[2023] Update 10: Shift towards Group Play

You can turn off the settlements system for a legacy mode that is only supported for singleplayer, though. New interlinked features may not be supported with that mode going forward.

I do, however, not agree with your assessment or conclusion of it. The system actually empowers the so far solo / loosely grouped players by incentivizing government and settlement creation as a core gameplay part and strengthens their ability to stand against groups that now get limited in size due to the town mechanics. So the advantage of groups is actually decreasing, not increasing. It also limits their government powers upon other players severely.

Market and economics play as much role as before - the system still works as before, you can still and now even must - due to the claim restrictions at your own place disallowing you to go super far - set up shops / resource gathering and get property in other towns, only now you are incentivized to talk and cooperate (which is Eco at core, right?) to achieve that. Priorities shift a bit more to settlement to settlement contracts (due to being more effective as a group, just like irl), but you still use markets like before, just that now the hubs are actually part of the core gameplay. You can still have property in other settlements (e.g. trade hubs) and are intended to have, so that line about proxy shops is unfortunately simply wrong. I'm also not sure how transportation changes, given there is nothing that changed that.

A usual town from influence range alone can't be self-sufficient and people within still trade as normally. It also makes it much harder for group players to get a claim on every resource.

Just that there actually is none. If you managed to get so many random people into a town and then on top actually have them forgo their money and trading to do communism out of nowhere, I'd call that you won the game. I've not seen anyone win the game on playtest.

We purposefully did not do that, as towns aren't intended to be friend-groups per se (like companies on White Tiger), but administrative areas of _general_ cooperation. You will be able to make these restrictions, but you will need the desk and a few materials for it - so usually if you found the town outright, you can't change it immediately, but it only needs maybe half a day or so if you wait to start off with it. It's on purpose to limit group power and delay it a bit - and the factor that we intend towns to be spaces anyone can join and work together, no matter if premade group or not. As usual, anything can be changed on private servers to personal desire as well, so there will be servers for everyone.

Doesn't seem worse to me if their influence is limited to a town and they get strangers hitting their plans - all while the majority of non grouped players is in other towns, unaffected. None of our systems can fix human attitude, but we can limit its influence. Imo, it's in opposite getting way better.

Towns cannot annex other towns, they don't need to defend against each other.

Yes, a premade group will be faster and more efficient, but that will not allow them to take over the whole world anymore. They are confined to restricted space, which is definitely decreased power.

Eco is all about collaboration and players figuring out communication and build a society - it is the point of the game. Not sure what other reason I could give you than that being the intended gameplay Eco is and has always been developed for?

I've seen countless introverts becoming involved and more social over my years with Eco. And we're still a framework, there is already multiple servers that change gameplay mechanics from the default to put focus a bit differently, for example with global federation start. If the base gameplay isn't for someone, there is alternatives.