Siege timers

[pppp]

TLDR; Copy EVE triple timer. Add NPC defenders that activate [x] minutes after breaking shield.

Bring back W10 shield concept. Require shield to be broken 3 times in a row, with invulnerability timer lasting 1-6 days before each siege cycle. Timer set by defenders before siege begins and revealed to the attacker after shield breaks.
Each siege cycle should last between 15 minutes and 2 hours (15 minutes is preferred),
First siege can be initiated at any time, most likely will be lost by defenders. That means nothing on the defending side but the attacking side has already committed some effort to the siege.
Both attackers and defenders have a few days to organize allies for a quite short siege event. If the attackers cannot break the shield within [y] minutes (again, 15-120 minutes, shorter is better) invulnerability kicks in and the siege is reset. If they can break the shield there is also invulnerability timer, again a few days but the third cycle is the final one.
if the shield is broken for the third time NPC defense timer starts and gives attackers [x] minutes to loot and destroy. After that time nidbanes spawn and attack every non-villager on the claim. Timer is visible to everyone on-claim (and for some time after leaving it). Think Salem's Loot Pinata.

Breaking defenses in that way twice within 2 months (put there time you like) will not spawn nidbanes and allows to kill the idol.

Nidbane timer scaled with village size (surface/banner count).
Siege engines drying timers must be reduced to single minutes or entirely removed.

Loosely related: give more significance to gilds, allow *4 stats instead of *2. Make artifacts lose some gilds on koed characters. Cap char stats, directly or indirectly.

Edit: Just ban donut villages.
The reason for very short siege windows is ATTACKERS time. Long lasting sieges where nothing happens for hours are unfun.