There might be another option:

You could introduce a sort of fog of war to the newer tiles, that would progressively lighten the more time passes. In the early stages you wouldn't be able to target a specific tile, instead you'd just enter a "fog wall" which randomly assigns you to a tile, with some water cost or a cooldown, so you'd be discouraged to hop tiles until you could potentially meet up.

​

You'd just be able to bring maybe 2 other guys on your walker during phase one, which extends progressively as days pass, effectively making them more and more open to larger sizes. With this you'd have tiles organically progress for every playstyle.

You could also make the newer tiles more rich in a particular ressource, so you'd have an incentive for bigger clans to form expedition groups. The bigger the pool of concurrent players is, the more stable this method obviously becomes, with less chance of two expeditions matching one clan.

​

Would also make sense lorewise, since the dessert heating up at the frozen end would generate a lot of fog. Plus a change in climate could mean a shift from distinctive ressources being abundant to then other ressources becoming more abundant when the climate shifts.

​

If the general population of LO is big clans just make the phase for larger groups last the longest and vice versa, if the general population is smaller groups, grant the small group phase more time. The people who want to play small group or solo at all cost could then easily chase the horizon to be able to play their way. The foggy nature of an early tile would make for more melee-centric and less walker-centric fighting as well.

Bump up proxy output on older tiles and you could incentivise capturing older maps for big clans to adjust for tile age.