I was inspired to rewrite my scrapped suggestion by skit (thanks skit)

Coups have been removed for quite some time now and their "replacement" has not seem proper usage . Over this time I have seen multiple use-cases where a coup would have had a genuine positive impact on a nation, which is what has inspired me to suggest my version of a coup (with inspiration)

To begin, allow me to establish how the old coup system worked and the issues it had.

With the old coup system, anyone with a mayor role could attempt to coup (kill) the leader of the nation to immediately take his position and do what they wanted to the nation. This must all occur within a set amount of time, otherwise the coup failed and the one who instigated it was publicly announced
Issue 1: Coups were too fast.
- In the past nearly all coups occurred when the leader was either AFK or armourless and the coup took about 7 seconds to complete, making coups seem "unfair" and "unrealistic"
Issue 2: Coups could be started far to easily.
- History shows that all important coups that succeeded often occurred because an outsider payed off a trusted player for mayorship of their town; an example of this is japan where in less than 20 seconds the once independent nation was now a vassal to oceanic empire. This was also the strategy employed by AS (American Syndicate) to annex and absorb 2 continents into their nation.
Issue 3: There was no price for losing.
- If you lost a coup, the worst thing that can happen to you is that your town is removed from the nation, but more often then not people just ignored the attempt, often not even realizing it occurred
Issue 4: Very Easily avoidable.
- If the mayor is told by other members of the nation that a coup has been set up, they would box themselves in to a plot with no permissions and AFK the coup timer (plenty of nation leaders did it back in the day)
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Now, with all that out of the way I will now propose my suggestion.

Outsider interference is commonplace in all sieges and the side with the most disposable pawns usually wins (assuming they are of equal skill)

To combat this I have devised a good countermeasure; Loyalty

Loyalty would be a variable assigned to a player with a set amount of loyalty "points"
For every towny day spent in a nation (and online), these points would be spent increasing loyalty to a nation. (E.g 10 points assigned to GNE)

After a certain amount of loyalty is obtained one could begin/participate in a coup, this would prevent nations from being quickly overwhelmed with outsiders.

Now, here is the catch. Loyalty points are limited, meaning players will run out if they join multiple nations. I'll give an example situation;

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Testuser joins GNE for 6 days and gains 60 points of loyalty in that nation, (60 being the max)

Testuser then joins HNE for 6 days and only gains 40 (the total cap is 100 points per player)
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The loyalty requirement is 60 before one can begin a coup, so well known players CANT nation hop to join (GG)

But there is a way to lower loyalty, which is to switch to another nation the original nation is not allied with (restrictions can be put in place to avoid abuse: ./n ally cooldown, only nations older than 2 weeks old etc)
By switching, loyalty in the old nation will fall rapidly (-20 points a day, point's can't go negative) and loyalty to the new nation will not begin to increase for 3-4 towny days (a "conversion" timer) - There is an upfront cost of 10 loyalty points

(swapping towns DOES NOT cause a loss of points,)

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Now, onto the main part of the suggestion (I'll be taking a good chunk of skit's idea here, so full credit to him here)

The civil war could be started by a mayor of a town in a nation by doing the command: (/civilwar prep) (/civilwar prepair) The mayor must have the required 60 points of "loyalty" ((ofc with a confirmation message + a fee for doing so))
This command would activate the preparation period, in which the "leader" can send out invites to specific players (assuming their mayor is also part of the movement, this includes the leader's own town)

It is important to mention that town's can't join during this time, nor can they be kicked (the leader is stuck with you)

1-2 weeks after the creation of the preparations there would be a message to the host mayor of the civil war if they confirm again, after they confirm again the whole nation will get notice that there is a civil war plotting.
At this point, the nation leader is informed that they can now start recruiting their own soldiers to fight (ofc with the same loyalty requirement)
After 5 days the host mayor has 2 days to place a siege banner at the nation capital.
After this the civil war host with all its joined towns automatically leave the nation with no option to rejoin the nation where the civil war takes place, those towns automatically make their own nation. Towns in this nation cannot leave this new nation.

(sorry skit)
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Onto the idea about HOW the battle with commence.

The nation capital (if non-peaceful) will NOT have the ability to fire it's cannons and destruction of the non-peaceful town is disabled (maybe, im not fully sold on it either)

Generic siege stuff ensues (this time without lots of foreign interference)

The winner finds themselves the nation leader, and the town their capital.
The old capital is then removed from the nation (stability issues y'know)
If the capital is the only non-peaceful town for the nation, the nation falls immediately and the winners get absolutely nothing for winning (To disincentives a costly war for no reward)
Assuming the above does not happen, the winners gain the nation and a war chest (yippee)
The towns of the nation are then locked in to the nation, this "lock" can be overridden by the nation leader (/n warlock false)
There are no taxes, nor occupation that the nation leader can levy.
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AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, the nation can't pledge to be a vassal while the nation warlock is set to true (+4 days)
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If the coup leader (and the participants) lose, their town is removed from the nation and they pay (Yes, all the participants) a losing fee

To finish up, this "loyalty" variable could also be used with soldier rank (specially since zaify mentioned it)


To sum up, since this is a VERY long paragraph to re-read

1) you need to spend a certain amount of time in a nation be be involved in a coup, this time is reflection on how recently you were apart of another nation

2) the actual war is exactly the same as a regular siege (maybe)

3) There is no incentive to delete the nation (since they can just reform it after lol)

4) There is no vassal "cheese" possible with this new system

5) In the old system, there were plenty of loopholes and exploits used, which makes the old system unusable

6) Skit's idea was great, skit is cool

7) please leave feedback :>