Note: I have not found any other similar proposals with this. My main inspiration was the regions system in Shadow of War.
Proposal
There have been several suggestions on banners with increased protection so that people could banner larger areas. However, these got shot down for a multitude of reasons, a prominent one being that the banner protection could be larger than the render distance, and also that an area may load before the banner does if the banner protection is of a larger size, allowing people to steal things and grief before the banner’s chunk actually loads.
I have a solution of sorts to get around that problem; Region Dominating. My suggestion is that all of Middle-Earth is split up into little regions; The Pelennor Fields within Gondor, Udún within Mordor, etc.
The Great Splitting
Large areas such as Mordor, Gondor, Rohan etc. would be split up into regions according to geographical barriers and how they were split in the book. Let’s use Fangorn, for example; it would be split into the Current Fangorn Wasteland, North Fangorn and South Fangorn (in fancier names, perhaps). Smaller areas, however, like Rivendell, would simply be their own region. Let’s have another example; the Shire. The Shire is an easy one; it would be split into the Four Farthings, the White Downs and Buckland. Certain large, and yet uninhabited areas, such as Khand, Rhún or Forodwaith, would not be split until their factions are developed.
Dominating Regions
All inhabited regions in Middle-Earth would be owned by a faction; Gorgoroth by Mordor, Nan Cúrunir by Isengard, while uninhabited Regions such as Meneltarma would read as “wild”. However, this can be changed; if Person managed to infiltrate an enemy land, they would be able to take control of a region. This would then make the Faction Owner display as Person. Underneath Person‘s name would be the chosen faction that the player used to invade the region with.
But how would you dominate a region? Well in every region there would be a small 50 by 50 area, displaying similar to a Sphere of Influence, where a player could place a three gem blocks atop each other, and then place a banner atop that stack of precious metals. The gem blocks must all be the same. Upon placing that structure, a player can right click on the banner as they would a normal banner. There they would be able to set which players were permitted to enter the land, and which faction they would like the area to be owned by. The are would be theirs, but they would need to set an “official” faction which they were conquering with. Fellowships, however, may be used instead of a Faction.
Players which are not in the permitted list to enter would receive a message saying “You have entered the land of Person! Leave or face the consequences!”. The owner of the area (if he was online) would receive a message saying “Person has entered >Region Name<!” Note that these messages would only work in multiplayer.
Viewing Regions
Regions would have there only separate page after Fellowships. Here the same Middle-Earth map would appear as in the maps page, however, you would be able to mouse over different regions and select them. Upon selecting them, the screen would display the name of the region, the owner and the faction/fellowship it was conquered by.
Corrupting and Purifying
Once ring forging is implemented, upon Dominating a region, if you have a ring, then you would be given the option to corrupt/purify it, depending on your alignment/ring. Corruption would darken the grass or kill it, and decrease the fertility. It would also cause the sky to darken and random bushfires to be summoned. Water in corrupted areas would give blindness and poison, and would also lower the standard light level. Highly corrupted areas would also absorb light similar to Utumno. On the other hand, purification would increase the fertility of the land and clear the sky, and increase the standard light level. Purification would also reverse the effects of corruption, and vice versa, albeit slowly.
Conjuctive Dominating
(This may be one of the more difficult things to code)
If a series of areas were dominated by the same faction, they would begin to reduce the number of faction enemies spawning and increase the number of faction allies. It would also spawn the mobs of the faction which conquered the area, albeit in small numbers. However, corruption/purification would cause more faction NPCs to spawn in larger numbers. This would rely on Mevans to implement ring forging, though.
A Few Things to Note
Region dominating does NOT banner protect the region. Players and NPCs can steal grief and place/destroy blocks. This also includes the banner used in dominating! If you dominate the region, a player could still destroy the banner setup you used to dominate and take it for their own. You would need to banner protect the region domination banner as well.
Finishing Up
I hope you people enjoyed reading this! It was longer than I meant, but I had a bit to cover. Remember, if you read and agree with this suggestion, hit that kudos button! The more the merrier! And if you actually read the whole thing, you get a cookie! And if you didn’t, then you’re probably not reading this anyway.