Kindara made no effort whatsoever to negotiate the terms they didn't like. The response to our terms every time was basically: "You want us to give back the regions we took? Go !@#$ yourselves." Oh, aside from the one time Kindara offered counter terms, along with the caveat of "I'm offering these counter terms but I'm pretty sure no one in Kindara will accept them".
Basically because everyone involved on the Kindaran side felt there was no point in negotiation because Velax wasn't open to it unless his longstanding terms were met. His terms have pretty much remained the same throughout the war (so he gets full marks for consistency), and those terms have been put to the Kindaran nobility through votes numerous times, and always been overwhelmingly rejected. That's why there's never been any budging politically from the Kindaran side - the nobles don't want it. Partially, this is because Kindara became the 'realm of last resort' for everyone on FEI who didn't like the Empire model, and the Imperial advance depopulated opposing realms either by destroying them (Aenilia) or through the dissenters leaving (Ohnar West), leading them to join Kindara.
It's also because the players on the island appear to be polarized into the groups who fancy your experimental Empire model for the future of the island, and those who prefer the more traditional model of each-to-their-own independent realms. The former gathering in the north, the latter in the south.
This has to be the worst excuse for losing I've ever seen. "We're losing because the enemy's nobles are better at war than us." No !@#$.
You completely miss the point of what I said. This isn't about excuses for losing a war. It might surprise you to learn that I don't really give a toss about losing the war. I have more going on in my life.
What I was saying was a general point about the way that players appear to distribute themselves. For Arcaea, you can substitute the Cagilan Empire, Darka (pre-glacier), Perdan, Sirion, etc. On appearances, such realms tend to attract the more military-minded, log in every turn, players (look at the number of players who have character distribution of - character in Perdan; character in pre-glacier Darka; character in Arcaea. Or Perdan/Cagilan Empire/Arcaea. Or some other combination of such relams). This tends to lead to a concentration of such players in certain realms on each island, broadly speaking leading to a thin representation of them in the other realms. This has become even more pronounced due to the decline in player numbers. There are realms out there now who can literally find
no-one who can effectively run their military because of the general shortage of people who are into the strategy side of the game.
Personal opinion, of course, but if the game is to remain interesting and thrive, we really need these strategy gamers to spread themselves out across realms in a more even fashion.
Failure to take advantage of the glacier benefits.
Did you play in an almost entirely iced realm during the event? These glacier benefits have been hugely overstated, particularly on FEI with its longer travel times and season impact on crops and travel. We were losing regions faster than we could take them, not only due to the advance of the ice, but also the snow trolls and ice demons with thousands of CS advancing ahead of the ice. We were fighting a war on two fronts for the duration. Add into this the slow travel times and the fact that takeover times remained the same, and the efforts Kindara made were titanic. Although the players were largely feeling demoralized by the event. Even Anaris said here on the forum that Kindara's response to the glacier was the most positive he'd seen. If you'd put the stongest military realm in the game into Kindara's position during the glacier event, I'm sure they wouldn't have done any better due to the limitations of travel times to glacier/monster advance ratio, plus takeover times.
We also wanted to move the capital sooner, and would have benefited from doing so, but we also wanted to stick to the letter of the rules on capital moves so we didn't move it until the ice actually claimed Masahakon. Which was too late, frankly.
To be fair to them, at the time the war started, it was just Kindara and Cathay declaring war on Zonasa, newly independent once they broke the federation to attack us (at least in part because we wouldn't help them devour Greater Aenilia). Zonasa wasn't part of the Empire till later.
Correct. The initial war was between Zonasa and Kindara. The Empire interjected itself into the war at a later stage. It might have been Galiard's intention to fight the Empire (in fact, I'm pretty sure that it was). But Kindara never sought a direct conflict with the Empire at that stage in events (well, with Arcaea and Coralynth - that's all the Empire was then). Arcaea put itself into the war, or Zonasa brought them in by joining the Empire - which ever way you want to look at it.
