The truth is that Nothoi can feed all of its regions.
Just not at 100%. Basically, the cities are stuck at 50% rations until we can get more farmlands. There is no reason to starve any region in Nothoi, unless the goal is to drive regions into rebellion so they leave Nothoi.
I think that's part of the problem. If Nothoi gets one more region, they will be at 2.85 below the 3 mark which means the monsters will spike and we'll lose a region. 100% isn't a possibility at this current time without causing the code to work against us. Speaking on an OOC level, we'd have to give up at least one more city to be able to take 1 rural region.
But other realms on the continent haven't reached 3 noble per realm average. So Nothoi must suffer as well. Nothoi better help other realms reach that goal by attacking them.
Why should a realm that is complying with the desire of the devs be punished? That more or less is saying we have to try to control what others who we can not even interfere with due to the monster horders. Nothoi attacking a realm wouldn't help at all as if we take the region, then we fail the standard. It's a catch 22 there. That's of course assuming that we could get to another realm without being captured and injured by rouges. Nothoi only has one border with another realm.
Why though? This system works. It keeps density high by making people lose regions. It has a bit of downside of making people quit the game but it will react to it and make people lose more regions. It will repeat it until people suck it up or the island becomes empty.
Is it? Has it made any continent at 3 nobles per region? If the goal is to try to get people to think about quitting out of pure frustation, I would say that the system is aiding that. As someone quits, it decreases the density which throws it back into a vicious cycle. You are right that this pattern will continue until players get frustrated enough to just leave the game and the island becomes empty. If the goal is to empty an island, just sink whichever island you don't want. Let us know about it. We won't like it, but it's the dev's call. If you want to shut battlemaster down completely, not much we could do about it.
If the goal is to reward those who are trying to meet the requirements, it has failed. We have to try to make others comply even when there's neither a logical IC reason nor a way for us to really even contact most of them. Remember, we can't just contact a whole realm. In theory, we could demand their leader tell their people to only settle in x regions. If we struggle now getting people in our own realms to do it and we are on the same team, do you really think the "other" realms that we may or may not even have a vested interest in will comply?
