Lowering kingdom sizes directly increases competitiveness through a more equitable distribution of talent across the server.

The fundamental problem is that a 15 province kingdom certainly panders to the waves or the imposing threat any 25 man organization may have in Utopia. When such inequities exist, there is no recourse in game-play but to accept the fact that the game becomes unplayable for the 15 man kingdom in this instance. The science you've accumulated can just be taken without threat of retaliation versus aggressor. The elites you pumped don't mean anything. Particularly more so today, where offense and military is obscene; a solo player can't even sit on turtle defense without being at the mercy of this majorly flawed interaction of power between kingdoms.

While the top 15 continue to recruit the skill from the main body of the game, they've so kindly only returned upon the player-base acts of aggression and a culture of straight farming.

If the argument is that there are not enough monarchs right now, or would not be enough even with smaller kingdoms; my argument against it is that there is no current incentive to be a monarch. The skill ceiling for monarchy - that is, the total province number for kingdom - has to come down to become more accessible for players to pursue.

The T15 have to assume a new culture of mentoring and cease-firing broken kingdoms in my opinion, versus allow them be victims of your OOW hits. You never know which one of those OOW hits will or has caused a new player of varying tenure to quit the game, ladies and gents.