How to organize the appearance of new players?

Question

PHP

I've been making an online game for a long time already ... two years.
And I left this question for last, since this is the only question for which I could not come up with the right solution.
In general. There is a browser strategy. (text, similar to travian.ru)
There is a map of the area, built on the x y coordinate system.
It looks something like this:

a city of a new player may appear in the box.
The question is: according to what principle should cities be born in one place or another. After all, there is a player, for example, he has been playing for a very long time, he has a large army, and everyone who is born near him will be destroyed in a couple of days.
How to add new players considering strong neighbors? but not too far, because the map is not infinite

Answer 1

Look at ready-made implementations of similar games.
Everyone has a lot of restrictions about who and how often can attack.
Initially set the immunity you are reporting about.
For example, players up to level 5 cannot attack other players, players from 5 to 10 can attack each other, then all restrictions are removed.
If a player was attacked and xx% destroyed, he gets yy% immunity,
in general, it's more about balance, not placement.

Answer 2

And why not give new players some kind of immunity to outside attacks for the first time?
Or place new players in the green zone, and after completing the training or reaching a certain level, if there are any in the game, give the opportunity to choose a clan to join (forced), and after choosing a clan, place the player on the territory of this clan

Answer 3

In the forehead, you can do this: go around the entire map and put down a certain coefficient for each square, depending on the level of the nearest player and on the distance to their cities, selected in such a way that this coefficient turns to 0 at a certain distance. Well, let's create a city only where 0 is.
Graphically, it would look like this: draw circles with a conical gradient: black in the center with 0 transparency, 100% transparency around the edges. The higher the level, the larger the radius of the circle. We give to settle only where the cells remain white.
Better yet, then go over only the white cells again and put down some coefficient depending on how many white neighbors she has.

Answer 4

Brown - strong cities. The circle is a kind of safety radius. We build a security zone based on neighbors.