Developement on sovs...

belargyle wrote: If I claim a sov that is 60 tiles away, is it really mine? (pun intended - hey, I'm a dwarf)

If you can afford the claim it is your claim, yes, and others are free to respect it as your claim as they see fit.  But if you have good reasons to claim it, you should have better reasons to occupy it with a serious army, and then I'd wonder why you bother to claim it, instead of only occupying it.  

I'm looking at what the community thinks since this is become a larger issue.

Each confederation without access to silversteel is dead, they can as well play it out this year, extending the agony into next year hoping for some dev intervention is futile. 

Bonaparta wrote: Why would anyone claim sov 60 tiles away?

Exodus. I've had to do it several times and it's cost me millions of gold. I doubt anyone would hold sov that far away for any other reason.

Outside of Dark's 8 square policy, closer if negotiated and agreed with by the dark member concerned. I am leaning toward the position that if a player claims any tile outside of our policy of 8 tiles then it belongs to them for as long as they have the power to hold it.

I think in cases of claiming, as noted above, 20 tiles out, should be left to the philosophy of "might makes right" school of thought. I also think any conflict over a claim so far out should be left to the individual players involved.

This line of thought is the only way i see that valuable resources are not locked down by any one person for any serious length of time.

However I also realize that alliance concerns may include the gathering of certain valuable resources for their own use and that permanently securing the source of said resources is paramount in their eyes.

Hence what would have been conflict between only two players now becomes much more intense conflict between alliances.

I see that happening rather quickly if whole alliances go about securing sources of valuable resources, effectively locking them down and shutting out other players from gathering them.

It is an interesting problem, many variables and no easy answers or solutions that avoid the potential for constant conflict between individuals or alliances.

Of course there will be trade agreements, etc. but i see even these becoming strained if the need is great enough and the resource rare enough.

Lets get real, if someone claims sov so far from their cities let them. It will cost a fortune to upkeep. If it is close to one of your cities you can always counterclaim at any stage, but I would let it be for a while just to get them to waste gold.