Not sure you understand what relatively even fight means. GX was slaughtering southern realms until Perdan and Vix joined.
Because the southern realms were not very good at coordinating. They had relatively equal combat power if they actually bothered to bring it all in one spot, but they didn't. Even just Vix joining in wouldn't have been a horrid overbalance. But once Perdan came in things were just ridiculous. So please, don't blame failure in a war solely on the size of the realm, because that had very little to do with what happened.
GX's military is what happens when you have competent, active players coordinating with each other. They punched above their weight not because of superior economy or number of nobles (the number of nobles was even and both Alara and especially Perleone had much higher gold per noble. I've checked repeatedly), but because they actually moved together as one force with relatively good discipline. It's why the war lasted for so long even after Perdan joined in.
