They do it for speed worlds dont they?
I haven't seen that aside from completely resetting a world. I know that I am unable to do it and there is no mechanism for a normal mod to do it. Perhaps a CM can, but I doubt it.
Somewhere someone said it is wrong to gift forts
I believe this is more of a "gifting forts is often abusive; a form of self-dealing" -- that is, gifting forts often is (perceived as) just giving the fort owner an opportunity to farm stats by giving them something to attack that no one will seriously defend. Now, in practice this is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- the perceived weaker side declines invites, or otherwise boycotts with some ~"higher purpose" of trying to get the other side to split up, but nothing ever comes of it. It's a social dynamics problem that is impossible to solve with the game mechanics as they are.
The best I can offer is what I am planning to do on colorado after the new levels come out and likely throw the balance completely out of wack:
Organize some Sheriff John battles with pseudo random join restrictions that try to find a potential line-up of towns that are ostensibly balanced, with hopes that a balance can indeed be found and that the powers that be elect to form new alliances along those lines.
I will need to see success in this approach on colorado before offering it elsewhere, but my hope is that I will be able to refine the approach to make it a reasonable amount of labor to be willing to offer it to the smaller worlds.