And that's the problem.
We've heard your opinion on this many times now. I get that, from your point of view, it was a laser-focused military prowess that managed to oppress the continent for years.
But seeing it only as that is NOT any good for BattleMaster.
Say it with me.
Cagil and Tara were brothers.
Period. !@#$ing. Dot.
It wasn't a mere military alliance. It never was. It was two federated brother nations that had fought to defend the other for over a decade of real life time. When I started playing in 2006, Tara was down to 3 regions and only the fact that Cagil garrisoned Foda kept the realm alive at all. It was with Cagilan aid that Tara expanded and took over the nations intent on destroying us, and a decade later their federation still stood when I was Tyrant of Tara. If there is a single federation in all of BattleMaster that lasted as long as the Cagil-Taran Federation, I'd love to hear about it. The characters and players who spent all that time fighting at each others' backs, often against alliances three or four times our size, had never known a time when Cagil and Tara were not brothers. Literally. Fight to the death to protect the other because we knew the other would do the same for us. Fighting each other wasn't just unthinkable. It was unimaginable. I actually would have kicked off a civil war in Tara to remain brothers with Cagil if anyone had suggested breaking our federation. I'm not joking. This was roleplaying, pure and simple, exactly what we are supposed to do in BattleMaster.
I get that you don't like it, because in the end it led to a static situation in Atamara. But stop blaming the players for playing their characters and the game exactly the way they were supposed to. I don't think anybody expected us to actually WIN the bloody continent the way we did, and we had no clue how to undo it once we did. On the war continents, we just reset it so the losers get another go at winning, but it wasn't suppose to be possible on a continent the size of Atamara, so there was no PLAN to reset it. And I totally get that when that didn't happen on Atamara, it DID affect the enjoyment and fun of other people on the continent. No one wants to lose and to know they never have a chance of winning.
Something should have been done to shake things up when it became clear what had happened on Atamara. I totally agree with you. The difference is that I don't blame the players that didn't know how to fix it for not fixing it at the time. I get that the admins tried to shake things up with their ice ages and other stuff, but it was much too little, much too late. If you (admins) had decided to do something drastic years previously, we almost certainly would not have congratulated you at the time. But breaking up the Cagil-Tara Federation (like the admins have now broken up other large alliances) could have shaken things up. Doing something drastic like an ice age (call it a volcanic eruption) that separated Cagil and Tara and erased their border areas also could have shaken things up.
But since you didn't do anything drastic to force a change, it came down to the players to muddle our way into finding a way to do it ourselves. Which we did. We players chose to sacrifice the one defining trait of our nations over more than a decade of gameplay, and even figured out how to do it in a way that made sense for our characters. All for the good of the continent so we could revitalize the game and kick off the biggest war in years.
And then the admins thanked us by telling us they were going to sink the continent.
I remember one of the players from Cagil I think saying something after the announcement came down. It was to the effect of "If we'd know this was going to happen, we wouldn't have betrayed our oaths and just remained brothers to the end." It's a bittersweet statement that holds true now just as much as it did then.
Years later, people like you continue to blame us for the problem that we went WAY out of our way as players to FIX.
If we'd known you were going to do that, we would have happily remained brothers to the end and given you the collective middle finger as you sank our island around us. Because that's the kind of brothers Cagil and Foda were to the very end. The kind of brothers that took no guff from anyone and were always ready to rumble. Brothers like that made the game FUN, and I will always miss them in these modern days of wishy-washy friends and acquaintances whose words aren't worth the electrons they are printed on...
