Holders are alts, I refuse to see it another way. Using a holder to secure multiple times is finding a legal way to alt. That being the ability to take advantage of having multiple accounts at the same time. While this was not a huge issue initially, it appears all sides now have an army of alts built off friends from other servers doing mutual favours.

This has led to all strategic land being largely gobbled up by greedy nations seeking to maximise their strategic capacity and minimise the energy. This is inherently problematic, as it exacerbates the gap between casual players and those who competitively play multiple towny servers. It too disincentivises new players or new projects, as most land that is useable is entirely locked.

I have seen some people speak of gaining trust and eventually their own land, but one should not be able to 'reserve' land. Moreover, the acts of gaining trusts encourages insiding (which is inherently manipulative and unfun) or distorts possible future politics by creating a straightjacket of national loyalty or 'terms.'

An example:
GOOD: A nation sees a town on a port that is semi active, seeks to use the port so incentivises the town to provide space for ships or repairs in return for something. Politics or Larp or whatever you call relation building must be maintained actively and there is always a threat of it being taken away.

BAD: A nation 'reserves' a port town, seeks to allow others to prep it and perhaps might give it to a loyal player after they have spent months to a year or more on the server. This reduces scope for politics.

Sieges: I am completely sympathetic to other suggestions that are unhappy with forts and holders and siegebases. In my opinion the nation should be given 2 NPC towns that can be used for such matters or other things. But regardless, Holders amplify the problem of wasting space, entire sections of nations are dedicated to largely holders. This is space that could be taken up by new nations and thereby create new politics.

I am equally aware, making holders impossible would reduce the offensive capacity of a nation. This is something I am actually fine with, I believe there would be a reduction in sieges until new politics could be established. I believe the sieges that come after would be better, as it would require more use of actual nations to do work. It would not work like SOI on a mechanical level, but incentivise similar.

Historical/ Inactive towns: I also appreciate some towns have historical status or are inactive. To an extent, I don't agree they should be punished immensely nor deleted. Port Denpa for example was my town is now owned by Xraze. The former plays irregularly and should not be punished huge upkeep nor threat of deletion if he only wants to play a few days in a month outside of holidays.

However, I do believe some historical towns which are hoarding a lot of space might need to be looked into.

Financial considerations:
In my opinion, any sort of financial penalty is questionable. I read Ashes43's suggestion and while I agree with the need for more money sinks in the server, the playerbase appear abhorred by the idea of leaving the house and I believe would simply grind in spite of new mechanics. I also worry this will effective inactive players and nations that are less wealthy.

DP Considerations:
Tying towns to DP may work as an alternative in this regard. By for example punishing larger nations with 'overstretch' based on how many claims / active player ratio instead of towns themselves would be a solution to this. It would have to be generous, and perhaps simulated and discussed before implementing. But this would work to punish nation leaders or the 'elite' who often use this 'holder' gameplay rather than actually playing the game.

Friendly Upkeeping:
Friendly upkeeping is the act of upkeeping towns for mayors, this mechanic is probably the worst mechanic in all of towny as it allows for the active zombification of nations. All sides have dedicated upkeep bots which seek to warn nations before upkeep is totalled. This is how players can own towns they dont actually own. A solution that would prevent this may largely save nations from these monstrocitites.

Considerations:
One criticism I have been told is the nations map may appear empty if changes were introduced. While temporarily, this may appear damaging or even backward, I believe in the future the cleaner map would promote new players and allow older players to consider new nations.

With that out of the way... here are some ideas that can all be implemented at the same time to solve this issue:

1) Rework of Friendly Upkeeping:
- Friendly Upkeeping should be removed or greatly reworked. Removing it I have no issue with. On the surface people may claim it would completely mess up inactive towns. This is not the case, the mayor may log to receive funds in what might take a maximum of ten minutes per time done. While easy for players who are just upkeeping their town, it would upset systems of holders as these 'players' are often looking to log on as little as possible. If a player has a problem where they are unable to log due to mitigating IRL circumstances, staff are available to help..

2) Imperial 'overstretch'
- This could be implemented in several ways, but it seeks to divide active players (as already defined by the server) against claims modulating DP points available. The ratio would need testing and simulating. This would force nations with insanely unreasonable claims to reconsider, a nation that has filled a continents waterfront with ports would have to chose between maintain that advantage or losing DP and thereby being strategically vulnerable or unable to fight elsewhere. This itself should be generous, I don't believe the system should be overly strict, but there enough. I chose claims over towns themselves for this reason as I believe it would be slightly easier.

Essentially the once a certain claim to active player ratio is obtained, you would lose DP as a nation.
There should be a delay in which this occurs to allow weight to be cut, preparations made ect. It would discourage future regrowth beyond a nations means and reward recruiter nations.

3) Ghost upkeep:
The server should find a way to detect holders, I believe this is possible. Especially as holders tend to have the same formulaic approach to playing the server, often logging on once every 2.5 months in order to beat the timer. I feel with logs available of when players are logging its possible to create a system that flags potential holders, especially those averaging maybe 5-10 minutes of playtime within 2.5 months. This I feel is different to 'inactive' players who often will log on to mine or play for a few hours or might log on intermittently to chat. If an algorithm could be created and implemented by those with better minds than my own, perhaps we could develop a system that would gradually increase upkeep for holder towns. This would be reduced by actually playing, while yes this is still a system to be metagamed... there are a lot less holders willing to play to beat this.

4) Remove need for such strategic towns:
This is purposely vague to avoid this suggestion being torpedoed over a specific detail, but perhaps delays to piloting after being in combat in wild fights or generally faster repairing during siege regions/ making movecraft more tanky may result in less need for larger towns.

Conclusion:
Townholding is a akin to alting, owning two or more towns for whatever reasons is inherently an unfair server advantage. Townholding brings in few cases an ability to not be burdened by siegezoned buildings but this can be resolved through NPC mayors or maybe building actually nice infrastructure. It only works to give those with better relations on other servers a say in nations and therefore is problematic. Nations moves away from what you can do with a town, to how many towns you can spam; not how many active players you can have, but who you know on other servers; not bargaining over uncertainty with friendly towns, but complete control and obedience. The suggestions I have made in this post work to differentiate Holders and Inactive players. It may inconvenience some inactive players, but I believe largely the inactive player who logs on merely to upkeep is a strawman fallacy. Even the most inactive players play patterns are not as frugal as time as holders, while those who are staff are aware of.