This is, indeed, the important point to keep in mind. A game without friction gets boring. When the "new" resources were announced, it was explicitly stated that one intention was to create more friction.

One thing which has struck me as I watched this war unfold in GC and fora, is the generally low level of immersive role playing. Usually GC is too full of silly chattering to be worth reading, but whenever war participants appeared there it did not get much better. It looked to me like many were viewing this as a game to "win" (whatever that may mean in a game without an end) rather than a game where the playing is the reward in itself. I could see no attempts at consistently representing the views of the lord of a small bunch of cities. Such lords can be peaceful or violent, greedy or generous, consolidating or expansionistic. The important thing is that they could have a totally different character from the payer running them.

Poor role playing tends to damage this distinction, and can make the in-game activities more personal than they should be. Alas, a moderated GC to keep all off-topic and personal posts out is not realistic because of the manpower (= expense) needed, but it might have helped making both peace and war more enjoyable.