"More war" is not an end in itself. "More war" is a means to the end of "more fun."
It is our hope and intention that the changes we are making will lead to "more fun."
True, I agree means should not be confused with ends.
But wars are the core of this game. BattleMaster is a game where you hang out with a bunch of other players to wage war on a bunch of other players. Over the years, it has evolved and become a lot more than just that. But we also can't just remove that from the game, it is the foundation upon which it rests, and without which the rest crumbles.
Wars give every character purpose. They provide stakes. They grant interaction, meetings between large quantities of players that could not otherwise speak to each other.
Extras should either enhance the war experience, or assist with the luls of between war periods. But any extra that cuts down on war is unlikely to have an overall positive effect on fun.
And just as we must remember that fun is the final goal, and not war, so must we do so with density. Density was historically correlated with fun. But that correlation weakens considerably once we enter forced density. Which is really forced partial density, since the underlying problem it seeks to address is that "everyone having a title tends to make realms passive", while only considering what is increasingly a smaller and smaller share of titles available. Bara'Khur, for example, is among the densest realms in the game. Possibly the densest realm in the game, with 3 nobles per region. Is the goal to make the whole game a bunch of Bara'Khurs? Because we've got 7 titles to share around those 3 folks, not to mention lesser titles like religious ranks or ambassadorship. That's over 3 titles per noble on average.
Compare with the most hollow realm I can think of, where there are regions without lords: Nivemus. They've got 19 regions for 15 nobles in 4 duchies. That's 29 titles. That's less than 2 titles per noble, or 66% of the title density BK has.
I've always agreed that realms with more nobles than regions was a problem, but I can't agree with solutions that put a huge block on wars.
