The whole Terran/D'Hara merger hurt Astrum, and caused a lot of political damage within the church. Had Terran stood their ground, Astrum would have stood a better chance of winning. Terran's job was to hold out as long as possible, and they gave up.
In Niselur, our job was to face the Astrum and Corsanctum army as long as possible to allow our allies down south to do their work. We had hoped we might win against Astrum, but as it turned out, Astrum won, but that was not our main objective. The looting in Niselur helped stabilize our control situation as we were facing massive protests, and was close to Darfix going rogue, when your raiders went across the realm looting and causing the peasants to hate Astrum and Corsanctum, and stopping the protests. We held on long enough to allow Asylon to complete their risky objective of doing two straight takeovers without a refit.
This was the first time that Asylon and Niselur worked together, so we had to trust in our allies abilities. Our trust it seems was rewarded. Asylon is the stronger of the two realms, but Astrum couldn't resist trying to take out King Leopold, and in doing so ignored the fact that Asylon is more experienced in warfare, and knew what need to be done to weaken Astrum.
I don't know, I think it was more helpful for the Terran nobles to merge with Astrum rather then just hanging on in the Chateau, because now they can hire as much soldiers as they can lead from one of the richest realm in the continent (Of course, whether they remain profitable is to be seen.)
Attacking Asylon when they were not even in Astrum's lands yet would of been ridiculous considering Niselur was Taking over a region already. Of course the looting did help stabilize the situation enough so Niselur could raise taxes back again to normal levels, considering most of the stronger protest was from being at war with Astrum, but Astrum simply has little options in this war. They can't waste time taking over Niselur's regions while Asylon taking over core regions of theirs. The best they can do is loot and cause some tangible (temporary) damage in the short run, even though in the long run it may have benefited their enemies more.
If this condition persist where only Corsanctum can help Astrum, they will eventually be destroyed simply because each time they engage one of their enemies, one or two of their regions will fall to the other realms' armies and they lack the ability to permanently damage their enemies in some fashion.
