Name: Dwilight Colonial Master
Summary:
Remove distance from capital penalties on Dwilight
Details:
Dwilight was the Africa of BM, colonization was always in its soul. Back when it was opened, we had the player base to sustain a model of expansion that involved spreading through the wildlands, creating one new realm at a time, and pushing the frontier continuously with more new realms until the whole space was occupied.
But we don't have the player base for that old model, anymore. We barely have enough nobles for the realms it already has, some would argue we'd even be better off with less realms in total.
But the density mechanics combined with the capital radius mechanics have a perverse effect: There is very little incentive for war. Why go fight the neighbor, when the new lands would be beyond your capital's reach, and you'd have a ton of penalties for them? Heck, why attack your neighbor if your realm has already attained the minimum densities the game doesn't want you to go below of?
Hinterlands might help a bit with the latter, but it's really complementary to this idea. Dwilight is testing. It's already the only island with seasons. Maybe we could experiment what it'd be like without the distance from capital penalties for (mercenary) troops and for regions?
Benefits:
Additional conflict, additional things to do for the realms. As it is, the game incentivizes conflict so much, that realms just don't bother. "We've already got all the regions we can hold". "Those regions would be too far, they wouldn't give us anything worthwhile". "The penalties for going so far would make our army completely ineffective".
Dwi has a lot of rogue regions, including a lot of rogue cities. If any realm could sail to take them over, it would certainly FINALLY create a lot of jealousy. "No, WE wanted those regions!" "Well nyuh uh, we took it first!" Successful realms like Westgard and the Lurias could start a colonial rush to secure greater resources, setting up outpost in remote cities, farming far-away lands, and perhaps finally getting some borders with other human realms.
Downsides:
Since this change only concerns 1) region penalties for distance from the capital and 2) (mercenary) troop penalties for distance from the realm, and has no bearing on any other of the density mechanics such as the monster migratory behaviors, the downsides should be limited. At first, it might further dissuade realms from attacking each other, since there will be empty lands to take... but this is both unlikely, and if it were to be, would be temporary as the colonial rush is CERTAIN to create jealousy. Secondly, it'll make some realms more able to project might and bully far-awar realms. Given how little PvP is left on Dwi and in BM as a whole, I'm not convinced this is such a bad thing. And since it's all just a very simple change that doesn't involve the creation of a ton of fancy new mechanics, it should equally be simple to just return things to how they were if we see it doesn't turn out as desired.
