So I came from CivClassic to Expand a few days ago, and I've been putting most of my time into this server since then, and I think it has a lot of potential and, with the right promotion, could go places. However, I would respectfully raise a few issues or points for clarification that I have with the plugin Nationlands, and how it affects the server overall.

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1) One of the very first things I began to think about when playing around with Nationlands, is that it presents a nice break from the traditional civ method of reinforcements. HOWEVER, I am very concerned about the difficulty one has in gaining power to claim biomes. I understand that power is to be a sort of scarce thing, and that it can be a good tool to encourage more people settling into bigger nations to avoid the deadly plague of OMNs that are on other civ servers, but I think it is a bit too scarce in the first place, and too hard to get from there. The way the system is set up now, smaller nations have very little ability to claim any pieces of land. In fact, I would say the only nation able to claim a reasonably-sized piece of land like we find on other iterations is Bryg—a nation with largely inactive players since the beginning of the server anyways. I feel that since the server population is so low, and although it has potential for sizable growth, will remain low in the face of CivClassic and the impending CivEx 4.0, the amount of land a person should be able to claim should be increased. I believe somewhere I heard deadbeef mention that a OMN can claim 10 chunks worth of a biome, and that sounds like a lot for one person, but what I found in playing on the server is that even with a nation of more than just one person, I couldn't claim even smaller islands let alone sizable tracts of land. I would humbly suggest increasing the amount of land that each player can claim, and from there, proportionally increasing the modifier of having more people in your nation. Just to throw a number out there if my information about the 10 chunk thing is correct, perhaps 25 chunks would allow for nations to feel a bit more safe in their claims, and control enough land for actual cities and such.

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2) Connected to my last point, and no less important, I think part of the problem with the server, at least from what I've seen on the subreddit and discord since joining, is that the plugin promotes PvP as one of the only two ways of gaining power. What this has the potential to do, and I think did with the majority of the initial playerbase, is drive them off the server because nations are either going to constantly be furiously at war with each other, or bullying newfriends off the server. Instead of rewarding peace and civilization building at times, the server feels too much like factions in the way that violence becomes a necessity. I think an absolute must have to enlighten the mood of Expand is to create new ways to generate power, perhaps something with gaining power from farming, mining, building, smelting, or any other form of more constructive and statistically-trackable activity. I think that if we can reduce the potential for newfriends being bullied off the server by existing nations, we could create a more inviting community.

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3) I do have one concern that is perhaps more of a clarifiable question than an issue. How does the claiming system react when players go inactive and get kicked from a nation? As my understanding from talking to those in the community goes, when players go inactive for a certain period of time, they get kicked from a nation. BUT, does that nation keep their power, or do they loose it—basically the issue is what happens when enough players get kicked from a nation that that nation can no longer support its claims because it doesn't have enough power? Does the plugin randomly start unclaiming biomes from the nation in question, or do the claims remain intact even with insufficient power to facilitate them. My concern here isn't necessarily nations losing claims from losing players, rather, it is that if the unclaiming is random, what if a city or other vital biome is randomly unclaimed before less important regions? I am concerned that this unclaiming would accidentally hurt nations way worse than it needs to. This would be especially bad if leaders weren't notified of which biomes get unclaimed in the case that they do. One solution I would have to this is to make an interface of some sort where leaders can assign levels of preference or importance to certain regions over others, so the less important areas get unclaimed before critical ones. Conversely to all of this, if the plugin doesn't unclaim or punish nations for losing players, perhaps this is a feature that should be thought about and added in some reasonable capacity, because otherwise smart countries could find ways to abuse power and gain a lot more claims than they would have playing with their actual number of players.

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I appreciate the time that anyone who read this took to do so, I simply want to see this server succeed, and I think either a few of these issues need addressed, or better explained in some form of FAQ or in-game so new players don't get confused.

Respectfully, shadedoom