My quoting here is going to be a mish-mash from several different messages, all re-ordered into separate topics...
If you can only have one noble in each continent, very few people will pick a priest to be that one noble. Most people who have priests, have one warrior and one priest. That is what I do. With the new rule, that is not allowed. Priests are simply not an interesting enough class for most people to want to play ONLY THAT. Which means the number of Priests that we have will drop with this new rule, and that will probably cause some religions to disappear altogether...
We know from experience that there are a certain number of players who will enjoy and prefer the priest game. We had, at certain times, 17+ priests in Sanguis Astroism on Dwilight. And you can only have one noble character on that island. There were also more priests in other religions. So, yeah, there are players willing to do it, if that choice provides enough options.
Having said that, I don't view a smaller number of priests as a bad thing. Nor do I view a smaller number of religions as a bad thing. Too many religions dilutes the limited amount of power available. Too many priests in a religion dilutes the amount of power and authority that a religion can hold over a larger number of players. It's like a realm with 8 rulers. A significant number of them will just sit around doing nothing, because someone else will handle anything that needs done.
IMHO, too many religions limits and spoils the religion game, turning it into a proxy for the realm. Every realm will have their own religion, and the vast majority of them will be nothing more than a blatant extension of their realm government. The realm leadership and religion leadership become virtually identical. It's a bad thing, and it greatly spoiled the early religion game. You have to have a limited number of religions so they can organically spread to cover multiple realms. That's when interesting things can start to happen. It separates the religion from the realm.
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.
This is very true. And it's also very difficult. Those who tend to rise to long-term power are usually the builders. Builders (including myself) are loath to take actions which they know to be detrimental to their creations. Letting go is Hard!
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.
Ha! I'm glad that got Tara mad. At least something was going right.
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.
Even better! Just like Suville was getting pissed that Strombran troops were joining with Tara to fight against Suville.
It's good to hear that the screwed up diplomacy was pissing off everyone. (Except perhaps Strombran. I never heard them complain all that much about it. In fact, they went on at great lengths about how it was really to everyone's advantage.) It's unfortunate that no one was willing to actually do anything about it, though, until too late.
No Taran unit ever crossed Strombonian lands to attack Suville until after Suvillan and Strombonian troops crossed Taran territory in missions against Caergoth. ... Strombran was caught red handed in our territory on an attack mission against Caergoth.
Being in Suville, that's something that I never heard about. If it's true (I'm not saying you're lying, just that it's possible that something may have happened of which you could be unaware), then it's something that Strombran wouldn't have admitted. In Suville we were told that it was Tara that kept changing the rules without letting anyone know beforehand. I.e. Taran troops suddenly started appearing from Strombran lands and attacking Suville, and everyone acted surprised and angered about Tara taking more liberties with the federation.
In any case, the entire war was just about guaranteed to make lots of people very angry about the entire situation. Suville having three or four different rulers over that period of time made it difficult for there to be any kind of coherent, cohesive policy/response over the entire course of the war. Having stepped back as general of Suville before the war started, I'm not privy to all the higher level discussions, either.
