People flock to opportunity, and flee disaster. Is Luria populous because it is fun, or fun because it is populous?
Enweil was populous and strong. When the invasions cut it apart, its playerbase melted away. I've seen it elsewhere. Players hate losing, they love easy victories. They tend to join realms that seem like they might win en bloc, and desert realms that aren't doing so even more rapidly.
When I ruled Enweil, we continued to grow, and I had great means to make changes on the continent. Later, when I ruled Fheuv'n, I was no less active. Indeed, I was much more active, had a lot more intiatives, assured a much greater distribution of power... And yet, Fheuv'n never grew. It shrank. Because all we had was a miserably city, and we kept getting pounded by rogues, again and again. We were too small to achieve anything, and players quickly lost interest.
I'm not saying that we should have few very scattered cities... In my mind, that's not structurally different than few very scattered city clusters. Pre-invasion BT had so many realms because these were surrounded by competing powers. When some clusters are overwhelmingly richer than the rest, it leaves much fewer opportunities.
