Bukkit

What is the enhancement in mind? How should it look and feel?
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Some final polish to the War and Holyland features-
Have the protection and ability to attack provided by holyland effected by a players god, their holy creature, their war (or alliance) status, and the power of the god owning the holyland vs an invading players god power level, and in turn effect the defending or attacking players attack strength (or ability to attack at all).

I went into quite a lot of detail below, so give it a quick readthrough, I have broken up parts of the enhancement request into smaller chunks which you can individually consider on their own, with references to other points that may impact it where appropriate.

Note: Items with  " ** " are the main suggested enhancements,   Items with  " * " are less critical but should be a long term goal,  Everything else is just suggested "polish" and could be omitted if too difficult to program.

Please provide any additional information below.
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Have Holyland use the following Logic: -
* 1: Members of the god are allowed to cause damage to players/mobs in their holy land.  But not Vice versa - conditional on their pvp and war status and point 2, 3 and 4.  (A side effect of this, is (citizens plugin) quest NPCs located on a gods holy land, will only be fully interactive to members of  that holy land, as they will still be able to /left/ click them) If they are not at war with the god of a player, or a player has no god, then members cant hurt him depending on PVP setting for the god. It might be worth allowing players to hit but not cause damage to players/mobs, to "push them out" of a holy land if needed.

** 2: Members of Gods with a higher or similar power level (configurable says 1-5 difference) to the god who owns a particular holy land CAN cause damage to mobs or players in another players holy land.  However the amount of damage should be handicapped.  If a players god is too much lower in power, or not at war with them, the current no-attack/no-pvp behaviour would apply. If there is an alliance and overlapping holy lands, two smaller gods may effect a combined power total, that cancels out a single larger god's player power - in effect making it like his god was too low in power to attack at all.

* 3: The "holy mob" of a god who owns the holy land, is able to cause damage on players who are not a member of that God.  But not damage members.  (another possible alternative is Holy Mobs should ignore players whom see them as holy, and only attack them if provoked)

4: The HOLY MOB of another god who has a similar or higher power level to the god owning a particular holyland CAN cause damage to players conditional on point 5 (and maybe point 10)

5: **Where another god has higher or similar power, and players (or holy mobs?) are attacking on a competing God's holy land - the attack will be weakened proportionaly.  Also vice versa, someone (or a holy mob) defending their holy land has their attack power scaled up even if the attacking god is more powerful.  This effect should be stronger the further into the holyland an attacker or defender is. (See also point 8)  Alliances should have some effect too. Combined power of two smaller gods should offer a higher modifier.

6: ** (may already partially do this) the size of a holy land increases automatically as their power level increases.  Removal of Altar or decreases in power should also effect holyland size but subject to the logic suggested in point 10.

7: ** (does this already i think) you can't build on anothers holy land unless it overlaps with an Allied gods holyland.  (but you could make it conditional to an effect like point 5 see also point 8)

8: ** At the outer fringe of a holy land a similar or more powerful god's members could have limited ability to build/destroy.  For instance - a delay when placing blocks, and a delay breaking them (eg blocks could have the durability of obsidian requiring quite a bit of time to break) this delay should increase the further in you go until you cant effect it at all (bedrock durability)
Other alternatives: add an option where the holy land never decreases in size but the fringe zone could increase as power is lost.
OR: the fringe zone could be fixed width (say the outer 5 rings) and the holy land decreases with loss of power.
In either case there needs to be a point where a god/Altar is so weak the altar itself could be broken. (eg power or believers is 1 or less, or perhaps the power divided by the number of altars, minus some calculation based on when the particular altar was used last - this allows abandoned Altars to be taken over even when the god still has power. - Very Faction Style)

9: ** If someone builds a shrine in or at the fringe of anothers holyland - the invading shrine should loose any of its holyland effects where it overlaps. (this is to prevent tank-rush style tactics - but allows blockade/siege tactics) This fringe shrine should be limited (where it doesn't overlap) to the min-holyland size setting; and be excluded from point 6 effects until such a time as there is no overlap. This would require a creation timestamp on altars to detirmine which altar has priority, and which is an invader (older/newer)  however it is done two shrines in close proximity should have some sort of effect on each other.  A possible Excemption to this might be allied Gods, where the overlap is permitted, and gives a combat bonus.

10: ** Most of these effects should only work if the gods are at war!

11: ** Can a new Altar type that does not create or effect holyland or spawning be created. (This would allow a temple with an altar to all known gods to be built; for example at a new players spawn). Something simple like an altar that has a redstone torch instead of a normal torch. You should be able to create these Altars without any bonus, change of loyalty or penalty with your currently chosen god. They would be purely for Prayer/Change of God. That way players of one god can make Altars for other gods as gameplay needs.

*12: Permit natural, spawner box or other plugin spawning of the holy mob on holy land. Point 11 makes this less critical, but it would be nice if your holy Mob can help defend.

*13: If an Altar's holy land is (or even if it isn't) weakened to the point where an enemy god's player can destroy it, and a player tries to break the Altar - it should react to this somehow -  eg cause a number of the "holy mob" to spawn and attempt to defend the altar.  The number spawned should be decided by either the remaining power level, or the number of believers, or some other arbitrary condition. Or the player should experience "curse conditions" for a while after. (eg if they succeed to destroy it)  or it could also work the other way, if at war their own god may bless them for destruction of an enemy altar. This could lead to the interesting effect of curse mobs being spawned, and holy mobs being spawned to defend the player.  However you go there should be a final "last shot/defence/revenge" reaction to an enemy altars destruction. Even just a lightning bolt (power of bolt once again set by power or believers) or a lightning storm.

14: relates to the above but works on its own - can we record each altars location in a file as they are created. Easier to keep track of them that way.

Suggested Pseudo-Logic to Make this work - in particular the idea of "fringe areas" of holyland
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It would require a redesign of holyland handling.
Instead of recording holyland regions, you would need to record altar locations, and perform a simple radius calculation based on power level of god to get your protected region.  This should also resolve the "holyland not updating" issues i've noticed. By replacing the load/save holyland file with a simple math calculation should also increase plugin performance significantly in theory. (100 calculations a second is a lot faster than 100 read file's a second)

This is dependant on your programming skills but basically - your protection sub that pulls open the holyland file and compares to a players location and god; would instead grab the altar locations, and do a
[ if (Believers>=1) then Radius=(minholyland+int(power*0.075)) else Radius=int(power*0.075) ]
type calculation to give you the  holyland radius to add/subtract from your altar x,y,z location  (that you previously pulled from the holyland file) and compare that to the players location. (The "else" allows a dying Gods holyland to hang in for a while as their power fades with no believers - but i think you calculate power from beleivers so may be unnecessary - you could instead add something that makes the Altar do something interesting, like blow up, strike lightning, cover itself with cobwebs(i like that one) or simply ignore that Altar until someone believes in it again)

Then from that you could calculate a fringe zone, (radius refers to the holyland radius calculated above)
[ if (Radius>=5) then (fringe is From Radius, to Radius-5) else (fringe same as radius) ]  to keep it simple, this assumes a holyland that shrinks with power loss, and can only be destroyed once it has almost no power.

Or for a more faction flavor to use fringe to enforce power / believer / altar ratios so that Altars are vulnerable to attack if there is a 2:1 altar to believer ratios until a Altar is lost or a believer is gained :
[ fringecalc= int((Radius-(Radius*(believers/altars))*(Altars*Believers)))  |  if (fringecalc>Radius) then (fringesize=Radius) else (fringesize=fringecalc) ]
[ fringe is From Radius, to fringesize ]

The IF here is if your fringe region is larger than your holy land region it assumes your entire holyland is fringe.
So for example if you had power 100, 15 altars, and 10 believers, your holyland would be a radius of 12, and your fringe zone would be from 6 to 12 of that radius.
Or if you had 15 believers your fringe would be non existant as technically youd have one person per Altar.

If you have as many Believers as Altars, eg power 100, altars 15, believers 15 your entire holylands would be secure with no fringe region

This would also work nicely in reverse, if you have more Believers than Altars, the fringe zone will be negative - which means all altars fringe zone will be OUTSIDE the normal holyland zone.   So with the above example, 100 power, 15 altars and 20 Believers, your safe holylands would be a radius of 12, but your fringezone would extend its sphere of influence 3 blocks outseide of your 12 block holy land radius (13-15)

For players to operate inside these holyland areas, youd need to check the players god, and its war/alliance status towards the owner of the holylands, and that gods current power level, and if it is no more than 4 less, or any amount larger ie
(if mygodpower+4 >= yourgodpower and mygod [is at war with] yourgod then ALLOW ATTACK and mess with STUFF in FRINGE)

You'd also need to see how far in they were, 10% handicap attack power at fringe all the way to 100% at core of holyland, and vice versa, 2x attack bonus for defenders in core, and only 10% bonus at fringe.  Likewise, durability handicaps breaking blocks at fringe areas, and delays placing, higher the further you go in, until unable to break anything once you leave fringe region and enter the secure non-fringe area.

The calculations above also allow a degree of protection (up to min holy land radius setting) to smaller newly created gods with only 1 believer.

0.5 update doesn't work at all on my server, and doesn't generate a config file if i delete my old one.

These are some VERY detailed and insightfull thoughts and first of all i would just like to say thank you for your time to write them all down in such a specific way. It is in a form where I can, and will work with them!

Many ideas are overlapping abit with what is on the TODO for ex. cobwebs/vines on abandoned alters and others are already in place (The radius/power based algorithm from alters stored in a file).

The idea about more effect/feedback when destroying just need to happen as well as the "God sending his holy mobs as a last resort".

The fringe zone ideas are very good as well and i will see what i can come up with from those: The challenge here is to make it as simple and intuitive for players to understand WHY they just lost x amount of land to another religion.