Another mistake was to allow Westgard to flourish in the West. That sent the population density down overall. Those westgard knights would have been more useful in the east to increase density.
It wasn't a mistake. You have to remember that all of the nobles who joined Westgard when it began had been forced to move to Dwilight because of their islands sinking. Westgard was an important psychological carrot to induce players to move characters to Dwilight (including some players who'd never played on Dwilight before (such as me)). By giving players something new to create, the Devs gave people an incentive to move. If they hadn't done that, Dwilight may not have got anything like as big an influx of characters as it did. It's also worth noting that Westgard has consistently been one of the most successful realms in Dwlight in terms of keeping a good noble count. In contrast, at least half of the eastern realms are failing.
This whole idea of 'the West should be abandoned and move everyone to the East' seems to be rooted in a mindset that the East is somehow intrinsically better. Which is untrue. Pretty much any quarter section of the map is theoreticallly as good as any other section. We could just as easily say that everyone should move in to the Northwest section in the box formed by Gelene, Darfix, Eidulb and Crysantilys. The same is true about the central map section. It's pretty much as good as any other section although it has the added advantage that every realm could probably reach every other realm via the sea.
I have yet another suggestion which I think will make it a really interesting, crowded and unique continent. Here it is. Make all regions unlivable except for those directly bordering the inland sea. That way humanity would be confined to a narrow strip around the inner coast, making sea travel important and forcing us all together to fight and trade. There are about 70 such regions so the density would be much greater than currently. It can be implemented very simply and easily. nothing like this has been attempted before and it would create a unique campaign in which the islands and sea travel would be really important. Its a great experiment and should be tried on this experimental continent.
People just don't like being
forced to move, what ever way its done. This is the central problem that needs a solution. Anything that tells players 'you must move or you will be destroyed' is going to be counterproductive. Any time this has been done (e.g. with the ice) players have left the game in protest or disgust. If you - or anyone - wants players to move, it needs to be done through incentives. However, it should be noted that while my charater of Rosalind has been ruler of Westgard, she's repeatedly made offers to small realms that Westgard would help them to relocate their entire realms to other places in the map. For example, Madina has been offered Westgard's help to try to move to a more northern coastal city at least 3 times that I can remember.
So, the problem has three aspects. The first is that people can't be forced to move without creating negative blow back. The second is that people have natural sentimental attachments to their realms and don't want to let them die off even when they're down to a handful of nobles. The third is that some people are sentimentally attached to geographic sections of the map (particularly Madina, where the players really do love their lsland).
Any solution must satisfy these three problems, or it won't work. Redrawing the map simply to move every existing realm closer to each other is the ideal solution, but it's never going to happen. It's far too much work for a small volunteer Dev team. Also, by the time that such a big project was finished, some of the small realms might have ceased to exist anyway.
Resurrecting the nomad code to allow realms to relocate is a possible solution. However, this runs in to the problem of the identity of some realms being so wedded to their geographic locations that they wouldn't use it.
The solution probably is something along the lines of trying to induce everyone to form up around the inner sea using the nomad code or some other means. The main difficulty with that is that most prospective coastal capital cities are over on the inner coast of the West. But, vitally, any solution has to be done with the broad consent and input of the players so that they feel that it's a team effort. The wishes of realms that just don't want to move have to be respected and the solution works with them. Some how.
To be honest, and I don't know if this could even be done, the best thing would probably be just to have the Devs manually move entire realms in to formally rogue regions that are Dev stabilized. So, for example, some massive magical event moves Arnor (intact as a realm) to Golden Farrow. The nobles fall asleep and just wake up in a new perfectly stable area of the map in a better location. Again, it would have to be done in consultation with the players of the effected realms so they could choose where they landed to a certain extent.
Incentives are the key. Rather than forcing things on people.
