I see you didn't read what I wrote.
First off, I said we need to rebalance mlitia to make it less powerful. Using very similar arguments. The current size of militias compared to the current player base is...out of balance. And we see that far more now than ever in the past.
Secondly, Oligarch had allies in the Southern Alliance who were aiding Oligarch in many ways. Gold. Food. And even some military aid. And I will remind you that Oligarch was winning the Sirion Civil War before Sirion called in all of her allies to protect her. Then, absolutely, the war turned against us. That is when the Southern Alliance began seriously aiding us and there is no way the realm could have held without that aid. I have been very up front with that point.
In much the same way that Highmarch never could have held against the Northern Alliance without the Southern Alliance funding their military and marching to fight with them, Oligarch never could have held without Southern Alliance support.
Oligarch abused no rules. We simply had a well-layered defense with the strongest walls, devoted nobles, and enough money and food coming into our realm from the South to keep us operating far better than a single city could otherwise maintain. Do you really think we could have maintained a 20k CS militia AND had the money to fund an equal sized mobile army that kept...what was it...FIVE other realms on their toes for months on the resources of a single city? Sorry. No. That did not happen. I was the banker of Oligarch. I know what I speak of.
Yes, in the last month or two we were down to a 5k to 10k mobile army. After Sirion pulled their trick with the archer-opening to suck all the infantry out (both noble and militia I will note), and the magic scrolls to keep our nobles wounded, we never fully recovered. When they pulled the same attack again and again, it put the nail in the coffin of Oligarch. It's not fun not being able to play a game because the enemy is using magic to keep your nobles wounded for a week or more at a time. And the archer-opening that causes infantry to rush out and be slaughtered is just a cheap abuse of a system that was never designed for a pure archer force.
Also. I will note that I have played this game for over a decade. In all that time, I have never led an infantry unit into battle. I have taken Cavalry. I have lately used Mixed-Infantry and ranged special forces. But since the very beginning, I have always used archers predominantly. Archers have always been useful. One of my characters killed the King of Kthon with an archer unit in battle. That was the better part of a decade ago. And I can't count how many nobles I've wounded or units I've wiped out in battle over the years. Yes, an archer unit requires an infantry to survive in most cases. You simply can't lay down enough fire to kill an infantry unit before it runs over you. Or at least you couldn't in the past. You relied on the infantry line to hold while you filled the enemy full of arrows. The standard archer opening where the archers started in front while the infantry moved forward under your arrows is a time-honored tactic that has controlled battlefields for over a decade. Heck, I remember archer units fleeing from battle en masse when the infantry started advancing. That doesn't happen as much now as it used to.
It's the balance of forces with each type of unit contributing to the battle that makes the game interesting. The Cavalry charge. The infantry wall. The archer swarms. The special forces doing their fun stuff on the fringes. The mixed infantry that does a bit of everything and contributes everywhere. It's a balance that has worked in interesting ways for over a decade. And I have always been on the ranged side of that balance, with one or two forays into the cavalry game for fun.
Gathering five realms worth of archers into a single battle line and then marching into battle without infantry support so they can suck the militia and noble infantry units out into the open and slaughtering them before they can even reach the archers is something I never saw in the old days. It simply wasn't a viable tactic. Perhaps it is this boosting of archer units you talk about that made it possible? If so, I certainly agree that it is time to rebalance the infantry versus archer game to be more...realistic.
