destroying realms should be encouraged in certain cases. having this blanket attitude that no realm should ever be destroyed leads to more stagnation than any other cultural problem in the game.
I never advocated this, and I have not seen this as a prevalent attitude. I've seen it in certain cases, but overall, what's much more destructive to the game is the idea that every war that's declared is a fight to the death.
This is true, to a lesser extent, even if the war ends without any realm involved being destroyed or significantly reduced. If the
intent of the war is to destroy another realm, it adds massively to the stress involved in fighting the war.
It should be possible to fight a war without knowing that losing will mean losing
everything. That's the kind of fear, after all, that leads to drawing in allies to form massive alliances that stagnate a continent.