I'd like to suggest that the land between three or more cities that are fairly close together and owned by the same person or alliance become a territory. These territories would be impassible by non-alliance armies, so that they could not take a direct route and would either have to go around or attack one of the nodes (cities).

This would make alliances useful and allow for strategies to be made. Cities that were just money pits before could become key links to blocking others and building an empire.

As an added idea, there could also be a new resource (or tax) based on the rough size of the "territory" which could bring in extra geos.

ya... u could also make people pay u to pass thru directly

yeah, i like it. also allies could pass for free, or passports could be issued to them. reconnaissance troops would be able to pass more or less freely and not be detected some percentage of the time.

the idea of borders, it has been proposed, but its way hard to code. I believe Luke started to cry when we started talking about it.

I believe the idea was to have friendly cities make "roads" between them so you could travel faster, and have "trade". also, the deeper enemy soldiers are in your lands, the less effective they are.

i believe another idea, which is connected to this one, was to have continental waypoints, between which you'd travel faster, but you or your alliance would have to "control" those.

this would enable some real border forming, and also a better way to defend the costy cities.

Best I can tell, they'd have to 1) figure out if a city is close enough to build a wall, and 2) draw a line between the two cities. Then 3) when the army move it checks to make sure it's not going to cross unfriendly borders. If this is too processor-intensive, then at least an initial check when the army first sets its destination.

4) Taxes or farm resources could be a calculation of the polygon's area. Perhaps calculate by each triangle (in case irregular polygons are formed)?

Many cities just aren't worth defending. A person/alliance could own a whole continent and someone could just move right through and attack any interior city they like.

I made a proposal before last reset to have transport network built and you'd have to map out your course following waypoints.

Each city would be a waypoint but the cities would only have a few different routes in and out so you would have to check on GE to find the quickest way to a destination. Then when moving you would first see the army at one city and only have 2-5 options of the next city to travel to, then 2-5 from that city until you can finally click on the final destination.

Now if you owned Cairo, for example. You could, using your proposal to block areas, either;

1) block traffic past your city to anyone not on your allowed list, then you'd create a traffic stop between Europe/Asia to Africa. The only way around would be to either attack and defeat the roadblock or the city, or travel via seaports which would be much slower transports.

2) Or you could charge a toll to buy passes to get through the "bottleneck". The bank would need to be changed to allow this as it would more often than not happen without the owner being online. You could have a toll set at say, 10geos per army to pass your bottleneck. (Imagine how much you would have raked in from NAR last week :p )

Either the owner of a city can opt whether the city has a toll or certain cities (bottleneck areas) automatically come tolled so as to create more "bonus" income.
Best example of land bottlenecks are;
*Cairo, for between Africa and Europe/Asia
*Bangkok for between Asia and Indonesia/Australia
*Panama City, Managua or Mexico City for North to South America
But we could also, be designing the road network, artifically create a few more.

Movement from a home base would have to first go to the closest city to the Home Base.

The toll is paid when the army is sent by the general moving his army. So when you map a route, and you have the option of Cairo, The game tells you that this city will cost 10 geos to pass. You can then agree to pay and pay instantly (so you don't arrive at the city with insufficient funds in an hours time). If the city changes hands during the travel, you may still pass as you still have a valid pass. If you change your mind and send the army back, you lose your money and your pass. Then if you change your mind again (female general) you need to buy another pass.

If an ally or "friend" (new feature) passes they pay no fee.

Don't worry, these features only ever make sense to me while I'm typing them....




Blitzkrieg

Here is the abridged version of my proposal;
* Moving armies is only possible along certain roads mapped out between cities.
* Roads to be constructed to create "bottlenecks" between major areas.
* Army movement only allowed along these roads or via seaport to seaport (which of course can also be tolled)
* Changes to the Bank to allow the purchase of "passes" for cities if the owner decides to "toll" his city.
* An army would be forced to stop and wait 5-10 minutes at each stop to referesh and restock (allowing time to be attacked enruite, allied strategy).
* The owner of the Bottleneck has a dialogue page telling him who the last 10 people to pay the toll are (same as latest activity page for example)