You are still part of a team, just a much smaller team, IE your Duchy. From time to time your team might ally with other teams in the realm, or not. Its not like we don't have intrigues and arguments between duchies now, just they can't be resolved in a military fashion without one or other succeeding.
That's not team play. Realm v. Realm warfare is team play. Duchy V. Duchy warfare is a political intrigue game.
Team play is "Us vs. Them". It's not "Us vs. them them for today, with us allying against them tomorrow, and then backstabbing them the day after, all while paying lip service to our supposed ream ruler, who no one really listens to anyway because we're too busy fighting among ourselves."
You don't have teams when the team you're on changes every week. You need stability and constancy in the power structures that make up realms in order to have the background against which to play as a team. This does
not mean that the same people need to be holding the positions in that structure. But the structures themselves have to have just enough stability and continuity to keep the game itself stable, but enough change and fluidity to keep the game from totally stagnating. Too much fluidity results in chaos and confusion, and lack of fun for the players. Especially the newer players who don't understand the background and political landscape.
