I'd like to talk a bit about how the process and implementation of claiming land isn't working terribly well for me in LH right now. I'll sum up my take on several facets and do a little backseat designing, if for no other reason than to get folks talking about things.
You Didn't Earn That!
The first step in getting land is killing the creatures that roam it. A big problem with this, however, is that clearing the land isn't enough. You need a sizable staff of pioneers to actually set up shop on the now-vacant land. Thus, it's not uncommon for me to do the heavy lifting and clear out large chunks of land only to have enemy pioneers set up shop immediately, killing the sense of reward I should feel from conquering monsters. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Wildlands - unless you have an army of pioneers spread out ready to claim the land that opens up from clearing a Wildlands, the return you get on your sizable investment feels incredibly underwhelming.
Consider: Directly link conquering monsters and claiming resources. Perhaps assign all resources to monster-defended "neutral" outposts so that if you kill the monsters, you claim the outpost/resources.
This Land is My Land... Or Yours, or Whatever
Even when you manage to expand your borders and claim some good dirt, it's hard to feel a real sense of ownership. Sure, you can ask trespassing armies to vamoose, but it's an exhausting and inefficient process - and one that's easy to forget until its too late and foreign pioneers have wandered across your lands and claimed that clay pit you had tucked away between two of your cities. As a result, expanding my borders doesn't really make me feel like I'm "expanding my empire" - I'm just grabbing a few resources, not adding to any meaningful map control.
Consider: Make those Arizona republicans happy and do something about tightening up the borders. Endless Space was really good about this - expanding your influence in that game was a great low-cost means to control resources that you hadn't explicitly exploited yet (like colonized systems) and lock them down for future use. In LH I feel that if I don't have an outpost on it RIGHT NOW then it's up for grabs, even if the tiles in question are only accessible through my lands. Locking down the borders would also go a long ways toward clearing up the late-game headache that comes with keeping track of who's where in your entire kingdom (instead of just keeping an eye on the borders).
So what do you think? Does the current Wild Wild West feel work for you? Are mandatory open borders the greatest thing since sliced bread? Any other issues of land (or "l and d" as it is known to some)?
