This is my opinion after 10 years (a lot of Money) of enjoying this game.
1. Players should be REWARDED for fighting MANUALLY.
I can't help it, I have to ask - why? On a strictly mechanical/technological/developmental/marketing level what difference could it possibly make to Inno to have it's players play manually over auto?
Look at it this way: If a position on a great building is really only worth what a player deems it's worth, something that has pretty much been agreed upon even if it's still discussed "heatedly," isn't the value of a fight, whatever type of fight it is, the same? Let's play Devil's Advocate here for a moment. You - manual, Me - auto.
We both spend the exact same number of dollars to buy brick-a-brack and what-not and we both fight exactly the same number of fights, you fight your "style" and I fight "mine." What's the difference?
The difference to us is perceived. You think you're superior to me because you have to remember a complex serious of key strokes as well as each units boosts and defecits under a lot of different conditions. I think I'm superior to you because instead of wasting my time learning all of that stuff that's going to be obsolete as soon as I level up an era or two, I'm also raking in the game-bucks because I think I'm "that" much faster than you -- and so on.
To Inno it's about what it takes to program it to do the two different kinds of fighting. If there's an infentesimal difference, they are going to want to please both types of fighters, right? Why show preference to one over the other? Well, that's where demographics and marketing strategies all come into play BUT let's keep this simple and say that the COGs are negligbly different between the two so in the end, your "package" and my "package" of Forge of Empires costs them the same amount to make, maintain, develop, and so on.
Who do they pick, you or me?
I see your problem as being a bit too narrow in your viewpoint. It's not a bad viewpoint because it's made up of the rich, cool, fantastical, fantasy stuff that makes this game "interesting" to both of us! It's fun! It's a game! But why should a company care about whether or not their clients are in guilds? Do well in them? Hate them? And so on?
Because they know that is what the customers want. Back to the battles.
Who do they pick, you or me? The answer is they pick us both. Together we will always spend more than either of us will individually spend. That, Sir, is Business Economics in a nutshell.
