For those advocating a progressive system of relic empowerment, how would you deal with the issue of losing one of the relics (say the 1st or 2nd one) and then later replacing the lost one with another?
How would anyone know which was the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc relic empowered (and what one is able to empower them to) when things start getting murky like that?
I'm not saying that the progressive system can't be done; I just saying I'd like more details on how each of these situations would be dealt with in your vision of this approach... with an important detail is one way that a program would be able to determine this. AND how would you help the humans needing to work within your system to know which was the 1st, 2nd and 3rd or more relic?
Sorry Myakka, I went to sleep rather than continue arguing this last night. It's a good question though

My answer is not perfect, but I think it covers all the bases. It also requires HCS to add the 'unempower relic' option mentioned by Hoof last night. I personally feel there needs to be a cost associated with this, but it's a separate issue.
Firstly, relics can be empowered in any order - let's assume for the moment we have 6 relics, A-F. The display order on the Guild Manage page would initially be by time held. For simplicity, let's assume: A, B, C, D, E, F
We then empower relic C. This moves it to the top of the list - and ideally gives the icon a distinctive border indicating empowerment (Perhaps a green one like Incoming Messages?): C, A, B, D, E, F
Subsequent empowerments shift relics 2, 3 and 4 to the appropriate positions in the list (top to bottom), and they all get the same border so guilds know they are empowered: C, F, D, A, B, E
Should a relic be captured and then retaken it simply reappears at the bottom of the list (let’s assume C is taken and then recaptured: F, D, A, B, E, C
Relics F and D move up the empowerment chain to 5x and 3x bonuses respectively. Note that this will result in a decreased cost for both of these relics, so upkeep will not increase as a result of a capture.
Finally, if the guild wishes to return relic C to the full 5x empowerment it would be necessary to unempower F and D and then empower them all in the desired order – easily visible on the management screen. This needs the option mentioned above to be implemented with appropriate permissions.
Additionally, it adds an incentive to hold the most desired relic best, since reempowering it would be an additional gold sink. I think it’s all fairly logical and doesn’t require much additional work. Obviously the ‘Every relic should give 5 or 10% bonuses’ proponents can argue that this is overly complicated, but honestly any guild trying to empower 2 or 3 relics at once should be both strong enough to defend them and organised enough to cope with a bit of planning.