I can tell you it wasn't the map or the large realms that hurt it. It was the near-helpless situation that people in the invasion were put in, not because of any player-caused event, but because of NPC rogues that were pretty much unstoppable.
QFT. I was pretty pissed off - not so much THAT they overran the whole of the West, but that the Devs gave no heads up about it, and neglected to tell everyone the monsters were literally unstoppable. In Niselur we spent so much of our resources fighting the monsters we had nothing left to try to carve out a realm in the East. Asylon at least guessed correctly and just left with enough resources to make it. Could've been interesting if both Niselur and Asylon had full strength and banded together like we planned. The whole Lurian war might've ended differently. Oh well.
@Ossan:
Antiqualia's performance: Yeah, it has ended up really lacklustre. None of us were really willing to step up and lead after Wouter/Fulco ordered war and then kind of dropped away into inactivity. Pratap Eastwood basically flipped us off and quit as well, so there went the next most senior player. It's a lot harder than one might think to defend regions by sailing around vs marching, and try to TO a region that can instantly replenish militia due to the broken militia mechanic. Goddamn but sailing is expensive with reasonably-sized units. I have to admit I would have taken Arnor's deal at the outset and built up with Cold Spring intact, but Wouter/Fulco D`Este did what he did, and I'm doing the best I can to lead a realm of nice and mostly quiet people who also don't really have time to lead a realm.
Could certainly use some help, or to get obliterated. Either or.
