@pcw i dont think i understand the meaning of this paragraph:
"I've also seen the opposite with realms refusing to accept a peace even when they can't reasonably hope to achieve victory. It's annoying but I think it's made possible in part by the lack of intra-realm conflict. How Luria Nova managed to have such high player density yet no internal strife for so long is beyond me."
Luria won the southern league war, so I don't think I understand what you mean by "cannot hope to achieve victory" if Luria is your example.. are you referring to the southern league refusing lurian peace terms?
I'm talking about the war that broke up Morek and got Astrum to found Westfold. Realistically all Luria could ever do was raid Astrum and Morek from time to time. There was no chance of conquering either realm in any meaningful way. Eventually Morek gave up and split apart more out of frustration then anything else. The same is true for Astrum ceding land for Westfold.
Furthermore all the while Luria could have gone after Swordfell and actually expanded to accommodate their larger noble population but for some reason they never went for that.
Luria had internal strife, but it was kept in check by a few things. the SLW had Luria on its own fighting every realm on the continent but swordfell, when you face those kinds of odds it tends to unite the realm. after the SLW was over you still had a pressure valve for a fair number of dissatisfied players because of the promise of a new realm in the north, which became westfold. even still there was massive tension between rossgyr/kilhorn and theon whiteheart in the military council and a lot of future westfold nobles left to HD for a while, some partially because they couldnt stand Luria.
third and perhaps most important factor was a rock solid core of leaders who worked really closely and rarely fought, which was able to maintain order among the less powerful nobles. knights and minor lords were allowed to bicker amongst themselves as long as it didn't become a disturbance to realm goals, if it did they would be shut up pretty quickly. if they had the audacity to criticize, sometimes even merely question,authority figures, they'd be chewed out via the trademark Old School Lurian Player Wall of Text until they learned their place or left the realm.
If all that was going on I'm all the more perplexed that it so rarely boiled over into something visible from the outside. Sure eventually you had Luria Boreal break off but only after a prolonged and relatively pointless war.
are you pillaging rogue regions in the west? hows that going for you?
Great, 14,000+ gold on my last expedition. I just wish it were a tad bit more controversial.
I think it will be difficult to get people away from the old mentality of war = destruction or all in.
This has been an issue for BM for a very long time and few people trying to change won't work. I am literally reducing a small realm that declared war on mine to a pulp yet they don't want to surrender. Already destroyed most of their capital. I am not even asking much. I just want the gold we spent to get there paid. Not in one go either. People would rather see their realm get destroyed than lose wars.
I am sad to say this but in order to change this, we will need a system where demands need to be forced to a realm like CK2 with a forced peace period of 3 months or so.
I think this problem stems from a general unwillingness to give up grudges and concede to a victor. In some ways the game accommodates this. If your realm is destroyed you can join another hostile realm, or turn a non-hostile realm hostile, and just keep on fighting and getting pushed back until you're this overpopulated cluster dedicated to winning a war you lost fair and square ages ago. Character death might help this a bit but people can still just go on to make vengeful descendants as their new characters.
This is one of the cases where encouraging people to change their play style will help. Two things will break up the trend a bit.
1. Just tell people to give up the grudge already. If you lost, accept it and look for a new conflict. You can't fight every cause ad infinitum, it's not fun for anyone.
2. People need to balance things out a little more when it comes to character motivations. We can't all be honorable upstanding heroes and we can't all be conniving backstabbers, in fact most of us should be neither of the two because realms made up of only those two archetypes don't work. How about playing a lord who's dedicated first and foremost to his region? Then when the enemy rolls in and the king wont bend he might just decide to put pressure on the king, stating that he wont fight for this lost cause at the expense of his land, and if the king will not accept peace that he'll change allegiance to another realm, possibly the enemy.
I'll note that I think I might have just inadvertently prevented such a destruction from happening in Luria Boreal. I dueled and wounded their king and the Margrave of their capital thanked me for it and now wants to pursue peace.
