Regarding current levels, remember rogues are cyclical. They choose their targets based on density while still far away and spend 1-2 weeks marching over, meaning situation has changed when they arrive. This also means realms get lulls after getting reduced where they rebuild 'to take back all our old regions', which causes them to come back again.
It's not about punishment or fault. It's about the simple reality that most realms today lack the players to provide a sustainable community that welcomes new players. The regions and realms that exist today are a relic of having many more players and are not sustainable for the current playerbase. Two and three nobles per region is a sheer reasonable minimum. The reality of a realm community was usually much more than that. I'm also starting to realize, based off player discussion in discord, that a minimum (10? 15?) number of nobles in a realm before it snowballs into a talkative community. It's really not about punishment as the whole point is to provide gradual, dynamic pressure allowing player reactions to the hordes vs the invincible onslaughts that closed the west and offered no reaction but fleeing, which I believe were a much worse mistake.
It has been the intent ever since daviceroy suggested it to change to a red text warning for low density on the start takeover page, blocking takeovers of rogue regions at a lower density level, and if a blocked-rogue-TO realm is in a human war and TOs a region it goes rogue instead of joining their realm. And an Abandon Region mechanic. And reduce rogue spawning and targeting.
Additionally, I've been looking at resurrecting the old nomad code from glaciers for realms who might want to forsake their lands to conquer new land elsewhere (or be given land by another ruler).
It takes time to implement these.
And with what Zakky said, I do not intend to have the block at such a high level initially. I think better to set it lower than 3 and to gradually increase it over time.
