First, no, a WG is not the same as a foothold, which is an uncapturable base. They are not equivalent.
Second,
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They do not in any way create a 3-way stalemate - that is just nonsense. What they do is make it a lot harder to completely remove an enemy from a continent. And the bottom line with that is that its bad for the game, thus the existence of the footholds.
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What they do is make it impossible to completely remove an enemy from a continent. The enemy doesn't go anywhere they are still there, still pouring out of their foothold, and now that the attacking empire has overextended itself, the third empire attacks their weak flank, forcing the attackers to retreat.
The thing is, could the attackers really have gotten anywhere near the foothold without the third empire capitalizing on the weak flank, thus stalling their advance? This is what I mean by rubberbanding around a central area.
The map of Indar, correct me if I'm wrong, has one amp station in the middle, and a few other bases ringing it. I don't remember about any footholds on that map, but I guess those are behind the ring of bases. So, for Indar, I think the main fighting will be around the amp station and probably a km or two out from it. How the contours of the fighting can vary much from that, I don't know, since any deep push will invite an attack on a weakened flank.
Because there are no chokepoints, as PS1 had via the lattice, the flanks are much larger in PS2. Therefore, the risk involved in diving into one of the empire's territory is greater than in PS1 where an empire could control that risk by holding chokepoints.
It's an interesting problem. And frankly, I think it is largely due to the nature of the footholds, namely that they are static and stationary, so each empire is always attacking from the same general direction, which was indeed a feature in PS1. Of course, the devs can change up the foothold ownerships, but what if the footholds weren't bases but those whatsits, airships(?) I see people bringing up every now and then? They slowly fly around the continent and hopefully change things up.
Dunno just my half-assed idea. Probably too late to implement something like that now. Still, would be cool. In any case, I can't wait to test whatever system it is the devs have come up with in beta!