First off let me say Im doing this for many reasons.
Ok totems they are everywhere. I have a vision of changing that, and allowing totems to help trade, economy and allow smaller more active tribes to control more area.
First off, I do not like the idea that totems take no resources to put down yet can claim resources. Also I do not like that to grow a totem you need more players even if they are inactive. Ive seen tribes of 100 people with 1 or 2 online controlling huge parts of the zone.
Now how I would vote to change it is this.
Key is to require totems to take resources, and need resources to keep "protecting" the area.
I think when you want to drop a totem it should first place a ghost totem down, this ghost totem would not protect anything, yet it would not allow anyone else to claim a totem in the area until that ghost totem is removed.
Ghost totems will be removed after % of the resources not put in. IE if you drop a 100 man totem it would require say 10000 units of resources. Ghost totems decay say normally in 48hours but if you drop in 500 units in (5%)of the resources it would extend the decay by 5% or 2.5 hours.
After you get all 100% of the resources needed to then you can click the create, and it will drop a real totem based on the one you picked for the ghost. This will last for 1 week. Every week you have to upkeep the totem. (25% of base cost). Which can be put into the totem and the totem eats up over time. You can also use this totem as a bank for storage.
Things used for resources. Bricks, Logs, Sand, rock, metal, cloth etc. Each would have to have a unit assigned to them.
What this does is mostly allows people to build on land based on needs or even expected growth, without them to just want to "zerg" more members in the tribe.
It will promote trade by removing these resources and maybe even hiring labor to help gather these resources.
Also if an area goes inactive, slowly the totem will eat itself. It should lose 10% of its range a week of not being filled on the resource upkeep. After 10 weeks it will disappear.
This will allow a few members to keep the candle going for a large tribe if they wish. Also allows totems in the world to be removed, if tribes just leave them. Also will help prevent people from dropping a totem without knowing what they are doing, it will also help prevent people from having alt accounts with totems just claiming an area for themselves.
Idea? Comments? Complains? etc