"War" does not mean "we're gonna murder you" as in "wipe out your realm". It means "we have a grievance of some sort with you, and it can only be settled with armed conflict."
Maybe, but I also don't think every unresolved grievance has to either be dropped or result in a war.
Frankly, I think that any realm that legitimately cannot sustain a real war due to low player count is a very strong candidate for merging into another realm.
I'm not sure that always works.
To offer an example, if Nivemus merges with Sirion or Eppy, that will be a bloody behemoth of a realm spanning 25-30 regions and still remaining way below minimum density.
I've seen far, far too many realms in my time—and this goes back well before the decline in the playerbase—that refused to go to war, citing various reasons that meant they "could not sustain a real war", when really they were just afraid there was a nontrivial chance they could lose.
I'm actually more worried about realms who want to declare a war but are clearly unable to pull it off on their own, like Eppy vs. Perdan. And even with support, they're unable to take over regions. So what's the point?
Maybe they wouldn't declare a useless war if they had other options of hostile interaction.
