Here is my feedback on this cycle and more generally about the game.

[short geyser]

About towns:
Generally, the system is great, but…
It takes a large server population to make use of them. WT is a high population server and yet not enough to use the towns. For a typical server, I doubt anything bigger than a town would be useful.
Jurisdiction is weird. First, players plant their claims before towns are made, and they can refuse citizenship when the town is made. This makes sense from a player experience point of view because one doesn’t want to suffer the ruling of a town that sets up after he settled at some place. So then we have holes in the city’s influence radius where the not-citizen can do anything and the town can do nothing about it. On the other hand, that player benefits from most of the town perks for free: roads, power grid, neighbours that provide goods.
Any plot should be affected by the laws of where it is located, not depend on the location of your homestead stake.
The role of each level is unclear. The federation is clearly responsible for shooting the meteor, and so they need things to run smoothly somehow. They are also bound to build the highway and have to build the presidential palace. Their role is pretty well defined. As was discussed at some point their role is also to delegate work and duties to the states and cities, which would change the tax dynamic from the fed being the biggest tax to settlements having different tax level based on services and efficiency of the elected positions.
Then comes the states. They are too big, not close enough to individuals to cater to specific needs. By the rules, they have no duty at all, so mostly their role is to build roads from the highway to towns.

Finally, the towns. They are close to the individual and should cater to their needs. They should give a theme to the neighborhood, provide local services. But they don’t. This cycle, I tried to make a town that people want to live in: we have a tractor any citizen can use, public fields to use, and a subsidy for people to move in. none of this was used.
While this is mostly a problem of people not seeing the point of having access to shared stuff, it is also an issue of the game making it too easy to have everything (still tractor/skid are very expensive and it’s very worth it to rent one instead, but ppl would rather have their own).
So then what can the town do for his citizen? not much. How does it work in real life, why do people group in towns and pay local taxes for?
Living close to your work -> the current housing system makes it so you never have to go where your housing bonus is. There could be a +20% bonus for logging out in your bedroom, or a calorie reduction if you are less than 500m from your residency
Services -> well, there is no fire hazard, no crime, no sickness, no education. So why pay for these? Maybe at some point those will be implemented, and a working fire station could provide a speed bonus to the crafts around it. An hospital could be a requirement to work a coal mine
Logistic efficiency -> many just sell at their place and expect others to come (See Zebis whom you need to drive tiled fields to get to! )

One of the fundamental reasons for this is that moving is hard. Once a player is established and has his hewn hut, he won’t be moving anywhere else. Therefor, he may not like the town rule that was built after he picked his spot but will not be bothered to move. Let alone join a township to be closer to other players. Even if they are paid for it.
To remedy this, we need to change the understanding that the location picked day one is your location for the whole cycle, but I have no idea how. This is even more an issue when it’s about claiming a natural resource.

About abandonment:
Players come and go, some stay, some don’t, that’s natural. I feel like any player offline for 7d+ should be automatically removed. I understand the no looting policy, so maybe a script could just delete any non-natural block?
There is the unclaim thread, and I appreciate Madminer’s job for his quick response time. I think it’s taking him quite a lot of time to maintain, so if he had to manage only requests for cases below 7d absence, it would be easier on him. Also, it’s a hasltle to file each request, screenshot stuff etc, so most of the time, the abandoned plot remains until the end.
Similarly, I think there was a request to turn off shops of idle players, but that’s probably a fed matter.

About vehicles:
When the barge is functional, vehicles should not fit in other vehicles. Loading a wood cart in a truck is fine, the other way around isn’t.
Doing so will make transporting stuff harder, the canoe+cart combo should be kept so anyone can run errands
Carrying a vehicle or industrial machinery in inventory is a sensitive matter. While it’s weird to be able to carry anything, it’s also necessary for building and recovering a vehicle stuck in a hole. I can imagine a buff when nearby a crane, or claimed land that would allow carrying anything regardless of weight but rescuing a stuck vehicle will remain an issue.
Finally, I’d like more diversity in vehicles. Currently there are several tiers of vehicles and some are not used at all (wheelbarrow, small canoe) but each are an upgrade of the previous one. How about a bike with 2 slots of inventory but higher speed? then a motorbike, a fast small boat. How about a vehicle to tow other vehicles, an advertising vehicle that’s basically a big banner with wheels, a shopping cart that preserves food. Even heard someone mention an helicopter.

[uneven grotto]

The jurisdiction exemption only affects homesteads and is to keep players at least some safe space - they cannot extend their plot anymore and in future versions can be annexed by the town, so they have high likelyness to join. But if they don't want to, that is indeed intended.

[uneven grotto]

The towns are supposed to be the local authorities, states just allow to separate the whole globe into a bit lesser parts with more concentrated efforts. They all have similar duties, but they are not necessary, it's up to players what they do with it - if anything at all. In my opinion they are still a bit too small, four states should be able to cover the whole globe together, just as before and that happening is actually the intended design on WT.

Giving states and towns key duties also comes with the problem that in opposite to the federal government both can go fully "abandoned" or generally are not super likely to cooperate as we have well seen. Means, we cannot ensure they do the stuff they have to if they have specific duties, which could break the whole server.

On the other hand, I also wouldn't know which would be appropriate.

[uneven grotto]

IRL I don't choose a town at all. They just exist and I have to be part of them depending on where I want to live. (They're just an administrative unit fulfilling things the state cannot do directly) The only time I ever chose a town was to optimize company tax location irl, LOL.

[uneven grotto]

I understand why you don't like it - but this does work as intended. I don't see how it could be made easier without third-party control. The judges are not supposed to allow unclaiming of anything that is somewhat developed if not for exceptionally good reasons at all, so the main things should be tutorial tents or abandoned people with a base home. Which also shouldn't happen too often, actually. I've not monitored the channel and hence don't know what is being unclaimed though. As a matter of fact I cannot have random town officials unclaim whatever they feel, though, as they will for sure not obey the base idea. We also do strictly not want to simply despawn stuff, the goal of the rule is that 95% of buildings that an inactive player built and that go beyond a starter tent stay until the end of the cycle.

Unclaiming someone elses property should generally be the exception, so when you report that stuff stays until the end, because you can't bother to go through the heaps, that is exactly what is supposed to happen. The hurdle is there so you only unclaim stuff where you really say "I must use this plot, because the road will here be most efficient and beautiful". If we allow towns to unclaim without third-party approval they will quickly ignore the required rules and just unclaim whatever they see fit.

Just as IRL you'll always want to see if there is alternative locations, only if there is not or the whole point is beautification by removing tutorial tents (but in this case the rules are less strict) the method should be used.

Whenever the road can go around, it should.

I have never and will never be a fan of servers that unclaim things automatically, as it just leads to looting and places looking even worse (if the original place already looked bad) after that, plus it erases history of people that played here, which I'm simply opposed and is one of the reasons I never played on other servers than my own. We had the system of free unclaiming before, but in turn required government clean stuff up - and that was obviously much more time-consuming.

[uneven grotto]

I do agree here with most all of it, but it's not really something WT can fix locally.

As for how to make towns / states more meaningful while ensuring that the server can finish when they chose to not be, I'm happy to take any suggestions as well.

[frank prawn]

I like the part about culture giving certain bonuses outside of just the influence range. Players tend to take the easy route doing most things, so for the mechanic to catch on, outside side of just exploring it, there needs to be a more impactful bonus tied to it. Nothing that upsets the balance of things, but still something that you would be interested in working towards as a "manager" of that area

[short geyser]

I chose my town IRL based on price, quality of life, distance to work etc.

I understand why the unclaiming works this way, and indeed some stuff should stay ; but you are right, What should and what should not cannot be defined by a script and neither can a random player (mayor)
Note that it got much cheaper now that LCP cannot/don't need to be repaid

[short geyser]

That is more targeted to changing the vanilla version indeed.

The cleanup/looting issue is why I suggested resetting the chunks

[short geyser]

I have not gotten to test extensively the culture mechanics. It could lead to some interesting auctioning of prized artwork, but it could also lead to 2 towns exchanging art reputation of blank canvas just to farm culture points. Currently, it only affects radius, and there haven't been cases of aggressive use of that influence given the "see other settlements as ppl from your own country" mindset

I really like the expo mystery had made in Samoa though

[short geyser]

Probably had to be a condition for victory. A run focused on culture maybe, where at least 3 towns need to hold a cultural event that gather at least 10 players attending. But that feels kind of forced. Maybe it would show that stuff can be done when people take the time to prepare that kind of stuff...
I remember my first MMORPG, there was a player made radio that hosted parties in game and people would come there just to /dance and chat

[frank prawn]

The only reason we have not seen "agressive" is that its not allowed on WT.

[short geyser]

We're there "abuses" on sea otter ?

[frank prawn]

Never played there, so I don't know

The system allows for a lot more then what is currently allowed

[short geyser]

Sure does. Laws, executive actions, immigration restrictions...

Can really have dictatorship power trip

[frank prawn]

Like Dennis said, the game provides the tools, what happens is up to the players. WT is a more "fair" take at making a world people enjoy spending time in, which is a good thing

I also think if we were free to do everything, you would not see some of the complexity that is actually offered as tools, leading to a much more boring way of playing the game.

[short geyser]

I agree. Though when making a game, the devs have a vision of what they want, and the unrestricted vanilla version is what the general public gets. So if it's too easy to have a toxic yet legit behaviour, maybe it's an issue

[frank prawn]

Thats the whole concept of sandbox games, players influence everything however good/bad their intentions are

[shrewd imp]

After reading this I plan to make some corrections to the way I handle unclaim requests. I'll have a proper procedure written up too so it's consistent and clear

[uneven grotto]

Well, we'll see what happens on SO this cycle. But don't forget that during playtests also given our monitoring people typically tend to play nice.

Outside, in the wild, it's a savage world of groupers against everyone else.