I fully remember the iron lock that Enweil once held in the diplomacy of Beluaterra. No one dared do anything if they thought Enweil would not approve. And when Enweil marched, entire alliances trembled. And Enweil could decapitate and destroy entire realms with a single campaign lasting a matter of days. I remember well the sudden fall of Fowagher. (sp)
It reminds me very much of the iron lock the Cagilan Empire and Tara once held over Atamara. Between those two and their Federated compatriots, they held something like half the continent and had locked it in a web of alliances that made warfare all but impossible. After all, who could do anything when the top four nations in the world could simply curbstomp them? Not that we were really that powerful towards the end you understand. The rot of nothing interesting to do had set in and even maintaining noble lords was hard due to the falling noble count. And this was when we could still have two nobles. Tara for instance couldn't send out a 10k armor when I became ruler. We would have lost pretty much any war with any of our border realms back then. It took me months and a good general to bring the army around again to be able to do something, but even then it wasn't powerful enough to break a tough city with a major militia presence. Remember...in the two noble time period with months of preparation...we couldn't do that.
Breaking the Cagilan/Taran alliance was probably the hardest thing we players did. And honestly, the Cagilan/Taran alliance had done what was supposed to be impossible. We WON the game of BattleMaster. Over a period of years, we broke every nation that fought us, turned more into federated partners and alliances, and bent an entire continent to our will. It was amazing. And it was devastating to the game. We had to end it to breathe life back into the continent. The continent WAS dying even for those of us on the top. And those on the bottom were probably at least as frustrated as non-Enweilians were in the era of Enweil on BT. So we as players made the OOC decision to break the alliance, put together some IC reasons to do it, and sparked the biggest war seen on that continent in years.
The death of the Cagilan/Taran alliance was as good for Atamara as the death of Enweil was for Beluaterra. It's a shame we never got to see how things worked out for Atamara after all that work...but...such is life. We don't always get what we want. *shrugs*
The death of Enweil was pretty much the death of PvP on BT. That said, Enweil was dead long before it was removed from the map.
The fall of Republic of Fwuvoghor, in 2008? Don't forget that:
1) Republic of Fwuvoghor had used daimons against Enweil's ally, Avalon
2) Republic of Fwuvoghor was created from a secession from Enweil
3) Republic of Fwuvoghor was clearly aligning itself with anti-Enweil realms
4) It took a huge amount of lobbying by RoF's former ruler, now in Enweil, to march on them
5) Fwuvoghor quickly died because Enweil and Riombara's armies arrived at the same time, but Riombara had been a dumbass about diplomacy and hadn't declared war on Enweil (and maybe wasn't allied to RoF). So Enweil got to start the TO without a major battle. Had RoF+Rio had the walls, it would probably have taken much longer to annex Fwuvoghor.
Now, I can't speak for pre-2006 days, when Enweil had allies like Luz de Bia, Plergoth, Mesh, Avalon, etc. But LdB was quickly replaced by Alluran, which was hostile. Mesh turned hostile to Enweil. Avalon was rarely meaningful for the time it lived. Plergoth got replaced by hostile realms.
Other than for the siege on undefended Fwuvoghor, I can only recall one siege on a city, Rines I think, which took the perfect storm to pull off, and a number of allies (contributions from Avalon and Iro, I think).
So, please, define the "Era of Enweil". Because if it was, like, 2004. Then, maybe, but I wasn't there back then, and it clearly didn't last. CE/Tara federation was nothing like Enweil. Enweil never* (from late 2006 forward) rallied the whole continent to them, or told others to be at peace or suffer the consequences. And even when it was a powerhouse, in those years before I joined, it did stuff like march to Melhed to reform their government system, NOT impose the creation of a grand federation.
Because to claim that Enweil was stifling is to claim that BT was stifled. But BT was non-stop war, between the invasions. Having a scary big neighbor is not, in itself, "stifling". Because otherwise, why don't we just give every realm on BM exactly the same economy and mobile army? That logic would suggest that inequalities are stifling.
But that's not the reality. The inequality pushes the "underdog" to (over)compensate. On BT, on Dwi, elsewhere. Maybe Rio got a few letters now and then from cowardly rulers. But the fact remains that they still rallied a 6 realm coalition against them at one point. And that's without counting the smaller coalitions mounted at almost all other times. And that Enweil killed none of these realms. The only realm Enweil killed, from 2006 to... 2013 I think? Was RoF. And that wasn't really a war as much of an annexation. Declared war, walked in, started the takeover of the capital, won. Just as Enweil declared none of these other wars.
And other than for jealousy, Enweil also spurred action in many other aspects. By housing in a number of active blood cultists, it probably helped drive a lot of hostility towards them, and thus action and war. The Imperial Raiders of Ete, Enweil's third army, participated in a lot of religious warfare with daishist Hetland and hemaist Sint, notably, during those wars. It also served to consolidate relations with the new Fronen, which was also another war-torn state, in some senses a proxy for the northern theater.
Enweil was the driving force of action on BT, and much of what happened on BT revolved around it, but that's the opposite of stifling. BT was the most active and thriving continent. Some of that thanks to the invasions, no doubt, that helped kill many realms and keep things fresh every era.
While the idea of small localized wars is appealing, truth it, it seems more like an idealistic fantasy. Those are rare. Not because players are bad, but because they are incredibly impractical. A realm with 5k mobile forces fighting another realm with 5k mobile forces... isn't going to achieve much. Large realms have been the source of much more conflict and action, both by their direct actions, and passively by inciting others to band against them.
