Hi! I was recommended by the devs to post this suggestion thread via a Facebook response under their patch post.
Currently bases require atleast a single month to be considered "fully settled" for the purposes of siege timing: rams' drying time is influenced by the current claim's power (which raises from 0% to 100% over the course of 28 RL days). I'm guessing it was necessary to prevent troll claims or otherwise nefarious activities next to settled places.
This current state of affairs obviously is detrimental to normal gameplay: as in recent case of Brodgar, the city was essentially razed to the ground without the possibility of even stashing the goods found within on secure alts before the siege was discovered.
I propose two solutions to this problem.
The first solution is to reduce personal claim "drying" time to one RL week. This gives the potential defenders enough time to react to a hostile claim while also doesn't prevent normal gameplay as much as four RL weeks.
The second solution is to implement some kind of a solution where a personal claim receives a penalty based on the proximity to other personal or village claims.
It makes no sense that a completely non-hostile (or otherwise "normal") claim is penalized just because of an anti-griefing or anti-trolling mechanic.