This idea isn't very fleshed out but I thought I'd post it for initial feedback. The goal of the server is to protect your own clan's flag and to steal flags from other clans.

Each clan can assign their clan's flag to one country not in protection (I'd like to allow the clan admin to upload an image for the flag but I'm not sure if I trust you guys). The country with the flag gets a huge boost in bonus turns and earns flag points for the clan. To prevent self-kills, it cannot drop all acres, self delete, or lose PCI from a food or cash shortage.

A clan can determine which other countries have a flag by using the military spy op. A flag can be stolen by killing another country. The country that steals the flag cannot be attacked for 48 hours. Players cannot attack their own tags. Players cannot attack at all if their clan admin never assigns out the flag.

At midnight each day, points are granted to each clan based on the number of flags that they own. The number of points per flag is equal to the unique user count for the clan that originally owned the flag, dead countries included. The final clan standings are based on total number of flag points divided by the clan's unique user count. For example, consider a two day round with two clans. Clan A has 10 countries and clan B has 20 countries. Clan A is granted 10 points and clan B is granted 20 points after midnight of the first day. Clan A then steals the flag of clan B and manages to protect its own flag. Clan A is granted 30 points after midnight of the the second day and clan B is granted 0 points. The final standings are 40 / 10 = 4 points for clan A and 20 / 20 = 1 point for clan B.

The server would not have humanitarians restrictions or vacation mode. There would likely be an early period where attacks are only allowed against a small number of bots to prevent OOP wars.

As a note for myself, I would need to figure out what happens if a country with a flag gets deleted for rule violations.

I think this could work if:

1) Need to think about not making it too complex. I see how you try to level the playing field for smaller clans. Will try to think of some other ways that may be less complex myself.

2) Turns need to be fast enough. This is only fun if this is as relatively short set and fast paced. Not a month or 2 month thing.... Turns at the pace of Express might be too much with what you describe above, but needs to be at least 120 turns per day I feel.

I like that you're looking for ways to make war significant, thank you for that!

A few thoughts:
1. Need to avoid having a few players who can be on 24/7 to stonewall never losing their flag. Maybe have several flags spread out throughout the tag, number of flags can be fixed or a proportion of the clan's size

2. Some thought needs to be put into how easy or hard it is to kill a country, more specifically the number of players needed to kill a country. Reasoning behind this is having two players will full turns able to kill off a country makes it less of a cooperative game, but needing 10 players for a killrun is too much for the size of the community. Factors that'll influence this would be avg. turns needed for a successful KR, max number of turns a country can have, effectiveness of stonewalling

3. How much land will be available in the server and how to avoid large clans simply outnetting smaller ones and then farming them into oblivion. Maybe have some sort of mechanic where grabs are allowed but limited in some way or another

4. I'm curious what the market would look like in such a server. But I guess it'll balance itself out in some way or another

Oil market would be horrible....

will the holder of the flag be known or concealed?

I really like the new ideas Slagpit.

One concern that stands out though is this:
" A flag can be stolen by killing another country. The country that steals the flag cannot be attacked for 48 hours."

If you let the same person get the "kill shot" or "cherry-pick" on each kill, basically making them invincible. This would also allow them to hoard the flags without worry of having the flags stolen, no?

Clever suggestion.

If the goal is to make it competitive, keep in mind you have a lot of casual players. If a country is killed, have it restart with ninety percent of itself each time. Doing that one thing would solve a lot of the parity issues that has plagued the game due to the time commitments needed to run a quality country.

That idea of capture the flag is cool and I appreciate you thinking outside the box. The things you have been doing with game mechanics is outstanding and I would put the focus there, especially around improving warring.