Note the very important part - to your eyes. This reminds me of Arcaea and other big successful realms, hell it reminds me of how everyone feels about my own realm in M&F right now. It is fun being part of the big winning team. It is generally less fun for everyone else, particularly when you are the target of the big team. This is only really a problem though once the imbalance becomes too large, particularly with the design of BM.
Thing is, nearly all the wars that Enweil was involved in were the result of others declaring war on Enweil.
In all of my BM play time, since 2006, Enweil declared war, like, once. And it ended immediately.
So yea, I have a really, really, really hard time accepting the argument that Enweil was, at least after 2006, stifling to other realms. If anything, I'd argue that Enweil itself was stifled, by Riombara and the ridiculous coalitions it would always mount, because Enweil never got a say in what we would do, past that one time. We'd always be forced to defend ourselves from one invasion after the other after the other after the other. Sometimes, those coalitions would more than double our economic power, and our victories were almost miraculous.
Thing is, you can't really avoid losers in a competitive game. And the mechanics to prevent winners just make it so that everyone's a loser. How fun's the war on EC? How fun are the realms that were forced to secede? Highmarch seceded because Vix's tax tolerance was too low, and it quickly declined in activity after a short initial boost. Same thing in Luria, on Dwi. The game mechanics forced a secession, and then both halves total a fraction of what the unitary realm had. Same thing earlier on, when I split IVF from Enweil. Perleone wasn't having any fun until they recruited dozens of new players to turn on their neighbors. BT was filled with small realms that are just withering away one after the other.
Small is not fun. Some small realms are fun, but breaking a large realm into smaller parts does not make it any more fun, it usually makes it much, much less fun.
There are winners and there are losers, this is a competitive game. But when you just punish victory, and remove all incentives for people to strive for success, then nobody bothers, and everyone loses.
