I am surprised that devs are willing to go through the numbers. They didn't want to do it for a long time. Guess even they recognize the need finally. That is a good thing.
This game only uses 3 indicators for what each region is worth. Population, Gold and Food. Of course there is another indicator outside of just pure numbers like 'strategic importance' but we will leave it out for now since we got three numbers to discuss first.
When Tom originally worked on the region rebalance, he made cities extremely rich while making them very food dependent. So cities couldn't survive without food. Rurals produced mainly food and little gold. I think he did it to encourage region lords to actually trade with cities. Townslands were somewhat balanced. They still produced quite a bit of gold but had just enough to feed themselves. Badlands and Mountains produced a lot of gold while very little food. Woodlands were probably the worst under his system since they just didn't have neither gold nor food.
Then Anaris rebalanced the regions again after Tom's departure which made cities produce a bit less gold but also much more food. Rural regions in general either got buffed or nerfed. But the regions that suffered the most were badlands. They went from producing a lot of gold to producing nothing which made them completely worthless. Of course not all of badlands were good under Tom's revision but under the current one, they are mostly worthless. Not to mention most of badlands are located in remote parts of the maps, making them strategically useless as well.
There are few things we should consider.
1) During BM's time line, most people lived in non-city regions. Only 10~15% of people lived in cities while the rest lived outside. BM should perhaps follow this as well. If you look at War Island for example, over 50% of the population are living in cities, townslands and strongholds. Less than 50% of the population are living outside of fortified regions.
-Reduce fortified region pop overall. So at most only 20% of total pop live in fortified regions. (for example, only 120k pop should live in fortified regions on SI not 310k)
-Reduce gold of Fortified Regions. No FR should produce more than 1500 gold.
-Increase pop of all non-FR (for example, on SI, non-FR pop will be roughly around 480k)
-Increase gold and food of all non-FR. (like by a lot. Will see regions where they produce over 1k gold and 1k food even. Probably want to avoid regions that have both high gold and high food except for few exceptions which will be mentioned below)
2) Well connected regions should probably get more gold and perhaps more food than other regions. Meuse on EI is probably a good example. Well connected regions can be attacked from many sides, making them a good target which may encourage people to fight over a region like that.
3) Perhaps addition to the above, maybe geography should be considered a bit as well. Regions that border rivers and sea zones should have slightly higher distribution of gold or food?
