I didn't mean to imply that there was cheating. It's simply a fact that if you look at Aurvandil's performance, it's a major outlier. I'm sure everything is handled through existing game mechanics, however your average realm (even your above-average realm) would be very hard pressed to reach the kind of numbers and averages observed in Aurvandil. Incidentally, that is why this group of players keeps getting singled out. From Thulsoma through Averoth to Aurvandil and Fontan, the realms that are populated by these families enjoy eyebrow-raising levels of coordination and economic efficiency that are simply beyond the grasp of most realms in the game, if not all of them. This is why suspicion and accusations tend to follow them wherever they go. There is all sorts of evidence that the realm, as a whole, is min-maxing, which is really just another word for power gaming even if it's all comfortably within the designed mechanics of the game.
It's really not that difficult to achieve.
Firstly, your nobles all buy out units to the maximum and never keep gold to pay their men, and pay them by a week by week basis, as well as enlarging them each time. It's cheaper to maintain soldiers, than it is to buy them, so it comes down to fairly cheap overall expenses, enabling a fairly consistent growth in the unit size. As for the nobles who don't have enough gold, you supplement them with treasury gold, and as the expenses are fairly low for the size and strength, this is something that can be easily maintained. Another thing, fighting wars gives yours unit very high cohesion and training, which sends your combat strength into overdrive when you consistently win battles.
As for high levels of coordination, this is a joke, we don't have that, we don't have high movement rates either, there is a reason why we give our nobles days of warning in advance, then make most moves two, or three turn moves, and it's always why whenever we don't do that, a lot don't move, Madina have sniped us considerably on this multiple times. The most we have for coordination, is some one sends me a request for gold, I sent them gold, and I look through the army lists to see who has the smallest units, and ask them if they need more gold. It's a case of the wealthiest taking a proactive role in seeing who needs gold and providing them with it.
This is nothing other realms cannot do, it just takes a bit of forethought and effort, and I seceded from Madina exactly because they never made the effort, they never had any forethought or coordination, they were the opposites of how Aurvandil runs, and I made Aurvandil the opposite of how Madina manages itself, so it's no wonder a realm like Madina, where every noble is only out for himself, can't compete with a realm like Aurvandil, where every noble is tied by oath and duty to serve the Monarch first and foremost.
