TL;DR: The current policy prohibiting mayors from selecting town+ settlements in unclaimed counties where only one such settlement exists is IMO unnecessary and will result in a lot of confusion and bad feelings toward SBS. I propose a couple of changes if scrapping the policy entirely is not an option. I welcome readers to point out holes in my logic or errors in my numbers, which I believe are good but not perfect.
There are ca. 1,350 multi-settlement counties on Luna which contain only 1 town+ settlement. That means that mayors will be locked out of selecting over 60% of the towns on that server. Dukes and counts are more likely to select multi-town+ counties, thus leaving an even higher percentage of the remaining towns untouchable by mayors.
I believe the number of players that this policy seems to protect is quite small. They would be:
1) Players that cared enough to pay good amounts of money for count titles.
2) Who then do not care enough to keep track of D&SS such that they know that maps are out and their window is occurring within the next ca. 3 weeks.
3) Who then wake up to the fact that D&SS has started during the ca. 2-3 week period between the end of count selection week and the beginning of the reverse auction.
There are ca. 1,058 Luna count titles currently in circulation (1728 counties and 670 count title upgrades still available in the store at this writing). It seems to me that the number of those that will fit the above criteria will be a very small percentage. Even if it is as high as 20%, and I would be very surprised if it were even half that, the effect is still to lock off a high percentage of town+ settlements from many hundreds of mayors in order to protect the interests of a relatively few players. You will likely end up with mayors selecting hamlets while 300+ unavailable towns beam tantalizingly from the shelves through the end of D&SS.
I realize one intent here is to avoid having to upgrade hamlets and villages to towns after a truant count belatedly selects one in a county where the only town+ settlement is already selected. But this policy will also create the need for similar upgrades: Players will purchase a village or hamlet in a county that does not have a count, purchase that county in reverse auction, and then their original village or hamlet will have to be upgraded to a town to be the county seat. I think this will also result in more hamlet-to-town conversions (as there are many 1 Town+ settlement counties that do not have villages), which could have especially harsh sustainability consequences.
The obvious, and IMO best, solution to this is not to restrict mayors in their settlement selections. However, I believe there are two compromises you could also consider:
1) Do not restrict mayor selections until the number of 1 Town+ settlement counties is equal to the number of outstanding unclaimed county titles. This protects the truant counts while opening up over 1,000 town options to most and possibly all of your player base (some of whom believe they were guaranteed a town+, though I respectfully disagree with them). These are fixed numbers, so I don’t think they would be hard to code into the system (says the person with no real coding experience).
2) In cases where the mayor of a village or hamlet in a 1 town+ settlement purchases the county in reverse auction, allow them the option of exchanging their village or hamlet for the unowned single town+. Not sure how easy that would be in the system, but it seems much cleaner and more sustainable than upgrading a village or hamlet to a second town.
IMO, the current policy will sew confusion among the many mayors who do not religiously read the forums and ill will from those who are forced to pass up juicy towns in favor of options they consider lesser. It will also lead some to mistakenly consider the current $375 count upgrade packages to be expensive work-arounds necessitated by this policy.
That's my analysis based on the information that I have. There are undoubtedly errors in my logic and data, and I know I can count on those here to point them out. 😊 Thanks.
Scorus
