Has there been any recent news on any settlement annexation fix? On Storis II the #3 settlment of The Shire was just gobbled up by the Capitol. I know it wasn’t intentional, as a third party was just expanding in both directions and connected the two, but it could easily be turned into a griefing tool and mechanic to make the largest of cities unstoppably big. I’m guessing it’s possible to reclaim a settlement by unplotting the connecting land, but that doesn’t solve anything long term as someone could easily move in again.
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People should be allowed to opt out.
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Can you define griefing and how it harms you? I find this term to be used liberally by people on the forums nowadays.
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Just want to write, that i wanted to ask same thing. How does this harm you?
Some people just want to have their own settlement with a specific theme, as part of their creativity.
This is how they enjoy the game.
I see no reason not to allow people the ability to opt-in or out of settlements, or settlement merges.
I feel a strange sense of mild irritation among users here towards newcomers and their differing definitions of “fun” and I don’t understand it.
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I don’t see a reason either. I agree this should be opt-in. Nevertheless…
Being part of your own settlement, or being swallowed by other does not change the theme of your settlement. People plotting in vicinity of your plots and doing their business that’s not aligning with yours is something that opting in or out of settlement will not change. Or I’m reading you wrong and the names of settlement is (in a very alien, to me, way) somehow important to you.
If we’re being honest here, I do have a mild irritation towards anyone who uses the term griefing without explaining what it means to them. He’s allowed to have his own sort of fun. But it doesn’t mean settlement annexation is considered to be griefing either. But I’d at least like to hear his side hence my question of how he defines it 
I agree. If I have a settlement and like the name of it and want it as my own I should be able to zone in and see the name. Its a little thing yes… but its valid. Now I’m not opposed to merging with nearby settlements at all I’m just saying I see the validness (is that a word) of this.
There are a couple aspects that go on here. First, we’re talking about the #1 settlement gobbling up the #3 settlement. settlement size isn’t a huge factor for me, but having one’s hard work assimilated into someone else’s cheapens the feeling of accomplishment quite a bit. Sure, you’re now part of the #1 settlement, but you don’t feel like you’ve earned it.
Second, you’re having the identity of your community taken from you. You may say they can still be treated as separate communities, but when everything you now do is tied into the larger settlement, and visa versa (prestige for example), It cheapens the entire experience.
Third, we’re also talking about a person with over a million prestige assimilating a settlement whose next highest prestige is a fraction of that. Were this done maliciously, it would be the equivalent of a lvl 80 rpg character camping a lvl 1’s spawn point. The smaller community has no chance of overcoming the larger community.
I am not saying this instance is malicious (I have specifically said otherwise in the OP), but the potential for malicious use is there.
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I wonder if it would be possible to implement some sort of “neighborhood” system.
In the real world city of Seattle, for example, as the city gobbled up it’s neighbors, the neighborhoods retained their name…such as Ballard or Northgate.
Maybe they could impliment a feature that if settlements of more than, lets say, 50K prestige are gobbled up they retain their neighborhood name within the city.
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Or the Twin Cities, which are two separate cities entirely right up next to each other without one annexing the other.
Currently the best fix for this is ironically what others would consider a bug too. If you plot a 1x1 strip around your settlement (or at least as a “wall” from the side of probable encroachment of a nearby settlement) it should register as a road/bridging and in theory prevent merger even if fully built-up to its edge
Setting aside the semantics of the term “greifing,” the question is weather this mechanic is good for the game. As a fellow member of The Shire, I can tell you that it feels really bad. We have an active and enthusiastic community, and the fact that despite growing rapidly we cannot maintain our own settlement just because we settled relatively near a giant city is highly dissapointing.
It is especially tough because we reached #3 on a high prestige world by having a large group of players that all contributed a little. No single member of out town has even 100k prestige. Now our mayor is a player that has over a million prestige. In many ways this doesn’t change the town. It is the same group of people with the same plots and builds, but if feels very different to not have our settlement’s name pop up when we enter, to not have our settlement appear on the world rankings and to not have one of our community be the warden.
I think a settlement’s warden should be able to decide to join or not join another settlement when they touch another one, and I hope there can be a way to give players more control over their settlements.
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I’ve posted here about this:
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There is already a fix…
Go play the game and build up your beacon so your the warden!
Otherwise the game is working as intended and no fix is needed…
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I love that idea! To go even futher:
100k prestige - neighborhood
200k prestige - town
300k prestige - district
Idk lol
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I would like to thank the Devs for being vigilant in working for solutions that benefit everybody.
I don’t see why people are defending the grieving or need an explanation on what it is. It’s a thing , it exists, this game is no different.
maybe add benifits to becoming connected to a city by a road? for example the settlement keeps the ability to control its own claimed tiles and is still independent from the connected city with a higher prestige but maybe you get a boost to trade or maybe a movement speed boost when on the roads, or some kind of diplomacy menu where the owners of both cities can set up large scale trades for gold or resources and you have to physically run a cart full of items to a stockpile in the city you are doing business with by the road system to finish the transaction.
If an opt-out solution is offered, there should be a counterweight as to what you’re missing out on if you choose not to opt into annexation. The mechanic may have been implemented as a foundation for features that are yet to be released so it’s difficult for people to understand that which they cannot see. This could affect both future PVP and PVE content. So a change in this feature will also impact upcoming development.
As an example of how game design works, alot of people are complaining about lack of PVP or more PVE content. The company decided to invest heavily into crafting and player economy mechanics. These elements are needed as the foundation for any type of PVP or PVE content. The lack of a basic player economy would mean that items that we all need will be super expensive or very scarce. Either way, it would stunt future gameplay.
For better or worse, I really like the out of box thinking that the devs have put into this sort of stuff. This mechanic is almost like a dumb-downed version of how annexation is played out in the 4X strategy of Europa Universalis.
Perhaps a better solution is simply better communication. Like when you choose to plot, there will be a notice that tells people you that you can get annexed by neighboring settlements. Unless you visit the forums, I don’t think alot of people understand how annexation works or if it even exists?