1. Anonymous Play - no guild names, no messaging, no chat. if inno could make it appear like every guild is in the 12 o'clock position on their map, that would be even better, but i'm not sure if that would work without completely uniform map appearance.
No guild names would have a large effect. Captured sectors by other guilds need to be in one color. Ie., only three colors on the map: white-your guild, gray-unclaimed, yellow-conquered by another guild (I'm not set on yellow, just randomly picked a color)
I don't think they could cut off messaging or chat unless GBG was cross world, but even then there would be a rush on building cities in every world. If the guild names are given, then messaging will happen.
2. Factor in guild size in rankings/matchups somehow - for example, like High School sports. small schools with like 500 students have a AAA league or something like that. Whereas schools with 2k students are in a 5A league.
That doesn't work out. We have seen guilds with lower member count roll over guilds with a full membership. It is not member count, it is member participation, and their collective strength to fight or negotiate.
3. Fog of war - someone else's idea, but I like it. Makes it so you don't know what is going on across the map
Thanks.
4. Home base proximity power (call it whatever you like) - give your troops % bonus attack and defense based on how close they are to your home province. adjust cost of province buildings and time to build based on proximity to home province. The closer to your home province, the better the benefit. As you move away from your province it lessens, across the map it eventually becomes a big penalty. for example, 300% atk/def next to base, -300% attk/def across the map. 70% cheaper builds, 50% faster next to base. 300% more expensive/longer to build across the map.
I can see this one. based on a scale of 1-6 (being the number of sectors away from your HQ) things get harder or take longer (not sure I like increasing the building costs)
5. Supply line tactics - factor in somehow province connectivity to home province. Like in real war, if a supply line is attacked and/or cut there was a dramatic impact on the cut off armies. Plus supply trains could be looted. Factor both of these into the game. I don't know how to do this, maybe make it so that if you aren't connected to your home province you lose your personal atk/def bonuses. That would be a huge deal and force players into protecting their flanks and not over extending to stick it to a particular guild far away while ignoring neighbors
This is interesting. Not sure about all the items you listed, but one boost that may be possible would be to tie the supply line to the home base distance. Your base is in tier 4. To get across the board, you would need tier 3-2-1-1-2-3 sectors, six sectors in total. If you have a line (opposed to an isolated sector), there is a boost which counteracts
part of the distance from home effect.
6. Prevent lock in - Put 1-2 siege towers as default in all home provinces that can't be modified.
I'm not seeing this as preventing lock-in. Guilds are pinned into their HQ by softlocks. Softlocks are based on two opposing guilds holding sectors next to your HQ and requires communication between the guilds. The latter can be removed by making the guild names anonymous on the map and leaderboard. So far the only idea that could have an effect on guilds holding enough sectors to pin a guild, is to limit the number of conquered sectors per guild. In this way, the guild that would be likely to pin another guild down will have to choose, pin the guild in to their HQ or hold sectors to make VPH to finish on top of the leader board.