Vikings.
Every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME that one side starts even SLIGHTLY winning against the vikings, they're back to 40+ fucking territories, and the ONLY WAY samurai and vikings win campaigns is because of the "comeback mechanic", which rarely even happens anymore because a good chunk of samurai and knights either A) try to team up against the vikings or B) one faction tries to fight off the vikings while the other faction captures so many samurai/knight territories that they outnumber the vikings. End result is always the fucking same: vikings are genuinely fucking untouchable
Listen, I get it. "Hurr durr just join the free loot club !!!!" like yeah, ok, but what if i don't want to be stinky smelly viking? What then huh? What if i wanna represent the faction i play as most? What if i just want a fucking rectangle or a triangle for my shield? And the worst part is that people from the samurai and the knights JOIN the vikings PRECISELY because of this bullshit, making the issue EVEN WORSE
There's also the fact that you can genuinely play the game for hours upon hours upon hours, but if your faction loses, then well, tough shit, should've joined the vikings. There's literally no incentive to actually put in the effort to try and make an impact because there's no individual rewards even if, in theory, you would have contributed 90% of a territory's troops to help capture it but failed anyway
Fuck this system. It could be such an interesting and engaging thing, but it's been the fucking same for years upon years. And the wu lin + outlanders STILL do not have their own faction even though they have so much fucking impact in the lore