You also have some named heroes to command those units.
One of the things about the game (and many other games) is that you have troop limits. You can't just spend 3 days building up 1000 troops and then go attack your enemy. You have an army cap and you have a time limit. If you just spend your entire time building, the enemy will either attack you or you won't fulfill the mission.
So I wonder if Crownrend could be enhanced by similar limits. There are some huge players who have thousands of troops and probably don't have time to keep adding to them (there is lots of clicking to build troops and defenses). As far as lore goes, it is unrealistic that a kingdom would have 1 gigantic castle housing a hundred thousand soldiers. Those soldiers would be spread out across multiple castles that are all connected together for trade and defense. I was wondering if limiting the size of an individual castle and limiting the troops it could support would improve the game. Instead of a giant player having 1 castle to attack defended by 100,000 troops, they could have 100 castles defended by 1000 troops. A smaller player could have just 1 single castle defended by 1000 troops. Perhaps they could attempt to attack one of a big player's smaller castles? If each castle had a troop limit, players couldn't just endlessly click to make troops. Instead, they can send troops out knowing some would be lost and then they could click to replace them. By limiting the number you could support, it would eliminate the need to just click non stop.
So I guess my suggestion is some kind of castle and troop limit. Once you hit that limit, you would have an incentive to attack others so you could get resources to build your next castle? I also think the actual real world time needed to replace the lost troops would have to decrease. Perhaps just make the troop production limited by the total number of troops a castle can support and the resources. If the troop limit is 1000 and you lose 400 troops in a raid, you could click "build 400 troops" as long as you have the resources required to build them. This would also encourage people to have large storage units of resources as they couldn't just sit at the computer and spend them on troops as soon as they are able. They would need to save them for when they needed to replace troops. Not just constantly churn them out. (Please note, the numbers in here are just place holders. I have no idea how many soldiers the biggest players have. I have no idea if 1000 is a good number. I just pulled that out of air to make it easier to make my points).
Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve a Kingdom building and strategy game?