* Determining Control
I've always been in favor of the "Whoever controls the first structure
in a region controls the region." This has the added benefit of
giving people motivation to build structures. Frankly, the way
Olympia works, structures are pretty useless in combat, and I doubt
anyone will ever build one until they are given some kind of value.
However, I think there also needs to be some mechanism for controlling
movement in and out of a region. People shouldn't have to build a
castle in every region to build an empire. I like the "narrow exits"
approach that Olympia used to have.
* Benefits of Control
1. Passage in and out of the region. If you control a region you can
prevent passage. The only benefit of controlling a route via stacking
is to prevent passage.
2. Taxation. The person who controls a region can tax monetary
transactions inside the region. In addition, he ought to be able to
tax the peasants, so that there is financial gain even if you have
closed borders. For this, I'd suggest some flat monthly tax. As you
raise the tax over some low cutoff, citizens die, dropping your tax
base. This would prevent T'Nyc-style abuses while permitting modest
income.
3. Impress and Recruit. Only the faction that controls a region will
be permitted to impress and recruit in that region. This will be a
big incentive to control regions, even if taxation benefits are low.
It will also drive people to build castles in highly populated
regions, another plus.
-- Scott T.