Giving enemy squads the ability to spawn on towns has taken me down quite the rabbit hole of other design options for the map-based portion of the gameplay. Under the new system, which enables the first round of enemy spawns to be on towns, the player is now faced with a fewer initial enemy squads, but earlier in the map.
Under this system, it doesn't make much sense to allow the player to deploy 10 squads right off that bat, as it'd pretty much just be a slaughter. It also kinda didn't make sense already, because deploying 10 squads at once at the start of every stage is kind of a slog. This leads to the possibility of requiring the player to liberate towns in order to increase the number of squads they can deploy. Notice the 1/4 deployed squads here.
Thus, a small number of initial squads are used to grab some nearby towns to allow the player to field the rest of their 10 total deployments. I want the gameplay to be army-focused, so I don't want it to take very long for the player to be able to field 10 squads.
My biggest hesitation with this design decision is its potential to degrade the progress that has been made toward encouraging the player to use a full 10-squad army instead of a few death squads. But ultimately I think enough has been done to encourage this that I can afford to make some changes (like this one) that work slightly against it.
This new role for towns to play leads to the possibility of further increasing the rewards from liberating towns and temples. As such, here are some changes being considered there:
Towns:
-Add a "Supplies" stat, this stat adds to how many squads the player can deploy
-Add a "Armaments" stat, this stat factors into damage taken/received in combat (replacing the current Morale system)
-Have a town pay tribute upon being liberated, giving new funds immediately
Temples:
-Have temples always provide a piece of equipment
-Augment the revive service they offer to also be able to heal living party members (still for a fee, of course)
These changes have the potential to inject more strategy in deciding which towns to focus on liberating, since some could give more supplies, armaments, or money. I'm sure proximity would still be the biggest consideration, but hey it's something.
Lastly, I'm also considering more changes to how town liberation works as far as Reputation goes. One idea I had is to incorporate OB64's concept of Ali-matching, such that you use goodly units to liberate good towns, evil ones for evil towns, etc. Charisma could possibly replace Ali as the stat that is always beneficial when it comes to raising Rep.