Dev has commented, discuss possible solutions, see below.
It seems a “toggle” might not be implemented because it would fragment the growing of massive empires, and so a middle-ground might be found so people can still retain their identity.
I hope not, honestly. This is a land ownership MMO. As populations grow and builds get bigger and grander, property lines will collide. People are going to start fighting with eachother on who has what rights to expand, because, naturally, people will want to expand their builds. Since there is no PvP and players cannot destroy/take over eachother’s stuff, the settlement merge mechanic is the ONLY mechanic players have in game to try and pressure other nearby players for land. If the underdog wants to keep their settlement name and mayor rights, they have to move their land away from the big dog and expand in a new direction; otherwise, they can choose to be stubborn and stay where they are like the old man in the Up movie.
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I believe that we have found a solution that allows players to retain their individual and collective identity that complements the settlement system.
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Didn’t see that. I personally don’t care, but I needed a dev response to point people to. This helps the discord complaints. Whew. 
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I imagine the implementation might be a “districts” type system, so while their maybe an overall “settlement” or “capital city” you could get an alert you’ve entered into a “district” perhaps.
Edit I’d consider a pinned post started by you, a Dev, yourself, whenever a solid plan is comin’ together so we can copy and paste a link to it whenever people have posts.
The frequency of these complaints are increasin’ due to people expandin’.
I’d prefer to keep my independence, no matter what. But districts are a great compromise.
To be clear, I’ve not confirmed “Toggle-able settlement merge”.
But I am happy to confirm - that we’re very aware of the issues players are raising. I read all the comments and posts, and have chatted directly with players in game about what they want, what they value and how they want to grow their communities.
But at the same time the process of settlements emerging via closeness + prestige, the awarding of capital status and the claiming of warden / viceroy also gives players something to strive for and (yes) compete for.
Ultimately I think this comes down to an area’s identity and a group’s identity, and players don’t like having their identity forcibly changed.
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I’ve changed the name of the thread and my posts to reflect this.
I just regained warden status after someone built an area and renamed my settlement and said “oh well” and then left. He hasn’t built there in two weeks. Just built up, and left. That was annoying.
In all though, it gave me something to strive for.
I haven’t had to directly deal with this yet, but the idea of getting swallowed after all the work I’ve done gives me cold sweats.
Lol that’s literally exactly the kind of miss quote he was trying to avoid!
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Lmao too perfect to not abuse xD
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James surely missed you all these months you were not around 
On topic: I imagine that best solution would be keeping smaller settlements as districts when they are consumed by another or something like that, but it would be tricky to implement.
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Just have to wait and see now. James has spoken. Very happy to hear it to.
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You will be to blame when someone actually uses that and people get mad lol.
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I sure hope so!
One day my friend, one day…
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Edited – town moved, no names, pictures involved.
We shall wait for devs to implement solution for the future.
Thank you!
Do not name’n’shame.
Use the in game report function to settle griefing cases.
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The original question is, Does this count as Griefing? That was my starting question on Discord, People say it is, others say it’s not… This thread was started due to Discord drama in asking if people knew the person who did this…
I apologize for name-dropping but-- it’s an entire city who is now really upset because of this person who wont be named.
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