I beg to differ, and say the opposite would happen. Take a look at Ibladesh: 90+ nobles. Ask the players there about the team spirit, and I bet about 30 characters will just say that they are following orders but don't really feel involved in a realm, or have no specific individual character line that they are currently pursuing. The realm is huge and so crowded that not everyone can be involved because that would just turn everything into one very slow and inefficient war machine (or whatnot - I'm thinking of Melhed here). Some people just follow orders and rice prestige & honour, which is always nice later. There are a lot of nobles that actually get a promotion (this would contradict the idea that new nobles don't have a chance in large realms - totally untrue) but even then the "domains" are so split up, also due to the fear of spies, that even a simple region Lord has absolutely no clue about the greater military strategy.
I understand completely about large realms, and realms with lots of players. You "90+ nobles" is
only half of what we had in Perdan back in 2006. And Abington peaked at
over 200. So, yeah, I know how things work in big realms. You're right, not everyone can participate in every decision. But then again, not everyone *wants* to participate in every decision. There are plenty of people that are quite content to mach along and follow orders. And to tell the truth, you *need* this. If everyone tries to be involved in everything you get chaos. You need the sheeple to do the things that the leaders determine needs to be done. Sometimes you play the leaders, and sometimes you play the sheeple.
However, what I find most important about this is our misinterpreted concept of a "realm" in Battlemaster. Taking a look at the Middle Ages, it doesn't take you a lot of understanding to see that we have to drop our ideas of nationalism. We, as players, are heavily influenced by several ideological/philosophical concepts of the past two to three centuries. Freedom of speech, emancipation, antisemitism, racism, ... These are a few examples of an endless lists of things that are well settled in our mind (for good reasons), but are completely absent to most of the Middle Ages - there will always be an exception to find, but even then, you cannot name those medieval conditions with an enlightened term. Getting back to the point of this paragraph, nationalism is another idea that simply didn't exist like it does now.
You're not ever going to be able to get rid of the sense of nationalism in BattleMaster. You have too wide of a player base, and too much of a continuous influx of new players. Trying to force everyone to get rid of their nationalistic tendencies is like trying to hold back the incoming tide with a sieve. You just can't do it. Continually fighting it is fighting a losing battle.
To summarize: I don't think that the team spirit will be destroyed, but I believe the opposite. Smaller realms will enable more possibilities and create a more coherent group. I'm thinking of Thalmarkin here - they're a wonder, attracting so many players for a one-duchy realm. It would not only reinforce that true bond that is so recognizable in medieval history - the one between the knight and his liege - but also allow a greater role for religion, as it becomes the glue or the "common ground" (also very medieval).
Smaller realms? Sure. They could increase the sense of team play among players. But fighting among your own team-mates? No. That doesn't build a team, it destroys it. It contradicts the entire sense of being on a team, if you're fighting what are supposed to be your own team mates. And this all results from the fact that the game itself defines the "your team" as "your realm".
Let's face it, "realm as team" is ingrained in the deepest structures of the game. And it is also ingrained in the habits of the players. I'm not an "Ohioan", I'm an "American". And other players are Canadians, Germans, Australians, etc. So when we all start characters, we don't join "Krimml", we join "Fontan". We aren't taxed by our lord or by our duchy, we're taxed by our realm. We don't fight based on what our duke or lord tells us to do, we fight based on what our ruler says. The game provides us an easy communications channel to reach a decent number of players: The "everyone in your realm" channel. And if we're honest, the "everyone in your duchy" channels reach a minuscule number of players, and are mostly dead anyway. We have so many duchies, and so few players, that restricting communications to within your duchy would isolate us to an extreme degree. All but the largest duchies would have few players at all.
Just for comparison, my characters would have access to, not including myself:
Fontan: Krimml duchy: 15 nobles (tbh, this will get bigger, I hope, when Fontan is reduced to a single duchy)
Darka: Siver Duchy: 10 nobles
Ohnar West: Akanos duchy: 6 nobles
Astrum: Libidizedd duchy: 12 nobles
So if we swapped to Duchy-based communications, I'd be stuck with the largest pool of players as 15 people. Wee...
I pity the new player who would end up in a duchy of 5 or 6 people.
So that leaves us with realm-based communications. And since BattleMaster is heavily based on communications, people will tend to identify with the natural borders of their communications, which is the realm. You can fight it all you wan,t but you won't break the habit without substantially altering the underlying framework of the game.
