Obviously the best way to have dealt with Shell Companies was to delete the Territory Control System.
But even if AGS wanted to be stubbornly self-destructive about their game and not do this, they could have done some thing way simpler than the new crop of territory tax rules and war cooldowns and mercenary limits and blah blah blah. That they apparently can’t even code properly. Cannot declare war? Bug or feature?
Here’s a s sample:
In the same region (e.g., looking at all US East servers),
identify every Company that has ever held more than 3 Territories.
Flag their ACCOUNTS. This will be important later for identification and transfer/character creation restrictions.
Tell them they have 7 days to prepare their toons and their company, then transfer their toons to a special Server type in the same region. Let’s call them “High War Competitiveness” servers. These will contain only other Companies transferred this way. Doesn’t matter if they try to disband or transfer. They get transferred.
If that special server population hits 2000, sort the Companies by the highest number of territories they’ve held in that server, then split the list into two new Servers.
Once an ACCOUNT has a toon flagged for transfer to High War Competitiveness servers, they can transfer toons to, or make new toons in, High War Competitiveness servers ONLY.
In these High War Competitiveness servers, we will not care if they do their Shell Company shenanigans or not. They’re probably all doing it so they can deal with it themselves, isolated from “normal” war companies who are playing the game as intended and not looking for loopholes.
Shell Companies are a product of player intent. Don’t use mechanics to try to discover or control intent. Quarantine the problem first so they don’t hurt the servers.