It would not be a heavy penalty. It's like the US Senate: 2 senators per state, no matter what the state's population.
True, but states also have representatives based on the state's size. Democracy (and common sense) require that larger organizations have more representation than smaller states. The small states still have a voice (and that minority voice is important), but it's still a
minority.
And merging gets them benefits such as more efficient support (thus more free total meguca), ease of 'crop rotation' to go with rotating tactics, two elites working for the same group, and just a general stronger group as a whole. The council member restriction is to make sure that that extra power and strength doesn't translate into unbalanced influence of the political process.
All of these benefits would also be available to groups who "ally" without officially "merging". Unless there are benefits to officially merging which go along with the penalties, then people will simply do what they want and call it something else in order to avoid the penalties.
Why would you think not, given the threat the class 3 demons represent? Pretty much all groups directly adjacent to Tokyo are at risk, so they'd all be interested in making sure that didn't happen again. And the cost is only one meguca per group.
Err. Sending one meguca to Tokyo to vote in council meetings is not where the cost comes from... You have to train all of the girls in Tokyo how to operate an organization efficiently. You have to create all these new organizational structures and force people to move around. You have to come up with a system of rules that allows things to work. And you have to convince everyone else to go along with it. These things are (potentially) doable, but they're quite expensive in terms of time and I can't really see any groups who are less optimistic than the Serene being willing to pay that cost. Some groups might
promise to pay that cost if it means that the incubators will send their pet Legendary to clean things up Tokyo, but putting the rubber to the road is where they'd start to flake.
We 'can' tax the Tokyo area. Say, 2 cubes per councilor, maybe up to 10 groups surrounding Tokyo, means an effective tax of 0.5 cubes per m-ward. There would likely be rebellion against anything higher than that, though.
However I'd think the greater benefit would be to have a hand in the growing trade market of a city the size of Tokyo. Buy or sell meguca time from the various m-wards for services like training or equipment or research assistants, or just expanding/franchising a business. How about 40 branches of our restaurant throughout Tokyo, with a franchise fee of just $1000 per month?
These sorts of benefits are more of how we might sell the plan to other groups. But many of the benefits are outside of anything that most of them have experienced, so it would be a hard sell. I'm not sure exactly how difficult it would be to create a whole magical economy from scratch (even if girls have some idea of how economies work from the real world), but I imagine that this would be rather difficult.
Actually, it's more important the that balancer be flexible and mobile. Historically the balancer position in Europe was played by Great Britain. Britain propaganda aside, Britain was almost always the weakest or 2nd weakest great power in Europe (in pure military power, and certainly in demographics).
Their advantage was due to first, geography providing them a shield against retaliatory attacks; and second, a superior tech/trade/financial system.
These are quite potent strengths. Britain's technology level and industry and trade meant that (despite their smaller size) they were a strong nation at any point after (say) the Norman conquest. But these are strengths that we simply do not have. Other more aggressive groups doubtless have more cubes (due to being able to claim land by conquest and kick out the girls who were there before and not accepting any refugees or new contractees unless the labor is desired). And they probably have better tech due to cube surpluses. And they probably have better finances due to accepting a certain level of criminal activity. These advantages come with proportionate disadvantages which will doom those organizations to failure eventually (only to be replaced by other similar organizations), but any large organizations that currently exist are (almost invariably) going to be stronger than us. Our strategies are designed for long term stability and we have the potential to outlast any of them and eventually build an organization that is stronger than they could ever hope to be. But that takes time and right now we're still a little fish in a big pond.
Historically, Great Britain was the least populated, and not extremely powerful in their military. Nor did Great Britain have allies - they were even proud of it. They made allies as needed, based on appeals to the interests of the other party, not based on historical alliances. Historically Britain was an enemy of Russia and France, and an ally to Germany. But when the balance of power shifted, Britain easily switched sides.
Great Britain was not able to balance Europe without allies; they were able to balance Europe by not having
permanent allies and switching allies frequently as needs must (while relying on the Sea to protect them from direct retaliation). As things currently stand, we don't have
any allies. To be sure, we ought to rectify that problem if we're going to be dealing with the groups of Japan at large, but as things stand we have no business trying to be a power balancer.
Serena comes with her own group of meguca by default. She's a giant lure for any class 3's.
I could see this plan working. But do remember that Tokyo Bay is far from deserted. Serena can't just park her (shiny new) boat there indefinitely, she'd still be forced to operate under a timescale of a few days. But hey, maybe that would be long enough.
On the other hand, with our tech and logistics focus, we will very much "win the peace" compared to the other, larger groups, who will likely continue to squabble even after Tokyo is stabilized. It is in this environment that we can start making solid gains, absorbing neighbor groups and showing them a different, better way to be a group of megucas.
Sure, it's quite possible for us to "win the peace". But in order to get the incubators to agree to send Kei, we would have to first have a workable plan to stabilize Tokyo. What you are describing is not a "workable plan" but merely us sweeping up the pieces after a disaster.
