(Tip of the hat to Detmer whose post on server wide land pool gave me this idea)

I envision a system where there is a sort of land pool of limited acres that can simply be explored (say 5-10k per country), and an (infinite) uncharted amount of acres past that must be fought for.

To gain these uncharted acres you stake a claim for a portion of land and if nobody challenges your claim after 24 hours the land becomes incorporated into your formal territories. If, however, the land is attacked within 24 hours, then the territory is surrended to the attacker(if he wins) and now the 24 hour clock begins on him. What would allow it to be fun is that in the battles for the unincorporated lands the attacker and defender will be unknown. Ie all a person will see is here is land acres. They can scout the acres to see the defense on the acres but not whose defense it is. So there would be no way to even retaliate over grabbing.

This system would not replace formal warring and grabbing of individuals actual country as currently occurs but could make grabbing much more a part of the game again?

So how exactly could we potentially make a system like this work? Anybody want to work with me on this?

What happens when several members of a clan stake claims to large tracts of land, then let one single member LG them all?

I'm not sure how the member would know which tracts of land are his allies (and I'm assuming not well defended)? And if someone else finds these before him they can grab the tracts. Also my first thought would be to have a system where you have to split up your defensive units amongst your tracts of land (and your formal country)

But I don't know if you were implying this or not Nukevil but perhaps the system could be setup so everyone is given 300 acres a day (in say 3 tracts of 100 acres of land) and thus the game keeps generating quite a lot of land each day, but people will be gaining it at much different amounts based on skill.

Hrm, I'll wrap my head around this and give a complete reply tomorrow. Certainly would alter gameplay.

So are you envisioning sort of a market/listing of tracts of land available to be fought for? How are these generated? Does someone enter a number of acres into a 'stake my claim' box and then the server generates those acres with some defenses to initially be fought for? If you win those acres and they become part of your lands, what happens if someone tries to invade them in the 24 hour system but someone specifically attacks you and takes those acres normally?

Yes you would see a listing of the available tracts of land. Something I need to figure out is how you can figure out a range of possible D a land has on it (w/out just listing the amount of D on the land as well) like NW does for formal countries.

If someone attacks your formal country/territories I would envision that being similar to how it is now and would not affect your potential tracts o fland.

Hope that answers?

How is that listing of available tracts generated? I am unclear on where these unlimited acres come from. Server or player generated?

I was getting the 24 hour claim period prior to incorporation confused.

So when i login for the first time and claim ALL the acres.... what then? :)

qz I think a few of the potential ideas are

new tracts randomly becomes available, and a minimum amount of defense is needed to occupy it (or offense to wrest control of it from barbarians lol) OR that every country can expand its horizons by some fixed amount of land every day, but this land during the transition phase into the formal occupied territories may be grabbed by one's enemies.

Detmer:
The acres are server generated.

I suppose I see the benefit to this in that you can land grab without offending anyone, however something just doesn't seem right about it. Maybe it just something like market prices (which are on some level controlled by PM prices) that until you know how things balance it can seem tenuous.

I agree that I don't really like the EXACT idea right now and extensive beta testing would be needing to balance this. However, the core of the idea (to develop a system that encourages player interactions that is free from retaliation) is a really good one

Bobby, it sounds like you play Evony Online. :X

nope never heard of it

add bot countries. like 2 for every created country. or stop worrying about land so bad in alliance. only so much land can be created from x amount of countries. used to be plenty of bots/multis to landgrab as well as spam tags and those tags that could never figure it out and get grabbed all set.

give people more countries to grab and maybe human players won't get raped as much and those people will have more fun playing.

also adding exploration tech and selling acres on the market would increase your greedy land needs.

From what I have heard they are considering that option. I think it is potentially a great idea. They could certainly program a range of strategies/skill levels and personalities (passive, retaliatory with land grabs, special attacks, etc)

exactly what i was thinking. even an agro effect that cause bot countryies to retal however they can after so many grabs.