The fundamental basis of claiming land should be a combination of land usage, ability to defend, and activity.

Land usage is perhaps the most important element of this in terms of fitting into the overall schematic of the word "Civ" or "Civilization". A dirt hut in the middle of trees or a crafting table in a cave with one person is, by definition, not a civilization.

A civilization is a complex human society, usually made up of different cities, with certain characteristics of cultural and technological development.

So, following this, on Civclassic a proper civilization would naturally have:

• Factories
• Multiple active players
• Certain cultural characteristics

I'd hesitate to call one man nations or "OMNs" civilizations. Using an example from the past, Savion's culture is not the culture of a people, it is the culture of a person who is only accountable to themself. The culture of Gul is the culture of a person who is only accountable to himself.

Therefore, it's hard to call these two examples civilizations.

But that doesn't mean that a one man nation, or nation without factories isn't able to claim land. Clearly, anyone with a Reddit account can post a .jpg of land claims onto this subreddit and most people, unless there is a major issue, will accept said claims.

Therefore, the ability to defend said land comes into the mix.

A personal example on this: Icenia claims Astonia, land inherited in the late stages of reorganization within the region following the victory over NATO. Astonia is sparsely populated. Icenian milita members were able to intercept someone in Astonia from Icenia City who was talking about greifing structures in the region. This defines the ability to defend land.

If a nation can keep and hold land then its claims are legitimate.

Now onto activity.

This one is a bit more complex. All nations go through growth and stagnation phases as burnout is natural on Minecraft. Sometimes a nation will have 10 people on in one day and another day it will be two, or one, or none.

But prolonged periods of inactivity lead to land claims that are unable to be defended, and lead to the lack of any civilization at all following the standard set above. Factories go into disrepair, builds start to decay, snitches cull, chests are broken.

If you go inactive for a long period of time your land claims should be seen as null. Grand Imperium, for example, was rightfully placed as a "heritage" site after departure from the server.

Another nation I can think of that went inactive, Carpathia, has been claimed over by other nations multiple times with no objection despite the fact that they never disbanded.

If you are inactive it makes sense that your claims are not respected.

I'm wondering what you all think about this. Healthy debate is encouraged.