Apologies for the double post (I feel like two different things should be discussed in two different replies), but I want to jump in on what Fleugs said about rulers being too cautious. Would it not make sense IC for a ruler to be cautious? I suppose it would depend on the character, but as a ruler your whole job is to keep the realm together. Not wanting to get your realm destroyed makes perfect sense coming from the perspective of individual characters.
Yes, yes it does. In fact, that's a core business of a ruler. I encourage rulers to engage into war, though. Not to destroy realms entirely. Actually, that's another tendency in battlemaster that might need... change. But that should totally go in another oversized post of me.
Lychaeon captures a part of the truth that small realms have fun wars. Wars for survival can be lengthy and afterwards give great satisfaction, given your realm still exists. Nevertheless Battlemaster still has plenty of huge realms, particularly several continents. Battlemaster is indeed a game of intrigue and politics, too. There's two ways to approach this statement:
1) You declare war based on what you know is a fabricated claim or bogus reason and everybody punishes you in their white knight spirit.
2) Another opportunistic realms sees that your realm is taking a lot of the attention away and decides they might as well jump in and claim some land of your enemies because, well, their armies are at the front lines fighting off you armies - so they can go no a rampage. Those are always fun.
The ideal situation is that everybody is like number 2 and before you know it your entire continent is an exploding powder keg.
Maybe the everything above "peace" should just be abolished. That would make it fun!
