That was one of my gripes about sinking islands, gameplay differed greatly. Dwilight and constant PvE is almost like a different game to old time Atamarans who never tried it.
Now mind you I've been playing a lot of crusader kings 2 so I'm kind of warped right now, but maybe we could add a feature to Dwilight that gives border realms a chance: nomad migrations. Add a button to the ruler command panel based on if a realm is flagged by a dev as nomad potential (not too big, geography, enough exposure to the west). Clicking the button flags the realm, a dev copy pastes the old migrating realm code that decreases morale hits for long distances, troop cost, adds attack bonuses, but also lowers the region stat soft cap 30%, etc etc to make it balanced. They can recruit from any region and are given a time frame that they have nomad status. After the successful/unsuccessful migration the code reverts to normal. The button is immediately usable but a dev has to look at it and say yes or no so prevention against abuse is already there.
Or we can all just... Suck it up and play
