This is actually an excellent example of the problem with large realms. It's not just that they're stifling—it's that they create huge inequalities.
Chénier, you may have felt like everything was dynamic and awesome around the time of the Third Invasion, but being in Riombara at that time, you know what we felt like?
We felt like Enweil was strangling everything, and whenever we talked to anyone else about doing pretty much anything, there was always fear about what Enweil would do or think. And this wasn't even during the time when Rio was actively at war with Enweil, or being cut in half and nearly destroyed by Luz de Bia with Enweil's cheerful backing.
The freedom and dynamism you experienced during that time came at a cost, and that cost was the freedom of the rest of the continent to do what they wanted.
That's why I stand by the principle of restricting the ability of realms to grow that large, even as I recognize that some of the specific measures we've taken in the past (and even some we have in place now) to enforce that restriction are far from ideal.
When was BT stiffled? Before I went to Enweil, I was in Fronen. And we warred Enweil and Luz de Bia alongside Riombara. And from Fronen, I don't recall anyone complaining at all. It was a fair distance of marching, but nobody complained about it. Then there were some rebellion shenanigans, and my side lost, so I moved on for a while, namely settling up in RoF. There, we weren't on Enweil's side, relations with them were cold at best. We still had a blast.
And from all accounts I had, Rio was dynamic and engaging. Was there a boogeyman next door? Sure. Did it bring stiffling peace to BT? No. BT never had stiffling peace. Not until rogue became the largest realm on the continent and realms were all impossibly far from each other (now), at least.
Now, the war with Enweil+LdB/Rio+Fronen was already in motion when I joined the continent for the first time, or started soon after while I was still too new to really grasp anything going on, so I don't know who started it or why. But every single other war following that, Riombara was the one declaring war on Enweil. After the third invasion, it was following a direct provocation, with Enweil swiftly conquering Republic of Fwuvoghor, but every other inter-invasion war was really just the continuation of that one. And they were always renewed by Rio, Enweil was always quite willing to put the war with Rio in the past and focus elsewhere.
So who stiffled who? Did Rio have limited paths to pursue? Maybe, but warring Enweil was never an obligation during my playtime, since 2006. And those limitations were due to Rio being an island realm, for the most part... a city choke to the north, and a peninsula with a bunch of chokes to the South. Once LdB was killed and it put a friendly nation there, what else were you going to do? And how was that in any way Enweil's fault?
And Enweil pretty much *needed* to be as it was. Rio was a powerhouse on its own. And with allies like whoever had Eno... that was quite a cluster of cities down in that corner of the map, many incredibly wealthy. Very concentrated. Enweil, on the other hand, all of its cities were on the border. You cut capital distance, and you cut out basically all of Enweil's cities, and basically none of Rio's. A Fengen+Enweilieos "Enweil" would have been pathetic. Rio would have steamrolled it, and then would have been surrounded by allies and the seas. I doubt that would have been a lot more fun.
Huge inequalities are worse than ever. Because now, you've got a select few elite realms, like Obeah (Rio) and Luria and Astrum (and to a lesser extent, Westgard), which with a minimum of nobles can overpower everyone else. Because they have dense rich region clusters. And the other guys? Even if they have a crap ton of nobles, they'll never compete, because the rich regions are out of reach, or inefficiently placed.
Huge realms like Enweil offered a counter-balanced to super wealthy cluster realms, because size allowed them to compensate for lack of quality. When Ete was blighted, and then later Enweilieos, Enweil quickly became a pathethic realm that contributed little to the continent, and got quickly overwhelmed by Rio, which in so doing isolated itself far from everyone, surrounded by seas of rogues.
And now let's go past Enweil-Rio, for most of my BT play-time, I had characters in different realms. One in RoF-Enweil, one in another central or northern realm. Again again, never did I experience any of these realms getting stiffled by Enweil. Even when Enweil was somehow involved, it was all proxy wars. And even that's a bit of a stretch. Old Grehk, Sint, Heen, Bara'Khur, Fronen, Thalmarkin, Hetland, Vlaanderen... they all had a bunch of wars for all of their own reasons. With Melhed joining in a bit later. And except for the numerous times where THEY declared war on Enweil, Enweil mostly had no role in their wars whatsoever. There were land disputes, religious disputes, who sided with what inhuman during the past invasion, and complex diplomacy. But Rio+Alluran alone was typically enough to prevent Enweil from doing anything anywhere else, though Hetland often also joined in to force a flank.
When Fronen fought its neighbors, we cheered on. But we sent them an army, like, once? In all of those years?
So whatever Rio had going on, "big realms are bad" is terrible conclusion to draw from it. Maybe it's a fairer conclusion to draw from whatever happened on AT, but definitely not from BT and Enweil. If ever there was a period when Enweil was stiffling, it was short lived. And as far as it imposing its will in the earlier periods, like the democratic crusades, that's always been exactly the kind of behavior that's been encouraged by the dev team. But to think realms will fabricate reasons to go to war against equal or stronger enemies is wishful thinking. BM has a strong reactionary culture, where the guy that declares war is automatically the bad guy for almost everyone else. Realms that want to dare to start a war need to have the confidence to be able to take on the inevitable gang-bang that follows. Otherwise, what you get is realms posturing during RL years, trying to goad the other realm into being the "bad guy" and declaring war first. To then gangbang and annihilate them anyways. Westfold being the latest example among many.
The old "inequalities" had balance. The new ones don't. Enweil almost got defeated a bunch of times, had the coalition against it been slightly better coordinated, slightly less dumb, OR slightly more persistent, Enweil would have fallen. Instead they attacked us all on their own, attacked us where we were strong, walked into probable ambushes, and quickly accepted bilateral peace accords. That's not an inequality problem, that's a political problem on the Coalition's side. The great thrill of being general in that war was how we constantly defied all odds, by continuously defeating a coalition that had like 5x our CS and economy. And which, for the most part, were all neighbors, and flanked us. Enweil didn't win because it was overpowered, it won because it was well organized, and its enemies did every mistake they possibly could.
But take Luria, and tell me who will invade it now? Or who would invade Astrum? Or who would invade Obeah? or Westgard?
Nobody. Because the game is now hard coded in favor of small clusters of dense rich regions like these realms have. There's no counterbalance. The only way to defeat these realms is to wait for their players to get bored and leave the realm, as seems to have partially happened in Astrum. But otherwise, even with average noble counts, those realms are now impenetrable.
Which is, again, on top of all other mechanical changes that make the mobile army lose potency/importance. Like ambassadors badmouthing the enemy and making every region spawn huge peasant militias. This mechanic has absolutely nothing to do with density... and yet, it still greatly amplifies all of the problems related to it. The synergistic effects are real, and the stymieing power it can have was blatant on EC. Fighting Caligus basically became pointless because of a single ambassador. What do you want to do, when entering a region causes a peasant horde that has more CS than half of the mobile armies? Does this sound "fun"? But even if I dislike that mechanic, if realms were more like the old days, and thus larger with a greater tax revenue, their mobile army would be much bigger, and thus the average realm mobile force would be much larger than this large peasant militia, and thus the stymieing power of it would be exponentially smaller.
I want to insist, though, that I totally understand that there were valid reasons behind these changes. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In a similar vein, the loss of density led to an increase in individual wealth, and nobles having so much more gold than they used to started generating it's own array of issues. So measures were taken that reduce tax efficiency, so that while the average noble still gets way more than he used to way back, it's not a linear progression.
But what matters more than a noble's wealth is a realm's wealth, and this cut funding for realms drastically. With expenses remaining the same, available income dropped by a far greater % than the gross income drop. In other words, the mobile armies, on the whole, get less gold. Thus, less CS. But something else also made sure they had less CS: the declining density meant nobles had larger units, and large units get less CS/men than smaller ones. So bam, density loss now punishes mobile army CS twice, through completely unrelated mechanics. All while militia CS stays pretty much the same (or even increases, mostly, as now many cities have few knights and know that the mobile army isn't as able to defend it anymore).
The dev team didn't cause the player loss. And it was an impressive feat for them to put a stop to it. But it does feel to me like BT and Dwi, at the very least, are living on burrowed time. The game mechanics are stiffling. There's little to do, and the little to do, there's little reason to do it. People are bound to lose patience. I've enjoyed killing monsters there, it's the most fun I'm having with BM at the moment, but visibly most people don't enjoy it as much as I do. On BT, realms are dying, and we are just droning by, always considering to just give up. Some realms have the numbers, possibly maintain more fun... but how long until they bore themselves, alone in their corners? The most dense and populous realms are basically at opposite ends of the map. And between them, the realms are struggling to even survive. What will happen if BK, Vale, and Nothoi fall? And the other struggling northern realms? Even if 100% of the players of lost realms migrate to those two realms (they won't), then what? Not only are they too far to really war each other, those two realms are friends... allies working together.
Now the devs aren't responsible for all of the changes between 2006 and today. But before joining with Enweil, I've opposed them from various realms. And I still had much more fun seeing them as the vile giant next door, than... whatever it is we are doing on Beluaterra right now. BT was never peace-locked until now. And right now, the peace is mechanic-induced, because a bunch of realms would giddily gang-bang Bara'Khur.
