Average Land Factor

[The Beatles]

Suppose we define, in configuration, a variable called avgland. Further suppose there are 'n' players in the game. Let 'x' be the total amount of land in the game.
Then let a (average) = x / n
I propose that the amount of land people earn with scouting is then proportional to (suppose l=their land): max(0, (n*avgland - x)*a/l)
In essence, the land they earn scouting is inversely proportional to the portion of the game land that they hold. The total pool available for scouting is what remains before everyone fills up the average land.
Average land, thus, would literally influence how much land players can make. Dropping land would not affect the balance, as people would be able to make more via scouting.
Of course the rough edges of the formula need to be smoothed to provide scouting over turns.

[yellow]

around how much land would be present before it would start to level out?

[Nohc]

Um, hello? I think this is a good idea if you don't want a land farm, but I'd like to know how much land per player there would be before you'd be getting 5 or so land per turn while scouting. A rough table would be nicer.

[ohmyjapan16]

sounds good to me

[Fresh Water Fighters]

It sounds a lot beter than what we have now.
But some more info would be nice...

[Courvein]

Wouldn't that penalise players who come late to a set? Then their max lands would be limited to pretty much avgland (assuming that all other players have grabbed everything), and they won't be able to build up to compete, so earlier players with more military, hawks, etc. will just use them as sources for land?

also, what happens when ppl are killed/disabled/dropped? a sneaky way to raise the land cap would be to keep creating accounts and then deleting it so that 'n' keeps going up. if 'n' does not go up per account creation, but per active players, then newcomers get even more penalized?

[Ruddertail]

Well, I generally don't like the idea of caps on how much land can be brought into the game. Also, I don't see how dropping land would not affect it, because if it works on the basis of average, and someone drops land, then the average goes down...

[Fresh Water Fighters]

Well just an idear.
When players sing up part way throung the round so they dont have sush a dissadvantage to every one else could start with acounts with exta land.
Say a fraction of average land. That way the new player would not be at sush a dissavsantage.