How do I claim more land in Eco

 Moooooorrr laannnndd! This is a common growling sound coming from the dark holes of smiths and straw houses of farmers in Eco by Strange Loop Games.

1. What lands means in Eco

When you first put down your tent in Eco, you get land claim papers and a tool called "land claim stake". Using the stake (right click) allows you to consume a land claim paper and claim a 5x5 square grid, which is a land unit. This land is yours and only you can place/remove things on it. People and animals can still move on it, but they cannot take or place objects. You can change access to the land by pressing "e" while holding a land claim stake or clicking from the map.

The only way to break this protection without your consent is through admin interventions and laws. For example, there is a popular hunting law allowing players to attack animals on owned lands. Otherwise your arrows don't reach them. Wild animals move freely in Eco and this is handy for hunters in densely populated areas. 

Finally, some laws use land ownership and the claiming action as conditions or trigger, such as gaining a demographic tag (ex.: city dweller must own lands in a district), paying taxes or limiting claims on rare land features (ex.: limited oil fields).

2. How to get more lands papers in Eco

The first source of land papers in Eco: you

If you want more land, you need land claim papers. However, these are limited in the sense that you cannot craft new ones. The only legit sources of land papers on a server are:

• papers gained when you set up a tent for the first time (10x)
• papers gained when you learn a new skill using a skill scroll (5x)
• papers gained when you unclaim one area of your lands

There is a good amount of land papers to get from early research: the early tier 1 era is made of about 8 skills that require few resources to research (total of less than 10 minutes if 3-4 players work together). This can bring you 50 land claim papers within the first hours, which is more than sufficient for any player at this stage, even farmers. Thus, each player can generate up to 130 new land claim papers in the game, which is an insanely high number. In fact, if you need more, something is definitively not right in your world.

Getting land papers from other players

Personal stores and direct exchanges

There are many opportunities to get land claim papers from other players. A direct approach is through exchanges and trade at stores. However, players rarely trade their land papers: these are unique items and there is no guarantee that you'll find more in the future should you need them. In fact, most cases of land paper trade that I have seen were a new player selling his land papers to a novice bend on getting the largest territory.

World bank

Some worlds have a bank that distributes the global currency in exchange for land papers and sells land papers in exchange for money. This system is interesting, but I have seen it go sideways most of the time because land papers owned by rich players act as a catalyst for further economic inequity. You need a sound knowledge of the "economy" in Eco, good mechanisms to keep balance and a steady community to make this work. I would recommend focusing on community structures that allow more people to get access to basic items before making experiments with land papers.

Deserters

Another source of land papers is from players who abandon the game. If they were kind enough to unclaim before leaving, you might find some papers in their containers.

Next, you can create laws that transfer claimed lands to a specific player. For example, a position called "Minister of land management" can become the owner of abandoned lands when a player enters the abandon demographic. This player can remove the claimed lands and use the papers for community projects or for sale at the bank. I have seen servers create auction for the abandoned lands as well, using a channel in Discord to display pictures and get bids.

Real estate

This brings us to the last way to get more lands: real estate. When you sell a land at the real estate desk, the new owner can remove his new claims and gain land papers.

Getting lands without land papers

The previous means of getting land papers are all linked to a low level and individual approach of the game. Eco unfolds and blooms when you are looking at the game with a cooperative mind. In this case, getting lands without land papers is about districts.

Districts are created at a zoning office and thus, are part of the government infrastructure. When interacting with the zoning office, you'll be able to create different maps and each map menu lets you create districts. The fun thing with districts is you "paint" them on the map and you have almost no limitation to their size. However, districts creation and modification are passed through a vote, unless someone fiddle with the constitution and allows an executive vote on districts maps. Most players also disapprove districts that seem to benefit only a limited amount of people, so this needs to be well explained.

Logging experts have a huge advantage over other players early on and getting a zoning office is quite easy to reach for them within the first 2 hours of the game.

Once districts are set, you can vote laws related to them, such as :

• prevent claiming lands and giving money if a road block is placed (public roads)
• prevent building and hunting by players (natural reserve in very small biomes
• limit the number of claims in the district (prevent territory wars in rare biomes)
• allow trees to be cut only when mature and prevent claiming (wood reserve)
• prevent placing/removing blocks unless the player has an elected official tag (government lands)
• prevent placement of polluting items and crafting tables (ideal farmlands)

You can see from the previous examples that getting lands this way is really about getting lands for the community instead of you alone. If you are ready to share this way, using districts is a neat way of reaching out to your fellow citizens and do some planning at server level. And when you think about it, making district means you don't have to protect these lands with your own land papers anymore. 

Since 9.5 trees cannot be planted next to each others (at last) and wood reserves became far more useful

3. How to save land papers in Eco

Individual city

If you find yourself always looking for more lands, it is useful to look at the way you approach the game. For instance, you may have the reflex to claim a large amount of lands, then go sim city mode and build your own mini-village with different buildings, different functions, etc. The thing is Eco is a cooperative game and a better approach would be to make a village where several players agree to bring small plots (2x2 to 4x4) together. You could begin by making a home, then make a store/shop 50m apart. Invite other players to settle in the middle and complete with districts for the roads.

Domain and mansion

It is also fun to make your own mansion or a giant sphere on the top of a mountain. In this case, you could consider a solo server instead of running after land papers. You could also begin with a small workshop close to other players, then make your big project around day 3-4. This is usually the time communities finish the settling phase, so you won't lower the potential of new citizens. Getting a stable community in the first days is an investment that should make your big project faster anyway.

Monopoly

For some players, it feels safe to be the sole provider of certain items and have total access to resources. You see this with farmers attempting to take over the entire food industry and smelters claiming all the middle area of a desert patch, forcing others to live on scratchs on the side. Having a monopoly is good in reality (for the owner), but not that much in Eco if you want a lot of players on a server. In fact, sharing lands is a major bonus. Miners in particular have the most to gain from mining together on the same spot because of their complementary lvl6 perks. Sadly, mods destroy this positive pressure toward collaboration by giving both perks to all miners. Having two or more players with the same resource gathering skill also means they can join forces in an election to create a district that is skill-related or limited to a demographic (miners guild).

Minecraft syndrome

Many players of Eco have the "minecraft syndrome" where they seek to get a very large territory and attempt to do every available job (mining, farming, logging, hunting). While this has detrimental effects on the game dynamics, it also leads to an insatiable craving for land papers. In fact, a neighbor with large lands and an individualist behavior is often related (but not always) to low chances of cooperation such as independent closed teams. It's probably best in this case to go on a solo server or start a boosted server with few friends that don't want to actively work together.

Build high and share space

There shouldn't be much limitation to Eco since it's a sandbox, but look at the shape of the typical room you build : I bet the sides with the largest surface are the top/bottom. This means there is considerable savings of both land and material if you place rooms on top of each other. 

There are also several advantages to sharing workspace (ex.: fablab) with other players, one being you need less land papers.

4. How do I claim more land in Eco

In short, there are limited ways to get land claim papers, but you might find clever ways to get more from other players. If you find yourself always looking for more land papers, take a look at other ways to approach the problem before cheating new papers with admin code and server rewards. Truthfully, these other approaches are likely to promote cooperation and make the game even more interesting.