Currently on CCnet, there are useless towns, ghost towns, and large areas of land claimed just for the sake of claiming it so (x) other group doesn't get it. All of the good areas are held by ghost town holders, and upkept by nations for no particular reason other than wanting the land under their ownership. It makes the map ugly, it makes it harder for new players to get a town in a somewhat decent area, and it promotes hoarding land that doesn't actually get used, harming the server imo. Alongside that, it is all too common for players to just make their own 20-50 chunk towns scattered across the map and not have towns grow anymore and have cohesion and residents, basically turning it from a towny/nations server to a glorified claims server where everyone just had 1-3 residents in their town of them and their friends, and no real residents.

There are three potential fixes to this issue, which have their own benefits.


Fix #1- (Not complicated)

Have a 3x (permanent or temporary) global increase on town upkeep.

Instead of paying (Example: $256 for a 236 chunk town), you would pay $768.

As a benefit, it would promote the prevention of over expansion by nations/players claiming tons of land while not having the resources to actually utilize them, and smaller 20-30 chunk towns wouldnt cost all that much still and would be affordable if a newer player wanted to make one, However it would be good to promote those new players to just join a town instead.


Fix #2- (Semi complicated)

Have mayor inactivity have an exponential increase in town upkeep.

Ex: For every 3 days the mayor is inactive, the town upkeep should increase by 10%, up to a maximum of 300% (90 days - town deletion atp).

This, while would require more work from staff (if its possible at all to do this), might be the better alternative to increasing upkeep than a general increase.

This in effect would make it so that those towns, with the mayors that log on every 2 months 25 days, would then have to pay more upkeep per day than the mayors who are on regularly and actually utilizing their town. It would not affect new players who do decide to make their own town and regularly play, and would mostly hit the nations that have many many towns being held by ghost mayors/town holders.


Fix #3- (The most complicated)

Have nation loyalties affect upkeep for towns in nations, and thereby lack of any loyalties (nationless) also be affected.

Currently, you can have a maximum of 20 allotted loyalties to any particular nation(s).

If town upkeep were to be affected by this, You would have a general increase in towny upkeep (say 400%), but have it be discounted per loyalty point you have to the current nation you're in. If you have 10 loyalties to (X) nation, you would recieve a certain percentage less per loyalty point (approximately 20% less from the increase per loyalty, up to 20 loyalty points, bringing your upkeep back down to what it would currently be before the change).

For a specific example-
The town of Nevada joins the nation of WCF. The mayor, currently has 14 loyalty points towards the WCF. He would then have 280% off from the 400% (lets call it activity tax). Thereby, he would be paying his original upkeep of lets say $100, plus the additional 120% upkeep cost for not having full loyalties. Once at 20 loyalties, he would have 400% off from the 400% increase, leaving him at only paying the base upkeep for the nation.

For this fix howeever, you would need loyalty decay to truly have it matter, and at .25 points per day, would still affect the people who are inactive, join for 20 days to get enough, and then try to stay logged for 3 months holding towns. It also wouldn't make it so that missing 2 weeks of playing would make you ineligible to participate at nation sieges, it would take 45 days of inactivity (20-11.25 points=8.75pts)




While this may seem significant in cost of upkeep, I believe it would help with the afforementioned topics, and promote town growth resident wise, help in preventing as many useless ghost towns, and make it much harder for nations to just claim land for the sake of owning it. Rich nations would still be able to do so, but it would become a bigger drain on them than regions could account for, and force them to sink more money (and potentially just get rid of them) into ghost towns.