Dear Imperia Online team,
I'm playing the game at the moment (not under this name though heheh) and I really love the game so far. Too many people complain a lot about the game but I LOVE it!
At the beginning it can seem quite hard but once you learn the mechanics of the game (such as using counter espionage, spies, army 'evasion' etc) you can survive just fine and even defeat other players often (heheh).
Anyway, I digress...
My suggestion is the following:
The pillaging option is great as it is. However, it would be even better if you could have the option to do a either a normal pillage attack or an 'Enslavement Pillage'. This is where the player exacts a pillaging attack on his opponent but instead of killing the enemy villagers he ENSLAVES them and then takes them back to his own Empire.
Once there, the the enslaved villages are added to the population of the province from where the attacker sent the attack. So for example, if he sent the attack from province 2, all of the stolen enemy villagers are then added to the population of his own province 2 once his army returns to his Empire.
Now, of course, there would have to be some hefty penalties for doing an attack like this, otherwise everyone would be doing this kind of attack all the time.
Possible penalties could be if a player exacts an 'enslavement pillage,' his emperor then gains the trait 'ENSLAVER OF MEN' and from then on his army always fights with a minus 10 morale penalty. Alternatively, the penalty could apply to only the general he used in the attack.
An alternative penalty could be that an 'Enslavement pillage' costs minus 8 honour instead of minus 4.
Anyway, that's my suggestion and use it if you like it.
All the best,
Heretic3000