Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.
Indeed. When I began playing in 2005, TO:s were a viable during-war strategy. From what I remember, you did not have to work that hard to get the stats back in order even when you used brutal TO:s. That allowed realms to almost always have a TO running, if they were at war (which basically everyone was all the time) and had an army that was alive.
All the take overs were done during the war and as such you didn't need any long maintinence periods between wars.
I liked the old way when regions shifted hands often and when a looted region wasn't destroyed for a year afterward.
