As far as we know, decay is a necessary evil to prevent server resources from going to waste on cities that aren't being used. But since the change to the Land claim system, decay of cities has felt really confusing.
I think we would all love it if decay didn't have to be a thing at all, since exploring and encountering other civilizations is one of the awesome things in this game. So without the full understanding about the reasons for decay, lets discuss alternatives.
If the number of cities is what is actually costing the most server issues, then I really don't know what can be done, aside from upgrading the server hardware. But storing information shouldn't be as big an issue if it isn't actually being used.
Assuming that it is the amount of computation it takes to handle the large amount of cities and units in them, maybe it would be possible to make the cities go dormant when their founder/owner/claimer hasn't been online for 7-30 days.
All manufacturing could either stop completely, slow down a lot, or be more selective; such as only working essential jobs.
Something similar to the old neglect mechanic could make the military units despawn and otherwise leave the military bases nonfunctional. And leaving the worlds defenseless against attacks in the process.
See also: (Idea thread) Automatically Add To Land
I think we would all love it if decay didn't have to be a thing at all, since exploring and encountering other civilizations is one of the awesome things in this game. So without the full understanding about the reasons for decay, lets discuss alternatives.
If the number of cities is what is actually costing the most server issues, then I really don't know what can be done, aside from upgrading the server hardware. But storing information shouldn't be as big an issue if it isn't actually being used.
Assuming that it is the amount of computation it takes to handle the large amount of cities and units in them, maybe it would be possible to make the cities go dormant when their founder/owner/claimer hasn't been online for 7-30 days.
All manufacturing could either stop completely, slow down a lot, or be more selective; such as only working essential jobs.
Something similar to the old neglect mechanic could make the military units despawn and otherwise leave the military bases nonfunctional. And leaving the worlds defenseless against attacks in the process.
See also: (Idea thread) Automatically Add To Land