I've just about had it with everyone constantly complaining that there are no wars to the dev team.
People, we do not make war or peace, you do.
I am not trying to argue that the dev team is causing there to be no wars to clarify. Next, it's what you said with above for this particular mechanic, you're not making war or peace, you're preventing war with this particular mechanic which keeps peace- that's even worse as your preventing change/keeping the status quo, which is boring. This mechanic is not game breaking by any means but at the same time, I don't see the positive effects of for the game at all with a mechanic that makes some wars impossible, though there is nothing wrong with making it rather difficult just no one likes it being impossible but the devs unless I have just not noticed a non-dev on the pro-prevention of a war side.
Though the original request was to be away with the distance penalty, I am sure all on my side of this would even be happy with keeping the penalty but making it manageable. We are not asking for easy long distance wars, we are asking for wars to be fought at quite far areas with them being somewhat difficult or quite difficult, just not impossible.