It seems that at this point getting any sort of access to acres is pretty hard and comes down to a bid war.
I've been back for maybe a few weeks and I managed to take over majority acres in psaral. If I tried really hard I could basically deny anyone building there.
Which also seems unfair to others and no fun to everyone involved.
One player can pretty much own all plantations at the moment as they require very little fleets to maintain.
Even with the max 100k acres, it can still be easily managed by a single player.

So, I propose increasing the acres for plantations. Give everyone a chance to play, and build. Not have to wait a month to maybe make something and failing.
The limiting factor I think should be fleets needed to maintain plantations. To the point that one huge plantation will need every single fleet instead of 10%.
Start off at 100k acres then increase to 1 mil with nation upgrades.

only governour can deny anyone from operating in a port

as before when new gigantic plantations has emerged, the average price has increased to 200-300gc per acre. as major land holder, you are eventually forced to pay that for each acre you own, as you need to outbid everyone else to maintain your desired land. this i believe effectively restricts many for going too big, as in such cases they might be producing at loss, or would be forced to scale down in size.

Cutpurse wrote:only governour can deny anyone from operating in a port

as before when new gigantic plantations has emerged, the average price has increased to 200-300gc per acre. as major land holder, you are eventually forced to pay that for each acre you own, as you need to outbid everyone else to maintain your desired land. this i believe effectively restricts many for going too big, as in such cases they might be producing at loss, or would be forced to scale down in size.

Actually, the high bids support big plantations as they already invested money and are making money. So they are likely to pay ridiculous prices.
High bids would most likely deter new players and new plantations, making them not even try.

"Fertile lands" is all I am going to say.

Noffin wrote:"Fertile lands" is all I am going to say.

The point is giving everyone a chance to play plantations. There just aren't enough fertile lands in the market for more than one decent plantation.
Plus the cost is so high it's equal to a max price bid, leading to losses.

it is true that plantations are playground for the wealthy. but i dont see just adding more land everywhere is a solution. it is also not in nations benefit to add too much land - when theres even single acre that is not wanted by anyone, the price collapses to 10gc per acre. such income is not worth for hundreds of millions nations put into adding new acres.

something should change, but i cant say what

Cutpurse wrote:it is true that plantations are playground for the wealthy. but i dont see just adding more land everywhere is a solution. it is also not in nations benefit to add too much land - when theres even single acre that is not wanted by anyone, the price collapses to 10gc per acre. such income is not worth for hundreds of millions nations put into adding new acres.

something should change, but i cant say what

The biggest issue I see now is how easy it is to maintain a plantation. 40 ish fleets basically right now can run the largest plantations in game.
Largest plantations should require 400 fleets. That way everyone gets a part of the action. Teamwork is needed. Nations work together to run it. People can trade immigrants, make money there. There would be enough acres for everyone to have at least a small plantation, without having to worry if next month they might lose acres and everyone dies.
Making plantations adopted by most and making it a team sport rather than a bar brawl as is now.

Right now there is over 50k acres available to anyone that wants to make a plantation. Even if that number dropped to "0" there is still fertile lands that allow a person to have a plantation. So to answer you there is no way someone could own all the acres in every port. One other thing you might want to calculate is that your acres you bid on are only for 21 days at a time where fertile lands is for 30 days.

On another issue you may think plantations are easily run now but you don't understand that there are still features that have yet to be turned on that will wreck your plantation in the future if you are not prepared.

Having spent billions on my 7 and only breaking even now I can state with conviction, they are not easy.
If you are finding it easy it's because you are in a port others deemd not profitable.

+1 to what Roo and Noffin speaks. Personally, I've come to the conclusion Fertile Lands are for when I have developed a plant to it's fullest potential and then get refused permission to operate it.
Also, I can see acreage selling for 500+ gc/acre in the future as more investment gets poured into plants and the need to recoup comes into play. This will make the profit margin very slim on under developed plantations especially those plants of 10-15 k acres. Deep pockets needed indeed ! Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the hidden pitfalls will show up thru fire, theft and who knows what else.