Originally Posted by
sionide
It sounds like tribal warfare.
It's a delicate thing to put in, especially when not thought through. Ok so a massive tribe goes on a rampage and just vassalizes every tribe in 2 units. All the tribes (from your example) lose all their resources. Next a lot 5 man tribes are crushed and the members pissed off losing everything.
Maybe they are resilient and instead of paying the vassal tax they start a new tribe. They work hard for a week and get attacked again only to lose everything again.
Many players will quit, others wil only join huge tribes, now the server is split to 2 or 3 zerg tribes. How fun. Not.
Shadowbane zergs sucked, as did Darkfakl 3-4 super alliances. Eve's system works but only because they have a safe zone (empire) which is large enough to live in (though a small area compared to 0.0 but 85%+ of the pop live in it).
I am hoping the devs look at tribal warfare very carefully and learn from the mistakes/lack-of-planning that other games have faced. Them stating that they are patient and going to take their time with it gives me hope.