Oh, it does absolutely help a war machine to have two characters. That's common sense.
But that's not what turned the tide on Atamara. It MAY have helped during the initial fighting when I showed up. But I mostly remember that we were stretching the ability of Foda to support the army. Even though we had lots of nobles, we couldn't effectively recruit up to what we could lead because Foda didn't make enough money. So we were limited by the economy on how much we could field. What I remember making the difference in that war was Cagil. They showed up at every big battle and turned the tide in our favor.
And after that, Tara and Cagil have been absolutely linked at the hip and have not fought each other. Ever. And every time someone threatened either of us, we helped each other take them out. And most of the time Cagil talked someone else into fighting on our side using diplomatic footwork that was amazing to watch. Or got someone else to agree to stand out of the fight. Or started another war up to get their attention. It's always been something.
You can try to hang the blame on dual characters all you want, but that's not what's made the difference in Atamara.
It's Cagilan diplomacy that did it. In every single war that has happened in the entire time I've played the game, the Cagilans have bought, cajoled, or negotiated just enough nations over to our side that we've won. Every single time. And each time we take over a city or two. And when you add that up in years, you get the situation we are in now, where that boughten and cajoled alliance of nations on top of the Taran/Cagilan alliance is just plain dominant over everything else.
Which did bring stagnation to Atamara. Which is why we decided to break things up before this "fix" was suggested. We came up with the conclusion that only two things could break the dominance we'd forged. Tom or the Devs coming in and breaking things up. Or we players agreeing to break things up. Because we'd pushed things to the point that no alliance of nations outside our alliance could ever again threaten us. We'd won. And that's no fun for people in other nations. So we agreed to break things up, and then came up with a real good IC reason, built on a very long IC history, to do it.
We've got the same minds that have spent the better part of a decade turning the Taran/Cagilan brotherhood into the dominant powerbloc of an entire continent now devoted to tearing it back down.
Atamara is in for some exciting times. And I can't wait to see what the other players do with that.
