I will note some things that Indirik said that are wrong.
I play Regstav Pryde, the ruler of Tara.
Regstav never EVER threatened or in any way suggested that the alliance with Caergoth would be ended if they did not do what Tara said, suggested, or ordered. Period. End of Line.
Regstav always considered them a true ally. And never forced them to do anything.
Regstav also never offered up all of Suville to Caergoth. Regstav wanted Suville weakened since he considered it too strong. Weakened but not destroyed. I worked to get Riverholm returned to Caergoth but nothing more.
The raiding campaign against Suville only started once Strombran started sending individual units to keep the Taran army from joining Caergoth in attacks. There was much anger over that.
And when Tara tried to replicate the tactic in Caergoth, Stromban just used murderous settings to start the fights, and due to the diplomacy the Taran forces were shifted to attack Caergoth. There was...more anger over that.
And so we started just raiding Suville because that was all we could do. Short of ending the federation with Cagil that Regstav was not willing to do.
Then Strombran took Riverholm via ducal secession and claimed it and there was MORE anger. Then they took Ser'quea via ducal secession and that was just it. Done. Put a fork in me. Just done.
I told Wayburg and Caergoth that I didn't think I could protect them from Suville because I didn't think Tara was going to be in any position to project power in the very near future. I suggested to both of them that they ally with Suville so they could look after each other, and then I relaxed relations with Suville so they could do that. And have slowly been relaxing relations with Suville ever since. No alliance...but...that's asking a bit much of Regstav...but certainly a "if you look after our friends I won't lay a finger anywhere near you" kind of thing.
And then Tara broke the federation and instantly attacked Strombran. Strombran really couldn't do much. But then Cagil jumped in. They may have been a paper tiger a few months ago. I can say from experience they are NOT a paper tiger now. Not at all. And I was VERY right to assume that Tara would not be in a position to protect either Wayburg or Caergoth. Cagil is a tough opponent.
I would actually say that with the Cagil/Taran conflict going on and the Strombran/Wayburg/Suville/Caergoth conflict going on, things are fairly close to even between the two sides. Basically everybody is getting their tickets punched while the northern realms watch.
It's rather impressive to see how much things are changing.
As a player, I wanted the federation gone the moment I became Tyrant. Before that, all I could see was from Regstav's perspective and he wanted it strong and whole. Then as a ruler and a player I saw how it stagnated the island. And from that moment I as a player wanted it dead and buried. So I started working to slowly take apart all the entangling alliances that have crippled the island. Things actually worked pretty well on that regard, though each one took a while to get through. The last and hardest one was obviously the federation. That took some extreme work to get broken, and I don't know if that would have been possible without Strombran acting so...badly. So props on the rulers of Strombran for giving everybody good reasons to hate them...
It's too bad the devs decided to shut everything down once it got interesting, but at least I can say one thing.
We did good. One year ago, the League had an unmitigated lock on diplomacy on the island. Every single nation was allied with at least one member of the League. That mad warring pretty much impossible. A year later, most of those alliances are gone. Thanks in no small part to Cagil and Strombran being very helpful when it comes to breaking alliances when I or others put a little pressure on them. Tara's alliance with Caergoth is actually the only one still active. The federation itself is fractured, and there is war inside the League.
Atamaran politics have been smashed well and truly. I would have loved to find out where they went after this. But the devs decided not to let that happen. That's on them. We players did the math and chose to make a change that worked very well. And I'm real proud of that.
It took a decade to build the League into the most powerful alliance very possible in the entire game. It took us one year to break it. And if we did sorta decide in the end to do it via some OOC communication, I can say without reservation that everything was IC when it broke. There were tensions for years, and we just finally decided...you know...for the good of the game...for the good of ALL the players on the island...let the tensions break. Let's see where it goes.
It went good. I'm happy.
This was the first real time I was ever an actual ruler. I've ruled before, but never for more than a few days. I've never really sought the position. This was the first time I really did. And it was because Foda is my home as both character and player. It opened my eyes a lot to how people have to play. To how rulers have to play. Rulers have two jobs in a lot of ways. One is to make their realm strong. The other is to make sure there are other realms to fight against. Which have to be some challenge. Because if the OTHER guys aren't having fun your guys won't either because they'll run out of people to fight against. So rulers really HAVE to take a step back into OOC just a bit because we have to make sure our players can have fun.
And this game is BattleMaster, not PeaceMaster. So it is our job to make sure there are people to fight. For one year, the entirety of my time as Tyrant of Tara, I've pushed for that. And other rules have helped. We all worked together to make sure that we could break the stranglehold of alliances that had Atamara crippled. And we did it.
As a player, I'm down right proud of that. Regstav the character is bloody unhappy about it. But Medron the player is giggling with joy at seeing the biggest alliance in all of BattleMaster lying in ruins.
And it never would have been possible without the other rulers taking the same step back I did. We worked together as players to give everybody a chance to fight and have fun. And we had lots of ideas for the future. Maybe we'll just have to replicate them elsewhere now.
