It’s not often one gets to read the thoughts of a brilliant mind. But I think this great community deserves my input into the current controversy surrounding Arkadia.
Arkadia’s future is in the hands of the other three Kingdoms. It is up to them to decide whether Arkadia will become a superpower or a regional power.
The Self-destructive Mindset
Arkadias most glaring weakness is its leaderships sense of invincibility. A superiority complex seems to have developed within the upper echelons of the community. The most common theme being that no matter how many enemies they make, they will not only fend off all threats but go on to neutralise whomever they wish.
Such way of thinking among leaders can heighten the likelihood of infighting if their world view was to shatter. The first instinct is to find someone to blame for their losses. It cannot be that they are not as competent as they initially thought. The reason for these setbacks has to be that someone else is incompetent. The superiority mindset also hinders the ability to respect adversary’s, allowing more opportunity’s for adversary’s to catch the leadership off guard.
Being on the back foot or seeing no progress leads to frustrations which are only intensified when feelings of supremacy had been circulating the leadership for a long period of time. Left unchecked, complacency will lead to an inevitable fracturing of the Arkadian kingdom.
Aggressive Expansion Concerns the Neighbours
When attacked from multiple directions, via sea and land, Arkadian manpower can be stretched thin across all fronts as each kingdom needn’t expend more than 33% of its military force. A war of this scale will significantly diminish resources and population numbers within Arkadian territories in only a short period of time.
Delusions of grandeur does have its benefits however. Expansionists are quick to subjugate those who don’t comply or show signs of disruptive behaviour, potentially harming the kingdom. Independent peoples are vulnerable to an encroaching kingdom. This feeling of vulnerability can motivate harmful activity within the kingdom, potentially leading to war. If such a move is made, the kingdom will be successful given the strength and size differences. With overwhelming victory comes high spirits, greater confidence and increased fervour which becomes difficult to contain among the population. A desire for new territory inevitably follows, leaving neighbouring kingdoms at risk of several defensive wars for small but resource rich pieces of land along the borders.
To Contain or to Let Grow
These hypothesis lead to two options for the Selene server:
Form an early coalition to avoid expending more than half of each kingdoms military in a war. This coalition then helps to contain Arkadia with little attritional loss on the coalition side.
Allow Arkadia to expand, increasing their threat level on borders. Hope that they don’t have a desire to take more than what they have and hope that your diplomacy is more valuable to them than acquisition of resources.
While there’s room for coalition attacks with the latter option, each kingdom will have to contribute more given the increased size of Arkadia.
Each kingdom has confident leadership who feel their people won’t be on the receiving end. Arkadian leadership, however, seem to be particularly grandiose in their approach which could result in a higher chance of success or a higher chance of failure depending on what future their adversary’s decide for them.