Hey guys,
As I am less peeved now, I can perhaps offer an explanation from my point of view in a much more coherent manner.
My issue was never one of Thal being destroyed, but the lack of options as both a realm and as the players in the realm. We declared a losing war, offering Irondale, a realm formed by realms Thal has bullied (I totally accept the Thal is a bully points, it is and was) their opportunity at retribution. We knew Nothoi would join in, and the pair of them were winning the war as is. This was fine, no complaints here. But then SV was requested to join Irondale due to the unofficial federation between the realms. This is where the issue was. Those federations mean you have an alliance block that goes far over what the balancing requirements allow, and means all 3 of your realms combined will always win a war against realms following the balancing mechanics. This is the only point of reference I used for the power gaming accusation. As far as I can see it, bypassing a game mechanic designed to balance in order to get an advantage is power gaming. I am however willing to accept you may not have seen it that way and I am hoping you now can at see what I meant by that.
For the comparison to the Grehkia attack, I can see the issues you have with it, but there is a distinction to be made here. That was multiple realms vs Thal. At the time, we could handle that. But the realm had 6 nobles, there isn't a war on the continent they could have gotten in that wouldn't have been one sided. We actually pushed for them to make the merge into Caelint and the whole war took place without a major battle.
For the similarities to the Thal Caelint war, we actually weren't strong at the start of that. We got strong during it as we used it as a plus point for our realm. Thal did not grow in numbers due to real world recruitment, we grew in numbers because we accepted everyone and we accommodated everyone. Mordok was refused by every realm, we took them in. VS was banned en masse by Nova, we took them in. Thal accepts everyone and allows them to be the characters they want to be and works with that, rather than against it.
I never believed Thal would be destroyed, that isn't what I was worried about.
I was worried that Thal was the "mixer upper" of the continent. If Thal is pushed into that top right corner again, and weakened to a point that it can't start wars, can't do it's pushing... what will actually happen? When I joint Thal initially, the entire continent was at peace and every realm but OS was silent. You may not like Thal pushing it's weight around, but Irondale is a much better realm (game health wise) than Angmar, Grehkia, Gotland and Caelint were. Would that have occurred if a realm didn't push it?
If Thal is to either die, or be weakened to a point where it cannot be the antagonist anymore, then all that is left is a group of realms that are federated unofficially and have proven that they can and will attack in a large group and are capable of downing any foe. No one will declare war on any of you. Any war you declare you will win. That is not healthy from a game point of view.
One of the first things I did when I noticed how strong Thal was, was to start offending allies. Ultimately detrimental if we wanted to try win the game, but a realm that had at the time 50 nobles, having an ally always backing us up bringing our total count to like 70... just wouldn't be fun. Thal has a fair few players that like the war game, they want wars to fight, not stomps. I am sure your realms are similar.
And finally, this isn't just a BT thing.
The Northern alliance on EC is an issue too. It's a whole half the continent that ensures realms such as Nivemus, that have more regions than nobles, are untouchable due to unofficial alliances that shouldn't be there. Realms like Sirion, who actually do have the fighting nobles, are unchallenged because they have a 3 realm thick buffer state... that's an issue for both the southern players who are opposed by them, and for the actual enjoyment of the Sirion nobles. They have to play for weeks of just movement to be able to get a battle. No battle ever carries any risk whatsoever. Their regions are never at risk. That's... boring for everyone involved.
I hope this clears up that this is nothing to do with "boohoo thal is losing" and is something that I have pushed for, as I see it as a genuine issue, both IC and OOC sinse alliance restrictions were a thing.
