Part of your logic in so far as much as the matching up goes is perhaps a little flawed.

Yes  its true you might have inactive towns in your kingdom and which you think are adversely affecting the battles match up statistics, howver its just as feasible that every other kingdom has a similar number of inactive towns so there is potentially likely little to no advantage at all in doing as you suggested.

Getting rid of inactive towns is not as straight forward as you think either.

Though the passing on of the chiefdom and removal of unused strongholds might have some merit, again there are associated problems and what ifs to consider.

This is so unlikely to happen that I'm not sure why I'm even talking about it.

When you sign up for the game you agree to a set of terms and conditions which not only apply to you but to the game company as well. Unless those terms and conditions include an explicit statement concerning what will happen in the event that your account is inactive for a certain period then the company is in a legal minefield if they do anything. And it's even worse if you've actually spent money. I did a little looking around on this and I could only find one MMORPG that had done this and they had a bunch of conditions that had to be satisfied before they would touch your town (including not having spent money).

As for playing in or against deadish clans or kingdoms, this is a strategy game after all. You can't expect to win the same way every time.

With events like KvKF and Jotunheim, the new stronghold fortress, soul shards for Aesir and the proposed changes to CvC I think that Plarium is looking for ways to encourage more fighting.

Unexpect said:

This is so unlikely to happen that I'm not sure why I'm even talking about it.

When you sign up for the game you agree to a set of terms and conditions which not only apply to you but to the game company as well. Unless those terms and conditions include an explicit statement concerning what will happen in the event that your account is inactive for a certain period then the company is in a legal minefield if they do anything. And it's even worse if you've actually spent money. I did a little looking around on this and I could only find one MMORPG that had done this and they had a bunch of conditions that had to be satisfied before they would touch your town (including not having spent money).

As for playing in or against deadish clans or kingdoms, this is a strategy game after all. You can't expect to win the same way every time.

With events like KvKF and Jotunheim, the new stronghold fortress, soul shards for Aesir and the proposed changes to CvC I think that Plarium is looking for ways to encourage more fighting.

This isn't so hard to get around.  Set conditions:  Must be inactive for X weeks.  Must be unshielded for Y weeks.  Say inactive for 40 weeks, unshielded for 20. When both conditions are met (along with any other that come up), the town gets relocated to a holding realm.  Just a realm of completely inactive players.  IF you come back, your town can move back to your original realm for free or to a new realm for appropriate drakkar. 

Not sure what to do about clan strongholds and such.

As has been stated before, its their game and they will only do what they think they want to do, no matter how many write here about getting rid of inactive towns.

In the scheme of things it  may be a small perecentage of the people who write or visit here, and facebook might tell a different story.

Yes. If it was simple and made money, Plarium would have done it already.

But just for fun, let's look at how simple it would be.

Plan B - Send them to Hel

So, instead of deleting accounts, we move the towns to another place, let's call it Hel.

Before we do this we have to, as Khahan said, solve the problem of Strongholds.

Money is the main problem here as I see it. People have most likely spent money to build and improve the Stronghold. If they return to the game and the Stronghold is gone, do they have a legal right to compensation?

If we ignore money, then do we follow Nemain's suggestion and pass the stronghold down. If so we need to set up a system to work out which Elder is the oldest by time in position. What if there is no active Elder? Do we go down to the last member? If the clan is Open, this would mean that anyone who wants to can have a Stronghold for free if they wait long enough. If we don't do it that way, do we dissolve the stronghold as soon as the Chief and Elders go to Hel even if there are active members in the clan?

Now, let's think about what Hel is like. You might say that the system already has two types of kingdoms (normal and Jotunheim) so adding a third type is simple. But is it? I have no idea but normal kingdoms and Jotunheim have some similarities while kingdoms jammed full of inactive towns would be very different I would think. And Jotunheim I assume makes money for Plarium. If you don't have it as a set of 20+ kingdoms with nothing but dead towns then you have to design a whole new type of container from scratch to hold them all.

So, we overcome that simple problem somehow. But we have to consider the situation in existing kingdoms also to allow for players to return. So do we leave a marker to show the old sites of player towns, or do we have to set up a new class of invisible item  with a random unoccupied location? Some kingdoms are full, do we keep them full in case of the unlikely possibility that all inactive towns will return?

What are the cutoff points? Different people obviously have different ideas - Nemain's 4 weeks and Khahan's 40 for example. Is a player that hasn't played for 10 weeks but is shielded for 10 years (this is a real example) active or inactive?

We also have to implement a new system that follows every single town and tests if it has reached the cutoff point(s) and transfers the town.

I suspect there are some things I've missed but let's say they're all solved and we've moved some inactive towns and deleted some strongholds.

The effect is that older kingdoms will lose some of their influence straight away and then lose influence slowly or not at all while new kingdoms will have a rolling loss of influence until they also become old. Changing the influence of a kingdom or clan doesn't change the number of active players or affect the way they play. Will this make for more even/interesting KvK or CvC matchups? I honestly can't tell. Can you?

Plan C - Have your cake and eat it too

So, instead of moving towns we ignore their influence but people can still pillage them.

This looks like a better solution but...

We still have a Stronghold problem - delete or not delete?

We have to set up a system that creates and monitors two classes of towns. If we don't delete Strongholds then we have to distinguish between Strongholds with no active players and those with at least one.

And the result is the same as Plan B.

Well, I had fun wasting my time doing that. At least it made it clearer for me why it's unlikely to happen.

Interesting, but I still do not see the fixation about removing inactive players towns or strongholds.

I understand Pegasus' s point about  not having enough active players to fight,  but removing the inactive towns and strongholds, wouldnt necessarily  have made any difference, they could have still been drawn against the  same clan in this kingdom.

If Pegasus is only going to be satisfied. by there being lots of opprtunties  for attacking other players, some one will have to come up with a better idea to achieve this, if its not Plariums idea, then they will have to convince them that its a workable solution that they want to use.

I believe the idea has already been suggested before about not counting the influence of any player that isnt actually playing and similarly  with a stronghold.

It should only be about the people playing, having a stronghold doesnt make anyone a better player and as far as I understand the actual benefits are minimal if nothings being done in it that scores..

Anyway the point may be somewhat moot now , with the new CvC introduction.

Good point.

I hadn't really been thinking about towns that big but yes they could really affect KvK and KvKF matchups

So let's have Plan D

Let's say we're only going to exclude towns over a certain size. We need a system to check this.

If they are not in a clan then we don't need to worry about the Stronghold situation. We would still need to agree on how long a town needs to be inactive and if/when a shielded town becomes inactive and set up a system to monitor those things.

It looks simple to say exclude "Jarls who are not Clan members"  and over a certain size and are also inactive, from influence and scoring in KvK, KvKR and KvKF. I don't know how easy it would be to do in practice. I think the kingdom is one big box with one total score. The clans are a bunch of separate boxes so we would need a system to aggregate their scores which probably doesn't exist at the moment. And if we're only going to exclude big towns, we have to count all the small ones.

This is probably the most doable plan so far but I still think it won't happen.

If they are in a clan, then we still have the original matchup problem. Also if you're in a kingdom where all the big inactive players are in clans, you would be at a disadvantage against a kingdom where all the big inactive players are not.

Hmm, the more I think about this game, the more luck I think is involved and fairness just isn't something you should worry about.

As they appear to try to do document activity already,I wouldnt have thought it would be difficult for them to monitor and exclude towns,and strongholds were no one is at home,it might be more difficult where players are in clans with strongholds , possibly without a chief,elders, and a mixture of inactive and active towns.

Again,if they take the view point its a lot of trouble for little or no benefit, that the same draws would occurr, they are not going to bother doing this.No matter how it might upset players who think they get a bad draw.

Its as you say, down to luck who you get drawn against, and how easy or difficult it is to win the event, and perhaps there is no justification for complaining, unless it isnt fair, and are constantly drawn against stronger teams and consistently loose.

Then its more likely then there would be no sustained interest in the event, then the clan,and finally the game.

I believe many players are only interested in smashing other players, and are drawn to the war game element, and become disappointed when its not as it seems.

It is actually more a farming game like it or not,with a strategy component.

If it wasnt the above, they could give players everything at the start of the game and just let people fight.

I am not sure if  a war game like this can actually work, nor if it would last long.

Here is a simple clean up.

Starting with all kingdoms that are 6 months old and older.

Take any town lvl 10 and lower. And inactive for 6+ months and never bought gold. and clear them. Easy to remake in a day. And no lose if they never bought gold

lvl 11-15 clear at 1+ year inactive no gold bought

lvl 16-18 clear at 2+ year inactive no gold bought.

19+ leave alone until 5+ year inactive.

For Strongholds. Make a minimum member requirement of 5 clan members of lvl 15+. Giving a new clan 7 days to meet this requirement.

If they have less then 5 active members in the clan for 1+ year. Down grade the stronghold 1 level. To include the complete destruction of the stronghold.

If a chief is gone for 30+ days. Auto move title to the next highest ranking Elder that is active in that time frame. If nobody is active and qualified. No title transfer should happen.

Again I ask why would you need to do this ?

Suggestions are easy, an idea that Plarium want to adopt is another.

For Strongholds. Make a minimum member requirement of 5 clan members of lvl 15+. Giving a new clan 7 days to meet this requirement.

This would seem a sensible requirement, but how many would agree with it, and how many would fall outside the criteria in the first place?

What would it achieve if implemented ?