Unfortunately, many of the things meant to push things into action only punished other realms and left Tara and CE untouched.
The icebergs that hit the north and south and destroyed entire realms didn't twitch us in the center of the map at all. They actually weakened our enemies and caused the Taran-Cagil alliance to be even stronger by comparison.
A giant tornado or earthquake or something crazy like that blew the center of the alliance into dust bunnies actually would have weakened us and given the others a chance to do something. Yeah we would have bitched about it, but it would have saved the island.
Imagine something like the continent-wide stoppage of emigration that has been used on Beluaterra during Invasions aimed at Cagil and Tara. Have a storm smash Foda and all the other border regions to dustbunnies. Randomly kill the second character of anybody who had a character in Tara and Cagil.
Yeah, it would have been heavy handed. But at least it would have been targeted against the nations that were seen as the problem instead of the last few who had enough fighting spirit to stand against us. Yeah, we would have bitched, but it sure would have made things exciting.
Instead, nobody made the hard call until the end, when the players finally made the hard call and brought about a circumstance that allowed all of us to break it up and start a new crazy war. And then the island was sunk anyways.
1) the players shouldn't have been forced to make that decision in the first place.
2) the admins had the responsibility to make something stick to push what needed doing.
3) the admins shouldn't have punished the players after the players showed the moral courage to do what the admins had the power to do but never did.
The point in the end is that sometimes the admins have to make a hard call that nobody will like for the good of the game. They have to have courage to do. They also have to do it in a way that doesn't attack the players. Just say...look...we've got an issue here. We have to change it for the good of the game. Nobody did anything "wrong" by doing it this way, but it had unintended consequences and we need to change things. Yeah, the players will grumble and bitch, but if you say it's for the good of the game and if you don't blame players for playing badly, they'll understand. They'll move on, and look for another way to find an advantage in the never ending competition to outmaneuver the other players.
Which is exactly what we all should do in a game called BattleMaster filled with armies and medieval warfare.
