Arcaea has too mcuh land, and can't control it all. That's why it's all going rogue. Couple that with the same problem Toupellon has: a banker not doing their job. Toupellon produces a surplus, but can't manage it well enough to keep everyone fed. Cathay was probably in the same position. Don't know about Ethiala, that was before my time.
The Arcaean problems with holding land are due to war and starvation. When Arcaea wasn't at war, and had stable food imports from Arcachon, it held everything just fine. As far as I can tell, the northern half of FEI is net negative food wise unless you count all that nice farmland in Arcachon, which basically
has to be its own realm.
As for Toupellon...Arcaea produces a theoretical surplus as well, but I've never seen it actually work in practice. It may be confirmation bias (I hate food) but we seem to have considerably more bad weather than good.
