35 regions, 17,707 gold, 61,054 CS, all shared between 22 nobles, and, like you said, nobody dares to challenge them. If that's not dominant, nothing is.
If that's dominant, everyone is dominant. Nobody's challenging D'Hara over Port Raviel, I guess D'Hara is dominant. Nobody's challenging Astrum, I guess they are dominant. Nobody seems to be challenging Swordfell, I guess they are dominant. It's not that no one "dares" to challenge Morek, but rather, that no one cares to. Astrum is a fellow theocracy, everyone else is ages apart and has a ton of reasons not to raise a fuss with them.
Dominance is not about being able to stand tall, it's about asserting dominance over others. Morek dominates no one.
So what? They have 31% of all the gold on Dwilight.
No. They have 31% of the raw "economy" of Dwilight. They do not collect 31% of the tax income of Dwilight.
I don't see it as misleading, since militia are part of the overall defense of the realm. If any realm decided to attack Morek, they'd have to overcome Morek's massive military, both mobile and stationary forces. If Morek didn't think militia units were important, they wouldn't have them, they would invest their barrels of gold in something else. But that's irrelevant. You may not agree with how they spend their gold, but you can't dispute that they have more gold than any other realm by a huge margin.
Wrong on so many levels. Militia is scattered. If a 20000CS army fights 2000 CS of militia in one turn, then 2000 CS on the next, then 2000CS on the next, and so on for five turns, it will not end up with just 10000CS surviving. That militia is there to protect the realm from rogues, which scarcely ever spawn in forces greater than 2000 CS, and probably a few coastal cities because of the ridiculous potential of surprise sea attacks. When fighting human realms, militia is rarely worth much.
And no, I don't agree that they have so much more gold than anyone else. Militia is not a luxury, it's a requirement, without which rogues would devastate the regions. And estate efficiency is certain to be, on average, much worse than anywhere else. Morek's available income is not known (Morekians could share), but it is not the figure you suggest.
Look, I'm talking about economics that are built into the game. Given the choice between having a rural region with a lord and 2 knights, or having 3 rural regions each with a lord and no knights, all other things equal, it's more advantageous to take the latter because of the unmitigated upside of a 1:1 ratio. More land, more gold, more food, more infrastructure, fewer knights.
No.
Let's simplify: Realm Tinystan, 5 nobes, a city producing 2000 gold as capital and sole region. Estates split 5-way, 100% efficiency. Realm income: 2000 gold.
Tinystan expands, takes a rural and a badland. Rural produces 300 gold, badland produces 150 gold. Two city knights get promoted to lordships, all else remains the same. Total income potential: 2450 (+450). However, 40% of the city's income is now at 50% efficiency. Both new regions are at 50% efficiency. Capital thus collects 1600 gold. Rural collects 150 gold. Badland collects 75 gold. Realm income: 1825 gold (-175). Net result: realm Tinystan is poorer.
And this doesn't count the fact that tax tolerance decreases with size. Running 18% taxes in a one-city realm is fine. Add in three rurals, it isn't any more, not if you want to do other things than maintain region stats.
Expanding, under our new mechanics, makes realms poorer rather than wealthier in almost every case. People expand anyways, because people like being lords or looking big, or sometimes because they need more food sources. But in general, expanding makes realms weaker. I've felt the effects of this brutally when Enweil was in its final days: we got a few more nobles and decided to expand despite knowing we'd soon be dead... it threw the economy down the gutter. The three new depopulated rurals couldn't produce a penny and the capital could no longer afford interesting tax rates and no longer had good tax efficiency. We starved ourselves financially.
