Look at elders war right now req.

We have 242m nw, they have 376m. And we're pretty clearly winning. We havent killed any restarts so under your premise, this war would turn out completely identical and equally as arbitrary with that rule change.

Without a restart bonus, nw would be swinging in our favor rn, and would seem to indicate at all that we are actually winning, though we would have just passed them in nw the last couple days. Numbers is advantage enough as it is.