Coralynth and Sorraine tried to gangbang OW.
Correct. We blew it. We waited too long, then Velax declared "No wars until everyone has had a chance to settle into the new diplomacy." Then when we finally tried to get started, Coralynth delayed the start at the last minute for a couple weeks to take some other region. Then when we finally got going, Coralynth botched the diplomacy, and we all botched the attack. This provided Arcaea and PoZ the opportunity to play paladin and jump in.
Cathay entered the war to defend their ally,
Wrong. Cathay entered the war to take Colasan. This was made crystal clear when Cathay, on multiple occasions, offered to exit the war and abandon OW to their fate if only we would let them have Colasan. It wasn't about OW. No one cared about OW. Ever. PoZ, Arcaea, and even GDD were all quite explicit in that they were entering the war due to Coralynth's false/misleading (your choice of interpretation) statements regarding the attack.
If Cathay had come out and said "We are defending our ally", then things may very well have gone different. But the way it went down, Bofeng's chosen approach to the war (including the infamous "I want a new summer palace in Colasan" line) caused a lot of problems for Cathay. Even now, Cathay's reasoning for carrying on with the war has nothing to do with OW. It's all about Colasan. Just like it always was.
a move everyone knew they would make. This would have been a good war if others hadn't gotten involved. Velax's decision to enter the war was what made that war so bad.
Correct on all three. Even as it was with Arcaea in the mix, If GDD stayed out and the south honored their neutrality, would have been OK. Cathay and PoZ could have kept going after Colasan, and the war would have kept on for along time. Arcaea was not using their full might to steamroller everyone. Sorraine was able to go to-to-toe with Arcaea's armies several times, despite the fact that Arcaea was more than twice our size. Both OW and Sorraine were constantly getting looted, and OW and Corlaynth were having fun beating each other up.
That wasn't enough for Claudio, though. He had aspirations. His entrance into the war on the south's side, and letting the south's troops have access to Sorraine's southern lands, would have quickly brought about the end of the war. The only reason that GDD attacked Sorraine was that I couldn't close the Colasan deal fast enough.
Anyway... Following the collapse of Cathay after the infamous Battle of Colasan, the war quickly died down. We got peace in the north, and returned to the south. GDD/Sorraine v. Cathay may have worked. But the war quickly turned into trench warfare between fortified cities. No one liked it, and people started to leave. Once we signed peace with OW, I think that probably 5 or 6 people quickly left Sorraine. And OW has lost 5 or 6, too.
The only attacks on Colasan were during the Bofeng era. Since he left no attack has been made on Colasan by anyone.
Wrong. There were at least two attacks on Colasan after Bofeng left. Apparently you just didn't know about them. I was there on the walls defending the region during the attacks.
Some of you may recall that Jonn was initially in Cathay for the purpose of brokering peace between Cathay and Sorraine (what? 
)
Wait.... Jonn... I vaguely remember some Cathay guy trying to play the grand manipulator. Was this the guy that Taylin basically told to bugger off? There were at least two, if not three, Cathay nobles that contacted Taylin during the course of the war, offering to play spy/traitor, or to try and manipulate the course of the war. There were two that had almost identical names... Jonnn/Jonnny/Johnn or something.
Claudio betrayed Cathay with the slaughter in Colasan (declaring war on his former ally when their military was already in a level 5 walled region stocked to the gills with troops)
Wrong. GDD did not declare war. GDD explicitly forbid Cathay from entering Colasan. Cathay ignored Claudio's warning, and moved in anyway, saying something like "We're at peace, and you're in the way of us getting to our enemy, so we're going to go through Colasan whether you like it or not". When Cathay moved into Colasan, GDD canceled the peace treaty, going to neutrality. Claudio even warned Cathay that he was going to do this several hours in advance. The following battle was a result of Cathay using Aggressive encounter settings while in neutral territory. Pretty much everyone not in Cathay was convinced that Cathay staged the entire attack *on purpose* in order to have justification for declaring war on GDD so they could take Colasan. If this had been true, then it would have been a great maneuver. Seeing as how soon after that Bofeng quit, it appears that the battle was simply a mistake on Cathay's part.
If you had better control of your noble's encounter settings, you could halved waltzed through Colasan and attacked Sorraine, forcing GDD to be the ones to declare the war. Try talking to Tara about it. They've gotten really good at using encounter settings to control whether or not battles happen.
The point is it is the responsibility of the leaders of each realm to inspire their nobles, and if they fail to do so defeat follows.
In some ways, this is true. But it's not just up to the leaders. It is the responsibility of *everyone* in the game keep things going. The leaders may bear a bigger share of it, but it's still up to each and every player to help make with the fun.
It's not the map, it's not militia, not player density, not any of that crap.
They all play a part in the big picture. Maybe you've been successful enough with it in Cathay to halt the bleeding. Maybe you can stabilize at 14 nobles. But the overall state of FEI has gone too far. A war of Arcaea/Cathay/Myern (and probably OW, too) v. Sorraine is as pointless as Sorraine/Myern/GDD/PoZ v. Cathay. Noble count is too disparate to fight open battles, and realms don't have enough land to defend them from enemies. Massed militia in fortified chokepoints, inability to go around, and people get bored and leave.
