I think if gangs were made more reliant on Brothels then the game would focus on the girls again.
Interesting way to look at it. One obvious thing would be to make the gangs into a cash sink. Currently, as you say, gangs are capable of supporting themselves. If the cash brought in from gang ops was seriously nerfed, the player would depend on money from his girls to finance gang operations. Maybe use a sliding scale, so the first couple of gangs were cheap (to allow for start of game) but have the costs rise steeply after that.
Instead of buying gangs and being able to own 8 all at once, have the number of gangs your allowed to own be based on 2 factors. First, the combined fame of all your girls. Second how many Brothels you own. I'm thinking that you should be able to control a number of gangs equal to the number of brothels you own +3 at max, with a starting number of 2 gangs to begin with (or just 1 if you want to focus on just the girls to begin with).
Nice idea to use fame as a limiting factor. Possibly again on a sliding scale, just so that one overpowered girl can't subsidise half the player's military activities by herself.
When you get into gang battles, you only fight the gang based in the next brothel. Not only do you need to take over enough territory to secure the new brothel, but you also have to defeat the gangs defending the brothel and will expect the occasional attack from that one brothel. Other NPCs might give battle reports but they would be cosmetic. When you go to face the next brothel it is at full strength.
You might be interested in the discussion in the
Town Wards thread. The idea is that each ward supports one brothel, and has one rival based there. You need to unlock each ward before you can operate there, but your rivals (being better established) can still raid you. Once you gain access, you need to control so much of the ward before you can base gangs in that ward.
To keep the game intersting, each time you take over a new brothel your two best gangs retire to enjoy the new territory. Best being the ones with highest combined stats naturally. This way you need to build up some before taking over all of the new territory.
Maybe have each ward need gangs posted there permanently. So if you have Sleaze Street and you take Pinchpenny Lane, then you need to split your gangs between both wards. Comes to more or less the same thing, I suppose.
As a bonus, you should be given a few slaves when you take over a brothel. I'd suggest they all have some good experience but also have low obedience, injuries, and some negative conditions like addictions, scars and maybe diseases so your not 100% happy with the aquisition but since they already have some fame maybe your not willing to just get rid of these girls right away. Or maybe you sell them for cash and just populate with new slaves.
Yeah, it does seem like there should be girls captured when you destroy a rival. Suppose we say the number of gangs a ward can support depends on the fame of the girls in that ward's brothel. Then you'd need some girls so the ward could support a gang. Of course, you could always transfer in girls from another territory ... which would potentially reduce the number of gangs supportable in the donor ward. Some interesting strategic choices there...
[edit]
That "Town Wards" link does
not want to work... [edit] Got it!