>What do I expect when I hear /int/craft?
Low IQ overall, using countries and races to roleplay excuses for being a fag, not to make the game interesting
>Regarding the plugins, were they a good choice? Did I prefer towny or factions, or do I know of any viable alternatives?
The guns could be more interesting. As they were, a single volley in short range killed anyone but they were a bitch to aim at far. There's much better alternatives for guns out there.
This actually goes for a lot of the other plugins.
>What time period did I have the most fun it? What time period that has not yet been covered would be nice to explore and play in?
Either a futuristic time period or alternatively, a medieval Dark Ages one.
>What's more important? Geopolitical role play, building aesthetic towns, trade, warfare?
You need the towns for the others to be interesting, since it's stupid to trade\fight against just bunkers and dirt houses, so I'd put that in first place.
The roleplay is what makes war\trade spin around, so it's second
War comes before trading because Trading sucks currently, but it should be the other way, with Trading being a reason for War, not the other way around.
>Stuff like that
It seems one of the common themes people enjoy here is the geopolitical banter and roleplaying above everything else.
But one thing I've never quite understood is the need to do so with real world civilizations and towns.
Considering the baggage those come with, you'll get preferences over playing with some of them and even some elitism because of this. It's fine for banter, but I can't stop thinking that maybe it would be interesting to have an iteraction where every faction was something created by the players, with whatever name they want, only the technology level of the server was fixed.
You'd still get towns and villages, but instead of coming packed with their own culture, already established IRL, the players themselves would have to make their faction truly different from others in some way, make their own culture and traditions.
This could lead to a bit more of roleplay, as people try to diferentiate their countries and towns from one another, and if aided by the server with biome restricted ores\plants\animals, it could be very interesting.
Like having a town famous for it's golden palaces, where players have the custom of throwing foreigners in a bottomless pit. Or a town built on the cliffs of a ravine, famous for it's spicy food and the arena where all disputes are settled.
I feel this would be more interesting then just saying "We are french, so we automatically like cheese and surrender" or "we are isis, so we fight and memeraid, I guess".
Another sugestion is to build arenas and warfields. I feel as many of the buildfags probably don't want to wage war because they don't want to lose everything they've built. Which is an hard complaint to tackle, because their city is the spot where they spawn and do their thing. You take it away, where are they supposed to play now? Not to mention the snowballing effect, where a nation that crushes suficient oposition can amass enough guns (and supporters) that they can raid any starting village to prevent them from ever being a decent oposition.
If there were places on the map where wars were actually fought, open fields to dig trenches and build forts and towers, if war was decided there instead of in towns, then I think more people would gladly join in.
Another point, this one harder to solve is the "blob effect" some nations can have. Once they grow to a certain size, standing against them might be interesting but it's not a smart thing to do. And you can't fault them because they have little to do besides raiding smaller villages.
What would be required is some PvE element with a difficulty that matches the size of a town\city.
Something like NPC raiders\thieves that assault towns every night or day, on a frequency and number based on the current population of that town. This would keep major towns somewhat busy fighting them while not harming as much smaller towns. However, I'm not aware if a plugin like this even exists…