Alliance Leadership on abandonment

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

 Jejune wrote:

Ok, so let's be honest: at issue here really isn't about Stormcrow's rare scenario, but players' and alliances' desire to hoard the cities of abandoned alliance mates.
you are making it about that, yes, but that was not the "problem" GM Stormcrow stated he wished to solve. i would suggest that your concern might deserve its own discussion. i do not think it's appropriate to insert a solution that serves a specific side of that debate into this thread as a side-effect.

 Jejune wrote:

And let's be even more honest: we're not talking about settlements with populations of 63 that never bought prestige and will be fast-tracked for deletion; we're talking about big, beautiful, shimmering cities with full research and stocked with gold that people pumped prestige into. In these cases, these cities re going to take a full 90 days to be deleted.
we are certainly not talking about populations of 63, because no one cares about those cities. ("stocked with gold" stretches credulity; as soon as word is out that a player is abandoned, these cities are stripped of their gold and remain as reservoirs of population and research...perhaps also cows, horses, and other items thieves cannot be induced to steal.)

 Jejune wrote:

Are folks saying that three months isn't long enough for some alliances to be able to reappropriate these cities to active alliance members?
if we are speaking of inactive rather than abandoned accounts, alliances don't actually get three months to reappropriate the cities, because some players leave with instructions that they'll be out for a certain amount of time and we generally trust them to return as they've indicated, so no action is taken until that time elapses. 

 Jejune wrote:

That some alliances have such a high proportion of abandoned city inventory that they actually cannot redistribute those cities quickly enough to their small active player base in the alliance to capture the city? To me, if that's the case, and you need to keep putting place-holder sieges in place to keep abandoned cities alive even after three months, there's a bigger problem there than simply limiting the lifecycle of abandoned cities to the "90-day rule." 90 days is a long time, and should be ample time to cannibalize cities of abandoned players.
and perhaps also to GM Stormcrow. but if so, i would have expected him to come to the forum with that problem rather than the one with which he arrived. 

now i think you are arguing from what you believe is good for the game, but we are both also aware that your alliance would benefit by comparison if the established, possibly declining alliances that oppose it were to be unable to hold these resources as long as they currently do. such a change might also force more alliances into publishing land claims, as cities on life support may currently be used to mark and reserve territory per the 10-square rule. if we are trying to solve some larger purge problem, i have some ideas on how to achieve that, but i think the larger problem requires a larger discussion. if GM Stormcrow wants that, i hope he will signal it. until then, i am for minimising unintended consequences.