No reason to take things personally I say. It's just a game at the end of the day.
I can understand why Remnant is doing what they're doing, I think of this game like Risk. The steppe is a nice location, it's pretty fortified with natural boundaries, and has easy access to EU lands. We were really weakened after the initial war in our lands, and we don't have the active members to have controlled as much territory was we were initially claiming. The downfall is that you're in a lot of people's cross-hairs (tactically/strategically, not even bringing up reputation). FCC has left their far eastern castles and city and towns relatively unguarded and have spearheaded their forces to their western fiefs and sending out armies to our lands.
Nothing any factions are doing is really surprising to me at all, nor do I think it's shady or underhanded...the reality is what the reality is. Everyone's going to do what's in their best interests.
I just wish Strategus rewarded mechanics with more incentive for people to attack larger factions (or try to carve out a small piece of territory). There's quite a few fief-less factions, and there's quite a few small fief owning factions. These guys really don't have any incentive to try and expand or attack their neighbors because there's way more risk than potential payoff/reward for doing so.
For the most part battle lines are drawn as far as mercenaries go. If a small clan tried to attack FCC they would risk alienating their potential mercs for their battles by not only losing FCC, but losing Remnant and any other factions that FCC has influence on. Just as if Astralis were to have attack LLJK (then Bird clan's) castle in the desert they would likely have not only had a hard time filling their roster, they very likely could have wound up having other faction's jump in with material resources (armies) and come and wiped them out.
I'd like to see more incentive for people fighting battles in strategus (both the factions having some incentive for trying to take a fief as well as personal incentive for people to merc in those battles). Maybe getting c-rpg gold for fighting strat battles, or getting even more XP than now? Or maybe allowing people to transfer strat gold to c-rpg gold (without having to sell it)? I think you'd get more mercs and more people creating characters on the strat map.
Strat's not perfect, there shouldn't be any hard feelings when someone does something that's in their best interests and potentially fucks over another...but at the same time, maybe we can get some more of these factions who are sitting idle on the map to pull up their skirts and start trying to fight some battles and take over some fiefs. It's a war game after all, let's fight some battles (you won't lose any sleep if you end up losing a fief because you were too aggressive, and if you do, you should probably take a breather anyways).
**Now a little bit more propaganda**
FCC really doesn't have the numbers to hold the fiefs that they currently control. The main saving grace they have is the small factions in the tundra who owe their fief ownership to FCC, and some more medium sized factions that don't really have anything to gain by attacking/taking FCC Eastern fiefs which are basically unguarded. But it would be awesome if someone decided to try and take some FCC territory while they were away nation building with Remnant. Yes you might incur a large mercenary wrath against you, or potentially risk having them try to wipe you out (I think other factions would potentially stop that), but it's a war game, let's see some more fighting over fiefs...it's not like you actually own these lands...these are pixels on a computer screen.
