The aim of these suggestions:

A) To try and disperse the player base across the game, instead of hording half the users in a single city and another 3rd in its twin city.

B) Bring the opening district feature back! that was great fun. Built team work for the city and was generally a great idea by the admin team.

C) Make the recent changes to the mayoral taxes and their need to be paid a serious issue in the game, instead of a back ground annoyance.

D) Alter slightly the consequences of wars and thus the lack of repercussions from paranoid take downs for self preservation (just to put it out there, I don't think anything can really stop paranoia in this game, but hopefully these changes might go some way to alleviate the condition)

• Remove the west coast (at least temporarily) 

Put simply, the west coast is the weakest, most undesirable place to want to be. At one time it served the purpose of being somewhere people went if they really wanted their own crews but realistically it wasn't somewhere you'd want to stay there once capable of making power plays for stronger cities. This simply isn't a thing any more. clearly, as 3 cities being left open and 2 of which are the stronger cities (xp/money for crimes) the initial covetousness and jellyness of other people's prime real estate isn't working any longer.

As it stands at this moment. 1 city has 9 crews (3 in each district) the other 2 cities have 6 crews (3 in 2 districts and an empty district)

(Total: 7 occupied 11 unoccupied) 

Not all of these crews are filled, or close to being filled. This is the entire active and inactive user base spread through out these 21 crews (6 of which are 10 man GF HQs)

There are 18 districts. That's not even 1 40 man HQ crew per district available. 

There is exactly 50% of the available cities occupied presently. Removing the west coast will instantly change this to 75% occupied. (Again this can be a temporary measure. If it's deemed the re-opening of the cities is a needed thing it can be done, I'm sure)

Even if inspired by this thread, or coincidentally chi decides to let 3 of those crews leave to take a city of their choice, that STILL leaves 2 of those cities empty and the new city will be sparsely populated at best and chi will be like the other 2 cities, with only 2 of the 3 districts populated.

•  Increase the property and HQ cost each time a new HQ is bought in a district with a crew (or 2 if GF set up) already in it. (when taking GF the replacement crew doesn't have an increase in price) I know this is already done, I was going to suggest making it an even more dramatic increase too, but I realised when I finished writing this suggestion that it would severely cripple rogue activity and the next part of the suggestion can be used to make up for the lack of further increase here.

• Dramatically increase the mayoral taxes that must be paid, for every extra crew in the district.  (if needed, can reduce the increased costs once all/most/X% of the districts in the game actually have a crew in them and a 2nd (3rd if GF) crew in districts actually becomes a requirement) 

For example, if the mayoral tax which will be expected when there's 1 crew in each district is set to 8% for each crew to contribute, triple the %  for each extra crew in a city during times when there are open cities/districts available.  (8% x 3) + every extra crew in the city. 

so 2 extra crews in a city would change the tax from 8% to 48%, 5 extra crews will change the tax to 120%, meaning your city will owe more money than it's even making, and will be expected to pay it unless the CLs want to go to jail, directly to jail without collecting the $200 they owe $240 in taxes on.

If there's ever been a reason to flip that switch from loyal to undecided to disloyal, this here would be a perfect example.

The Benefits to this is to make it financially crippling to horde 50% of the user base in a single city by refusing to auth crew leaders in empty cities.

The mayoral taxes will be a more key feature in the game and unless the GF can shit golden eggs to pay for the extortionate tax rates set by the mayor, his captains are going to be spending their days in the slammer counting the tiles on the ceiling. After all, the more mobsters you have robbing old ladies, the more armed robberies at gas stations, prostitution in the streets and drug deals going side ways the city has, the more the mayor is going to demand. 

He can't keep a lid on everything, so if he's going to be fired and remembered for being a lousy mayor who did nothing to stop the crime, he's sure as hell gonna be having a well paid for retirement.

This will essentially force players to distribute themselves around the 4 cities (or 6 if the west coast is kept) putting an end to masses being horded in 1 or 2 cities. 

• Reintroduce the extra districts. 

 I believe this will only work if the west coast (or 2 random cities, whichever) are removed from the game. At least temporarily.

There were 5 districts for each city, if I remember rightly. Given that there will be a desire to keep only 1 (or 2 if a GF is available) crew(s) in a district, this will open up a need for the district battles to be reintroduced. 

I would recommend, that for the first (or 4th) district to become available for occupation, there must be a CGF and at least 1 40 man HQ with 30 members or more in each district (including the district with the CGF) 

for the second (5th) district to become available, the first 3 districts must have a GF in them and again all open districts to have at least 1 40 man HQ with 30 or more mobsters in them. 

This will create a total of 20 available districts across the 4 cities, each capable of holding 50 members each before there are any punitive financial measures being taken against the city for attempting to hold more members. 

If/when all the cities have crews in them and they've mostly opened their districts then I guess it would be a call for the admin team to decide if they want to keep things that way and remove the financial blockades to allow cities to start adding more crews to the city, or if they want to re-introduce LA and LV

Aside from those points, this feature was just great fun. It got the city buzzing with excitement and purpose, working together towards a common beneficial goal (that wasn't going to instantly be bitched at by civilians and thugs the next day) and as it is atm, with all 6 cities and there being 3 or 4 crews in districts and half the cities remaining empty... this feature doesn't look like it will ever return if things remain the same. 

Potential changes that may be considered good or bad, depending on your perspective on the subject.

When it comes to war. If you've built a power house city and you've got a few districts housing a couple of crews in it, you're going to need to act quickly to repopulate whichever city was just wiped out, or be prepared financially to cover the taxes to keep your CL's out of jail.

Due to this, take downs of another city will now have knock on effects for other cities, so more diplomacy will be needed instead of simply "throw jails to find them, line the cap killers with CLs, job done... now let's absorb the survivors and recruit the next generation of characters" with literally 0 repercussions and no checks and balances in place, from the game nor the players.

This *MAY* go some way to helping ease the fears of being a CL with capped BGs in a world where other people besides you have a cap killing gun. 

For example; if NY decides to attack PH and it's going to impact on chi and det's mayoral tax % they're going to need a good enough reason to make the families of Det and Chi understand the situation. (or be powerful enough to deter them from wanting to do something about it)

There's always talk that war is bad for business, well... not really, not at the moment it isn't. *best Yoda impression* But it could be... it could be.

As mentioned in other posts regarding the other districts being opened.. The extra districts equates to a slightly better home field advantage of places to hide away from the attackers. meaning the attackers in a war are going to have to stay sharper and plan more than they already do, again providing a (even if only slight) deterrent to the hostile party casually waltzing into someone else's city during war time.

The lack of west coast would change the central/east coast balance. (unless there's a change I didn't see in the announcements) the east coast gets a higher exp/money gain from crimes and jails. Where as the central cities have the higher drugs income from dfps and stays safer whilst inter district drug running the 9-10k heroin.

Other potential bonuses/changes could be a new "district profit" type achievement. If you sell drugs for profits x amount of times in every district in a city. Or "reclaiming your city" achievement for killing the gang members or by shooting their BGs to help your city win the district.

There is another huge change these suggestions may bring about, which is rogues. In a time where a city has a crew in each district, it's going to be more expensive for a rogue to set up, so there is a risk that the randomness of someone's roguish behaviour may diminish, it's true, but a prepared rogue who's taken time to fund their project will make more of an impact.

Even if they're incapable of killing their targets they're aiming for, whilst they're set up in their target's city, their extra HQ presence is going to increase the financial costs to that city via mayoral taxes. (before someone complains about the idea of people using finances to attack a city, please note that selling 100 credits for 45m and hitlisting a CL is entirely possible and you'd all be expected to contribute to paying off the hit)

Interesting Points

" I know this is already done, I was going to suggest making it an even more dramatic increase too"

My idea for a solution is less complicated. People could stop hoarding crews in one city and spread them out. There is no reason anything other than city leaderships' attitudes needs to change. Cities sit vacant for months because of the players, not the game.

why would they change the attitude, Clionadh there's absolutely no benefit for them to stop hording people. There's only the detriment of more potential GFs with guns who could turn on them. As it stands, there isn't even enough crews and players in the game to make use of all of the cities.

This suggestion wasn't just about hording players, although it is aimed to stop that practice continuing. it's also about the fact that the game doesn't have the user base it once did and because of that using all 6 cities would be a bit of a stretch. It's fine saying just change attitudes, but without a reason to, why the hell would anyone? also... this isn't just the attitude of the present dudes in charge, the previous was the same, and repeated others before them. 

If people would auth more "smaller" crews (we do have an assortment of HQ sizes after all) then there would be enough crews to fill all of the cities. The districts could easily run with one big crew of 40 and 2 or 3 of the smaller HQs. This would allow for more variety of leadership. The idea of smaller HQs (They used to be 100+) was to get city heads to auth more leaders. This was also the idea behind districts. Not every HQ needs to be a 40 member. This is something that the players can control themselves. 

I've played the game long enough to remember 100+ HQ's and honestly I don't agree with the idea of more total auths with fewer members in each crew.  Sounds good on paper, but my experience has been that stretching the userbase out to different crews winds up isolating users from each other instead of promoting the diversity that the idea is based around.   Friends will always follow friends, and what you're left with is a dozen or so crewleaders struggling to keep above water while trying to keep what little activity they have in their family alive.  

Powerhouse cities that have historically gotten too big for their britches authed those that served their best interest and functioned as a single unit despite being different in crew only - I don't really see there being much of a difference with this dynamic even with something like this implemented.  

I think hoarding members into one city leaves the other cities being utterly pointless. What is the actual point of having them if:

1/ The user base isn't big enough to warrant further auths out there

2/ People aren't using them anyway

I've always disliked the districts, I've always felt that the game was never big enough to accommodate them, I still feel this way now and I feel the user base has probably decreased in size since then, although I'm only judging this by the amount of noticeable characters that have left the game. So if the districts aren't working as we want them to, I think increasing the prices of HQ's would be a better idea of creating a better balance across the board.

I think Madara brings good points to the table, it's well thought out and it seems easy to implement. Sometimes the players just have too much power, I think the lack of distribution amongst the cities is one of them. Not just in this current regime but in many previous ones, most of the cities have been overlooked.

I think an interesting solution to the issues that are raised here was proposed in an earlier thread: 

https://mafiareturns.com/comm/thread/708182#2954910

Essentially, when a district is empty an NPC crew moves in and takes over, which lowers the amount of money that people make.  The longer the NPC crew is there, the harder they become to dislodge  (note; this would not be increased numbers of Durden gangsters... this would be a smaller number of NPCs that would be actually difficult to remove and/or a credible threat to anyone who attacks them and fails.).

Perhaps NPC crews should occupy a district and make it substantially more difficult for us to do business, prompting players to spread out their crews.

Perhaps HQs should become prohibitively, substantially more expensive when there is another non-GF crew in the game. I understand that in the thread I previously linked to, Squishy explained that HQs get more expensive already. But is the difference between buying an HQ for 13 million vs. 30 million really going to move the needle when there's 1.8 Billion dollars floating around the game? Perhaps if this number was greatly increased it would function as it's intended?

Regardless of which precise suggestion is implemented, I believe it is necessary for to include some kind of penalty for stacking crews in the same city/district and to push players in the direction of incentivizing the spread of organized crime into as many cities/districts as possible. I don't blame any players for keeping crews in the same city/district- because why wouldn't they? It has no real effect on gameplay once the HQ is purchased. This, however, obviously goes against common sense; no organized crime outfit would run multiple crews in the same city when there are entirely empty ones... they'd be competing against themselves too much. But if we're still making the same amount on crimes, drugs, etc., then the players don't have any reason to spread themselves out.