On a somewhat related note, have the devs ever considered redesigning the continents?
Yes. It's a ridiculously huge amount of work. Dwilight only happened because it was a community effort. The map design, region naming, initial stats, and a few other things were all community-driven efforts. But even after all that, there was still a very large amount of work that had to be done to get the entire thing ready for play.
Anaris had some ideas for a more dynamic map that would be adaptable to dynamic changes. Unfortunately, his work load with the game is already too high. Pretty much every other volunteer coder contributes for a short while, and then fades away.
And not just cutting off slices, but actually forming a more "free-for-all" multiplayer map style landmass?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean some kind of symmetrical war island, designed for X number of predefined teams? Kind of like the war island we have now, but more than 3 realms?
I would rather not be at war with all other nations at all times. Not sure how it would make the game better either.
It's a refreshing change from the constant politics-drive, all-for-me attitude that has infected a large portion of the game. BattleMaster works best as a team-style game. Too much of the game has lost that team feeling.
I am also like the idea of making long range attacks more doable and think that bringing the islands "closer together" would be awesome. I am not sure if either of these would help the player density problem though - though they might.
As others have said, too much long-range warfare gets really boring. Marching for 10 days to make one or two attacks, or loot one region, then march 10-12 days back home, refit, and do it again... that about one big battle a month. And by the time you get back, your enemy has mostly fixed all the damage you did. That style warfare doesn't really hold your attention all that long.
