You can keep making these claims, Tom, but the reality in the game simply does not match up to them.
The realms with small armies are dead or dying. The realms with big armies are thriving. The realms that empower their Marshals are dead. The realms with micro-managing, megalomania-cal, charismatic, cult-of-personality Generals are winning and conquering, or at least surviving. This is why real wars are fought with centralized command structures instead of by committee. This is why Sun Tzu and Napolean end up in history books instead of war planning committee #532. War planning by centralized authority is simply a superior system. And when your realm only has 40 players in it, you don't need four helpers to decide where to send them.
If that's not true, then I suspect that you would not be trying to handicap the General position. But like the players in this thread are telling you, all you will accomplish is forcing every realm to consolidate into fewer armies.
Maybe all these realms ought to die. Maybe. But unless you start lightning bolting the realms that fail to follow your "vision", they'll keep on living. The realms that tried to obey your vision are mostly already dead. I know, because I helped kill one of them.
I have to agree.
Imo,
the main problem is not that generals take all the power from the marshals, but that it is so damn difficult to find people willing to be marshals and actually bother giving orders once appointed.
It's not a system problem. It's a playerbase problem.
And it's difficult enough to find just one person in a whole realm willing to actually run for the title of general, in most realms...
I've been general of Enweil for a long time while it was large and strong, and I did split up the forces to great effect into three distinct armies. But most of the time, I had to give the orders to everyone myself, because the marshals just wouldn't do it no matter how I nagged them. And most of the time, at least one of these armies was just sitting in a region where a ton of militia had been dumped just to dissuade counter-attacks while others looted more exposed fronts.
In Fheuv'n, I'm not general, but I may as well be. I'm the realm's only marshal, so I call all the shots.
