We played the political game with the Order - it ends up being like a unloved Realm. Other Realms dont like it when you influence their politics, they get angry, and burn your temples to the ground, destroy your buildings, and generally attack your priests, while the Realm hosting you either can sit idly by and watch, OR try to defend you and get beat up by everyone because the rest of the Realms like to join in on the beat down to keep out TMP.
Not knowing the exact situation you were in, it sounds like maybe you played it different than I think it would need to be done. Rather than have the religion exerting the pressure on the realms, you need to have highly placed realm members pushing for you.
If you push hard, people will push back. That's just like one realm pushing on another. You'll meet resistance. But if you want to expand and become influential across more than your parent realm, you will have to push and play the game. I don't think playing Gandhi will get you very far.
