There are so many NPC owned towns that make up a lot of nation's towns that completely are empty and no one is trusted either, to fix this obvious problem I think NPC owned towns should either 1. have a 100% increase on town upkeep to ruin the town faster or 2. Have their bank cut in half to also decrease the time the town will take to ruin.
NPC owned towns are bad for the server because it allows nations to overreach without proper manpower to suffice the towns while actual people that want to settle in that location cant do anything besides wait. A way to fix these NPC towns is if there are town members, have the next rank in line to automatically become the mayor
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Expanding on this I have two ways on how the server can pick the mayor if there is two or more players in the same position. First, the server can pick whichever one's status is active. Second the server can make it a percentage change like 50/50 or however many players there are.