Yarr/Tuf

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   ajqtrz, I think you should take a deep breath, count to 10, and go back and read my post, since I think you missed the crux of my argument. And my statement was neither pro- nor anti-YARR or TUF, for that matter.
If you look at what I said, I was making the argument that, in my opinion and experience in fighting wars, sovereignty plays a key role and can lead to a small alliance defeating a larger opponent. You said, "all things being equal," but all things are not equal, and the fact is, in spite of being outnumbered in terms of towns and players, TUF has a better sov-to-town ratio than YARR. YARR only has 5.7 squares claimed per town, versus TUF, which has 10.16 claimed -- nearly double. There are a lot of small, sov-less towns in YARR. I'm not putting YARR down by saying this -- both alliances are still growing alliances.

This is one metric that is an indicator of war-readiness. 

If you need an example of where a smaller alliance has competed well against a larger alliance, you need only look to SIN's current war, where we successfully fought against the #1 and #4 alliances in the game (according to land) when we were originally ranked #14. In this case, both SHARK and VIC had superior sov, player counts, and towns, however, I would suspect that much of their sov was food-based in order to support large cities. SIN's sov is entirely troop-focused. So, while our opponents had large standing armies, we were probably able to our produce them.

 ajqtrz wrote:

The problem is you assume that there are superior techniques of warfare in Illy that somehow the big alliances have missed and that we, a small one, can use against them.  Do send me an IGM with a list of those secret techniques as I could use them now.

I don't assume it -- I know it to be true. In addition to having superior troop sov, developing winning war strategies at the strategic and tactical levels, and being able to execute them, are major equalizing factors that can allow a smaller alliance like TUF to compete against what at face value appears to be a much more powerful adversary. Our alliance has assembled some of the best war minds in the game (of which I do not claim to be one), and that is a decided advantage. Moreover, every one in SIN executes our war plans superbly well, and by out-executing our opponents, we're able to win.

As a now-seasoned warrior, I'd like to think that your leader Agalloch himself would agree with this -- just look at his cities and sov, he clearly is already a player who understands this.