Harvesting hides and animal parts

A lot of people have stated that "sov is theirs".  or some such thing.  I'd like to point out that according to the game rules, I can harvest on anyone's sov terrain.  It's only "yours" to the extent that everyone within Illy both agrees it is yours and is willing to support that contention with force.  If not, it's only "yours" to the extent you and those willing to fight with you can fight for it.  Which has pretty much been my point all along.  I can appreciate everyone's desire to "own" that which they kill.  I see the "righteousness" of harvesting your own kill.  If you are a neighbor of mine and someone I am on good relations with I'll even send some troops to support that right.  But if it's a member of a big alliance poaching your kill there's a good chance that "righteousness" will fall to force.  It will not be the first time that's happened nor the last.

It would be convenient though if people could agree on a number and stick to it though. Every player or alliance seems to have their own rule, and how much even that is respected is based on military strength. For example, as a small alliance whose cities are rather tightly clustered I might feel that 5 squares around those cities should be inviolate, and that I have every right to bump non-confederate harvesters or kill non-confederate military occupations within that zone. Crow believes that if you don't claim sov you don't claim the square. While I could theoretically claim sov for five squares in every direction, 120 sov is very expensive, and as I can only build on 20 of them that is a lot of gold and RP to waste simply to gain the common courtesy of not finding strange armies camped 3 squares from my door. And while I might be able to enforce my will against a lone player or a group half my size, if it is a Crow then he gets to determine what I can "reasonably" claim. If I ask him to hunt elsewhere and he decides that I am not entitled to that third, fourth or fifth square unless I am paying for it, what can I do? Either I suck it up and let it go, or I wipe the army anyway and wait for the nastygram from his leadership demanding that I account for my unprovoked assault on their member and listing the reparations I must pay to avoid destruction.

For myself I would say no one should harvest within 5 squares of a non-confed city without permission without expecting to be bumped at the least. Let the superpowers claim more if they want to fight about something, but I couldn't justify traveling twenty or thirty squares just to harvest something two or three squares from another player's town.

Also being a neighbour of Gragnog, and having lost something like 180 skinners to his policies, I do not like it. I would be ok with being requested to give up the harvest if closer than 5 squares. But both killing skinners and claiming "farmland ownership" over a ten-square unmarked land is way too territorial in my opinion. (Note though, that I am talking skinners where the skinner is more valuable than his harvest - when herbalists might endanger a marked or within-5-square plot, I fully understand them being killed.)

On the map screen of my closest town, I see dead animals in the north-east corner and I do not see any towns there. I send harvesters, and it took a couple of turns before I relised that it was Gragnog and not a random npc-spawn that killed my skinners. And then at first I thought it was an april fools joke.

I am sort of ok with a range of 5 squares - being the logical consequence of the 10-square-ask-before-settle rule enforced by Harmless? and others, but last kill was 6 squares from his nearest town. You might suspect that he is trying to increase the price of the hides he harvests by killing skinners to increase demand.

Lol rupe the area might have a reputation for disappearing cotters and skinners so that may be why less of them are brave enough to come around there :P

I am a close neighbour of Grags (Geographically speaking) and Grags system works well.
Whats caused this huff is Grag calling his gameplay a rule.
If that's the way Grag plays then fair do's.
At least he has come here and told everyone so no surprises if you get killed.
It is amazing how many of my kills that don't get poached around Grags cities.
I do generally leave a guard if I really want the kill though.