Are Land Claims Bad for Illy?

One thing I am curious about is trade hub access. Alliances are generally more lenient about letting non-members approach within 10 squares if it's a trade hub. I'm specifically interested in the policies around Hedgor's Haven, as it has emerged as an active hub for Broken Lands trade.

ajqtrz wrote: Let us imagine what this may lead to in the future. Let us say that each of the largest 50 alliances decide to claim some portion of Illy for themselves. Let us further suppose that they claim an area approximately the same size of the current crop of claims. In the end this will mean that fifty alliances will hold sovereignty over 95% of Illy, and perhaps the entire thing.

This assumption is highly implausible. Illyriad has run for almost five years with only a tiny handful of land claims. You are suggesting that everyone's policy is about to change across all 5000 players, simply because 100 players made 3 land claims? That seems laughably farfetched. All the rest of your "end of the sandbox" scenario--heavy restrictions on new players, harvesting restrictions, and mega-alliance dominance--is predicated on our acceptance of that first assertion. Fortunately, that assertion is never going to happen on any meaningful scale.

My perception of the current land claims is as follows. SIN/HALO and T-SC appear to be military alliances. Time-to-target is a huge factor in Illyriad warfare. They are keeping their alliance zones clear of immediate threats. Clustering is also very important for mutual defense. They are preserving interior settlement spots for their own members and allies. Considering city placement requirements and available sovereignty, and there's a limited number of key locations available in each zone. It is hardly a surprise that these would be claimed in advance.

Even eCrow has occasional conflicts over settlements. People tend to not respect marker armies. (There is a valid debate over whether markers should be respected at all, given how often they are abused.) The marker convention is itself a kludge to solve the issue of claiming desirable settlement locations for your alliance. It's a real pain when people start putting cities inside your alliance zone, even when the location's immediate 10 square radius is clear. Those cities then block your own members from moving cities into the alliance zone. It gets worse as people migrate to different alliances or leave the game, because their cities might be captured by players who stringently demand a 10 square radius, right in your heartland. Given all the headaches, I find it reasonable that alliances starting with a blank canvas would claim the lands immediately between their cities, so that they can expand by adding cities and players. You can't do that in Elgea because so many cities are already on the map, but Broken Lands is still wide open and lightly populated.

In short, I see these claims as pre-emptively defusing many conflicts that frustrate even peaceful alliances in Elgea. If eCrow had any inclination to cluster tightly in Chulbran, I believe we would have considered the same approach. Perhaps not as sternly as the current claimants, but we aren't a military alliance.

ajqtrz wrote: The process by which this process was adopted by those alliances adopting it, was unilateral. There was little to no discussion in the larger forums or GC, and the adoption by those alliances was done as a "fait acompli" with the expectation that there would be little to no resistance, or if there was a determination to war over the right. Thus, we are faced with a situation in which we must "undo" what has been done if we decide that the new rule is not acceptable, rather than to have avoided this situation by having a good conversation and open discussion before it was done.

The forums and GC are not appropriate venues for statecraft. It's good fun to discuss Illyriad happenings here, but why would alliance leaders elicit feedback from any random person who wanted to give it? That has backfired almost every time it has been attempted on these forums. It certainly isn't the way strategy is handled in Crowfed, nor in any other MMORTS that I have ever played. You work out details with your allies and other stakeholders in private. Given the tepid reaction to the announcement, an assumption of no resistance seems to have been a prescient one.

Fait acompli, accomplished?

Speaking as someone who was already "there" before a land claim was made, I do not appreciate the land underneath my feet being claimed by someone else.

Edited by Dungshoveleux - 17 May 2015 at 19:26

http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Alliance/Alliance/438

Some people seem to be missing a couple of basic points: