A Holistic approach to Regions

[Anolytic]

The long and short of this idea is this:

That Regional capitals are expanded ONLY through investment in the other ports of their Region. 

 

The problem to solve is that currently only County Capitals matter. All other non-capital ports are inconsequential. To change this, non-capital ports should matter in the conquest of a county, and they should matter in the development of a county. Only through expanding the infrastructure in surrounding ports can the capitals reach their full potential. This is not only prudent gameplay-mechanics, it is also historical. If you neglect the surrounding lands, the cities cannot fully develop their potential.

There should be no distinction between 20k ports and 25k-ports in terms of development, except for possibly this: Some few ports could allow 100% development of shipbuilding bonuses, PLUS placing of Forts and other defences. While the other county capitals would still allow 100% development of shipbuilding bonuses, but you would have to ration your points if you also wanted to put defences in the port. That way any nation can make any county capital a shipbuilding port, but they would have to secure a frontline port as a buffer to their shipbuilding port, where they could develop defences instead of shipbuilding characteristics.

The current model of having only some few 25k BR ports with full development potential creates gear disparity and is a great way to  make people in the smaller nations quit the game in frustration and facilitate player-base warfare, where it is not about winning, but about destroying the enemy nation’s community. We tried this before.

My preference however would be a system where shipbuilding upgrades in a port was a strategic choice, and you could only develop 2 traits to level 5, or alternatively all 5 trait options to level 1 and 2. And you would have to choose what traits to focus on. This would also encourage RvR expansion without it being crippling, as having more regional capitals would allow a nation to develop different combinations of traits in different shipbuilding ports. Successful RvR would allow more shipbuilding variety, but any nation with at least 1 county would be able to develop shipbuilding bonuses in that capital to the RvR-meta to give themselves a fair chance to expand their territory further.

 

Back to the development of Regions as a whole, my idea is this:

The county capital would have say 30 base development points if you owned only the county capital, or if the county capital was the only one being developed. Through the development of dependent ports, a further 30 points could be added to develop this county capital. By investing in a special infrastructure option in each of the dependent ports, the whole region would improve. If the region had only 2 other ports in it, each of those ports would be able to be developed for another 15 points each, available at the capital. All dependent ports in a county would not have to be equally important, so in a county with 4 different dependent ports, port A could be developed for a potential 15 extra points, while port B, C and D would each be developed for an additional 5 points.

 

This system that I propose would have the benefits of encouraging collaboration within nations. If you want your county capital to be fully expandable, then you need to encourage the clans who own the dependent ports in the county to develop them. Most importantly, it would mean that capturing whole counties would be important, and loosing parts of a county would hurt the value of the capital.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Anolytic

[Ligatorswe]

Extraction of rawmaterials, like mines and woods etc, should only can take place in the region-cities. The capital should not have extraction of rawmaterials, in it one should only be able to refine the rawmaterials, with the help of forges, workshops and shipyards. As it is now the clans will in a short period of time basicly only have extraction in their capitals.

It is historically correct and leads to more trade and makes the regional harbours mora valuable.

 

Edited April 29, 2019 by Ligatorswe