Lord Thane While I understand what you are saying, I think we can find a system for your new CR that can work.
But to the point of what happens if we implement a 10% land loss system is this:
- The early game and smaller kingdoms are given a mush easier time managing their kingdoms
- The larger kingdoms are made more difficult to manage as they lose more and win less
You say that the new system would incentivize players to go to a 1:45 land ratio, but it's the opposite. In the current system we are incentivized to get to the 1:45 land ratio the larger we grow because you lose LESS.
In the current system it works like this:
When you get your second castle you lose more and it decreases until you hit 20 castles, then it jumps up, then it decreases again, repeat ad nauseum.
Here are the percent losses of land per castle:
2 - 50%
3 - 33.3%
4 - 25%
5 - 20%
6 - 16.7%
7 - 14.3%
8 - 12.5%
9 - 11.1%
10 - 10%
11 - 9%
12 - 8%
13 - 7.69%
14 - 7.14%
15 - 6.67%
16 - 6.25%
17 - 5.88%
18 - 5.56%
19 - 5.26%
20 - 10%
21 - 9.52%
22 - 9.09%
23 - 8.7%
24 - 8.33%
25 - 8%
26 - 7.69%
27 - 7.41%
28 - 7.14%
29 - 6.90%
30 - 10%
Now as you can see, the more castles you get the less land you lose. Until you reach the max amount of land lost which is 10. So players are incentivized to get to 19 or 29 etc. then get 1:45 land to lose the least amount. By switching to a system where you lose 10% every time, it removes the terrible punishment of having less than 10 castles, and prevents larger players from losing less.
Castles are not useless, and in the new system they become more USEFUL. By claiming they would be useless you neglect the fact that they increase unit production. This is something that you already know is EXTREMELY useful. They also still have the arbitrary cut off of 45 land which means they are required (opposite of useless) for gaining new land beyond the 45. They also still affect CR which is a system that I hate how it "works"
I know you say you want to make castles more useful, and I agree! Your proposed system of CR being tied into land ratio can be a good incentive for building castles too! Something like at 45:1 CR hits the ceiling of 25%, and can drop to the floor of 5% with like 10:1 ratio. (These are arbitrary numbers off the cuff)
But this idea not only reconciles castle value in a way that makes sense, it greatly increases the way the game would feel for players of all sizes. And if we gently inserted this idea into the game, it would benefit the small and casual players more, and make the game slightly more challenging for the hardcore die hard players.
