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.
So if you see an army of 1000 armed soldiers vs an army of 1000 armed peasants you call that even because the numbers were the same? Sounds like solid logic. Of course they were bad at coordinating. It is quite difficult to coordinate with multiple realms. That is a well known fact of this game. There are even better examples than that of GX. Sirion for example lasted years against multiple realms or Fontan which fought largest realms on the continent by themselves with their infamous lions.
It is better to have one large highly concentrated realm instead of 2 smaller realms with 2 capitals sitting few regions apart. And what about having equal number of nobles? Alara+Minas Nova+Perleone did not have the same number of nobles as GX. GX always had at least 5 more. Alara and MN actually lost nobles over time while GX gained even more. Only when Vix jumped to aid them things started to become somewhat even. When Perdan joined, it finally tipped. Let's not forget Fallangard actually joined GX's side as well. Then Caligus on top. So stop giving me this bull!@#$ about GX and south being on the even ground. If you really believe that then you are just horrible at being a general.
