I think I could live with it, if you're convinced we have to lose an island. After all the discussions, I'd been tending towards thinking that a variation on your idea at the start of the thread would be the best route anyway. This is effectively a war between islands, and that would at least put a lot of drama into the game.
The movement of religions is going to be a touchy subject and needs to be taken into account too, because players who've put a lot of playing time into building up regional followers for their faith are going to be incredibly disgruntled to see that wiped away unless priests have a way to gain a firm foothold on their new island. Even then, there's stuff like this to consider:
I would never carry on with Turin on another continent. Not because of habit, not because he brings in lots of gold or wields a lot of power, but because his existence is defined by a religion which exists only on Dwilight. I have a very strong sense of who Turin is and what he'd do in a given situation. He would never leave Dwilight in the face of some cataclysm. Based on his fanatical religious beliefs he would conclude that achieving enlightenment was impossible without a geographical proximity to the blood stars.
How you would manage the practicalities of realms from one island invading another and standing a chance of survival is going to be difficult to fathom, but I imagine you've already got thoughts on how to do it. This will be the tricky part:
So every realm can retreat in an orderly fashion by declaring a target island. We will manually re-create the realm there and those who flee can join it. Details TBD (landing location? how to get a region or two to get started?).
Because the invading/landing realms will need more than a beachhead landing to be able to even stand a chance against the established realms. They'll also need an immediate point of recruitment on their target island, because they can't reasonably sail back home to fetch more troops. It'll also probably be in the interests of the realms on the closing island to form a huge alliance to move
en mass to a target island to give themselves a better chance of surviving an invasion attempt.
Still, it's an exciting option that could inject some drama into the game. If it's well received, I could imagine people requesting that an island-to-island invasion mechanic be added to regular gameplay.
