Luria ruled by very hard power: A huge-ass army, lots of players, and the ability to beat down anyone on an individual basis.
Fair enough, military power is necessary for any projection of force, yes. I still hold that their method of what they do with what is conquered is vastly different than the groups compared to.
Although your overall city-states plan is a good one in theory, it's the establishment process that sucks. If it were a matter of waving a wand and the entire island were transformed overnight, that would be great. But it's not. It's a long process that drags on for years. And of necessity, you force your neighbors into it first. And you hold onto your own power until last, to make sure that you have the power to enforce the change. That means that everyone near you has a super long wait for that golden age to appear, during which time they really can't do anything. They're locked into waiting. And they die.
That's exactly what happened on FEI while Arcaea marched to establish the empire. All the realms behind them slowly fell to pieces and dried up, waiting for the empire to finally get done. We all knew that if any of us stepped out of line, we'd get torn apart by everyone else. So we all sat and did nothing. By the time the empire was done, the island was dead.
Except this is what is uncomparable to Luria. Luria did not say 'do not attack one another' at any point, to any realm defeated or friendly to it. In fact, repeatedly, it has said *attack* one another (another, not excluding lurian-friendly realms and that made clear on at least one occasion) to realms its discussing peace with. It has not had alliances and federations limiting realm diplomacy across the island. It's friends have been allied to realms at war with other of its friends. Other semi-friendly forces are allying with a not-so-friendly realm against a much more-friendly realm. It is not, nor accelerating towards, anything like the other continent's alliance and federation blocks. Luria was not marching to conquer lands to bring them in line with an imperial concept as Arcaea was doing. It did not try to tell realms to not war another under thread of war by all other parties. Luria has been saying 'break into smaller realms and war people closer to you'. Over and over and over. I even got flack from Westfold players who got spooked that our enemies would all break up and they couldn't form Westfold. The most successful lurian international guilds? An advy guild where all nobles share the elder rank equally regardless of realm and a religion that encourages faithful to war one another as a holy thing. Hardly tools of imperial domination like the FEI Phoenix Empire, AT League of the Eagle, or other such groups.
Again, the realms (Madina and Fissoa) *chose* to do nothing. I'm not saying they had a buffet of wonderful choices, but they had more choices than to *do nothing*.
