The lack of war bothers me, but what I really take issue with is the consolidation of land on many Islands. The Colonies started with 9 (I believe) realms. Now there are only three. East Continent when I started playing (2004~) had 13 realms. Now there are 8. So over the years we've seen the smaller realms gobbled up by empires. Empires of boring. Most of the huge realms have been around forever and will likely continue forever as well. Lack of change is boring. Dwindling number of realms kills off opportunities for fun. And not least of all is that waging war as a large realm is inherently less exciting because the stakes are lower and the distance you have to travel to refit is higher than in a small realm.
I started playing in Coimbra and it was hella fun, battles constantly going on; desperately scraping together scarce gold in order to recruit a new unit; the threat of destruction always looming over the horizon. Then Coimbra was destroyed and I decided to continue the fight against Oligarch by joining Sirion... but it was hella boring. It was just triumph after triumph, our future victory was always certain. Battles were less frequent and gold was always on hand. It lacked the fast pace and tension of Coimbra. The consolidation of realms has essentially destroyed all of the Coimbras out there and left nothing but Sirions. So the game is much less interesting now than it once was...
The threat of destruction is an important part of the fun, therefore realms must actually get destroyed once in a while. However, I would like to see more secessions occur. And not only planned friendly secessions, but real ones.
