Defensive alliances too weak or too strong?

There may be many examples of successful cases and players on both attack and defense, but the fact remains - despot alliances do not fight each other. And you cannot trump that. Don't start on the "friends" thing again, this is just hilarious :)

I said nothing about friends.  :-) 

I miss Guro----he was the team member who actually tested the war path of this game.     Yes Bers joined an alliance last time---collective I might add--so saw what happened when multiple Despot heroes attacked---how about becoming a despot hero and joining up with a despot alliance and go on a couple of attacks? You might then finally see the other side and what we are talking about. Why it's not possible to do actual PVP.The dev's have set it up so we are expected to fight for space and globals---you do of course realize that we would fight anyway even if we weren't on top of each other.  But whatever.There are only 2 solutions that I can see and that Bers will disagree with :))----either have a separate server for Despot  or don't make a War Victory.  People will still continue to do fight for space but the incentive for a Victory won't be there.--------I for one would not like to see that happen but for whatever reason those who try,  as testers, to point out flaws are always argued with and for the most part the ideas are discarded.

You are attacking collectivism alliance and complain they are not easy enough to wipe? Seriously? How about the fact that collectivism players have absolutely no chance to retaliate? That drawback is huge enough already. If you complain that collectivism alliances are hard to defeat, try to fight despotism alliance of comparable size. They are easier to crack, I guarantee, but I doubt you are up for that, because they can retaliate and you might get hurt substantially.

The fact that despotism alliances prefer to fight collectivism alliances and not each other is a undeniable proof that the game balance is skewed towards despotism players and needs to be fixed. Only when despotism alliances will be fighting collectivistms and other despotism alliances equally, then it may be called a balanced state.

Like it or not, currently collectivism alliances lack in defensive tools and we are working on making it more fair.

I am not complaining that I cant wipe them ( for instant lol ) . What I am saying is that the collect alliances are only complaining and asking for more items to defend instead of putting ressources and time to rise a correct army to defend, that's all. The tutorial is not enough difficult for collect, they must be blocked somehow if they are not buildings all the requested towers and the units asked by the quests.

Only the collect alliances are building on our borders and give us a reason to attack them. Why should I attack a despot alliance if it is not doing nothing to provocate me?  Plus you say that despotism alliances are easy to wipe, so where is the fun there ? I prefere having fun and fighting hardly for ressources and space :-) Is my motivation in this game, I am really sorry if it is not corresponding to your idea about how alliances must fight in your game. But please try to keep in your mind, that we are too few now to be representative of what wars will be exactly when the game will be released. Thousands of players will fight each others for differents reasons, not always honorables...Imo, better give to the collect players more advices in tutorial about defense, instead of just giving them bonuses or items to protect them. A tutorial about alliances is necessary too, and also quests about the commander's abilities and buildings like taverns. Collect are underestimate those ones, very powerful tools if correctly managed.

"Friends" right. Don't make me laugh. Last alpha a small despotism alliance of "friends" was wiped by another large despotism alliance and you were part of that small alliance if I recall correctly. The wipe happened not because of relationships no matter how you like to treat it, but because your alliance was small and their risk of attacking you was manageable. The only reason why despots don't fight each other is because of risk and fighting collectivists is much easier. Don't start again on this "friends" thing :)

No matter what you're thinking , but the reason of this attack was not because we were a big despot alliance happy to fight a small despot alliance. The reason is in what Mina put above: the WAR Victory. That small  despot alliance was very aggressive attacking small collect players in order to fill up their Trophy Hall. Instead of constanly reinforce those players - our friends yes - we decided to attack and wipe out that alliance in order to stop those attacks for trophies. We did it to protect a friend collectivism alliance and not because we were looking for easy targets . As I said before , every player has his own motivations, mayne not very obvious for everybody. 

Players in the same alliance are limited in numbers.

Plus, when we use an army of a player who is offline and his/hers army is wiped out, that player is put in a vulnerable position until s/he logs in and has a chance to retrain.

What I am saying is that the collect alliances are only complaining and asking for more items to defend instead of putting ressources and time to rise a correct army to defend, that's all.

You are dead wrong. I am not bringing it up because someone complains to me. In fact many people can confirm that I rejected their complaints and suggested learn how to play defensive from other more experienced players/alliances. I am adressing this issue because that's how things fare objectively. In fact I have contacted Kyron first to get feedback about their defensive experience and asked for feedback in private. She never contacted me first or complained, that's why I was very interested in her feedback - due to the complete absense of complaints.

I have also watched various reports and talked to players in defensive alliances, filtering out the "complaint" parts and picking the rational seeds.

Despot alliances do not fight each other.

All arguments you can make crash against that fact no matter what kind of clever literature you can come up with in your posts.

OK if you want despot alliances fighting EXCLUSIVELY other despot alliances, just say it :-) we are here to test it after all, right? BUT , in this case move the collects on other server , because when the game will be released it will be always despots against collectivism, because they are more numerous, because they are building on borders, and because they dont want to built defences and army to defend. All they want is to built, farm and expand....and this is a fact too 

Despots learned that the only way to defeat a collect player was to send in as many armies as possible. That forced us to bond and attack together. Our only other choice is to attack small, inexperienced player. Something that no despot player wants to do.

And it is not true that a single player could not be anywhere on the map before we can get there. We attacked a player at the opposite corner of the map from Kyron, but she was still able to get her massive army in there. Kyron is located on the south eastern corner of the map. The player she reinforced was in the northern west corner of the map. And we spied often before the attack, so know that she was not there before until the last moment before we hit.

If you want us to attack with smaller numbers, make it possible for fewer armies to be able to do something.

I became a despot, because I was getting bored of farming. Now I feel very discouraged, as attacking is useless. The only thing that happens is that I lose my army. 

I became a despot, because I was getting bored of farming. Now I feel very discouraged, as attacking is useless. The only thing that happens is that I lose my army. 

Try declaring war to the other despot alliance of equal scale. The fun will be back I guarantee it and attacks will no longer be useless :)

Just asking the question, by despot alliance, are you talking about an alliance that has more than 50% despot heroes, or some other number? You must have an overview about alliances, could you tell us how many you think are despot alliances, and how many you think of as collective. I suspect the number of despot ones will be very small compared with collective, so the odds of fighting a collective alliance will be much greater than fighting a despot one.

Bers, you are missing the fact that we did not all start out bonded. I can tell you that I attacked Black Flags members heavily in A4. But instead of getting angry at each other, we became friends. We bonded as a strategy to overcome the collect players, that we could not get alone. 

"Players in the same alliance are limited in numbers."

That is not true. You chose for each of you to have multiple heroes. That is not the case in other alliances.

The fact that despotism alliances prefer to fight collectivism alliances and not each other is a undeniable proof that the game balance is skewed towards despotism players and needs to be fixed. Only when despotism alliances will be fighting collectivistms and other despotism alliances equally, then it may be called a balanced state.

There are so many things 'wrong' with the first sentence, so i'm not sure where to begin.  It is so wrong to say fighting against collective alliances is what we PREFER.  Most, if not all despot alliances choose their targets based on the behaviour of the other players in the game.  We fight collective heros because they have built on borders or because they have chosen to build only culture and squeeze out our domains.  Yes, at times we will pick a target of someone in the alliance that has done nothing, but this is considered war strategy, to cut off resource and reinforcement help to the actual target. 

I can certainly say, that fighting a collective target is really NOT fun, since it takes so much planning to coordinate 10 players from around the world to overcome a strong (and even not so strong) collective defense.  In addition to all the planning that is involved, the actual damage done is so much less satisfying than it is if we were to hit a despot player.  Not to mention, if their defenses are strong and with proper reinforcements, we risk losing huge armies, that will take days to retrain.  Let's also not forget, having to navigate attacks between novice protection (when applicable) or lada's or doves.   

It takes massive armies to do any sort of damage to a collect domain or to overcome even the smallest collect army with or without veles' protection.  So, no, bers, we do not 'PREFER' to hit collective alliances.  I can guarantee, that if a despot alliance was dumb enough to border build on our alliance, we would be declaring just as quickly on them.  But the truth is, most despot alliances, would not do this, because they know it would mean war.  And why would you invite someone to come along and completely wipe out your domain?  The fact is, collect players border build because they CAN....and know that they have so much protection in doing so. 

Despot alliances do not fight each other. Fact.

Bers, I would be very grateful if you could answer the question I posed in my earlier post, I think a lot of us, both playing despot and coll would like to know:)

Despot alliances do not fight each other. Fact.

Fact:  there was a despot alliance last alpha, led by Startouf that exhibited 'collective' type of behaviour of border building and resource stealing.  There was a huge war between despot alliances back then, the stronger despot alliance won.  Now, if there were more 'despot alliances' that chose to exhibit the same behaviours, you'd have more wars between despot alliances. 

Fact: A despot alliance chose last alpha to hit another collective alliance and then posted taunting fireworks over a destroyed domain.  The collective alliance that was hit happened to be friendly with a despot alliance that was unofficially 'protecting' them from such attacks.  A despot versus despot war ensued and the stronger alliance won.

So, the 'FACT' is, that it's not a matter of 'preference', as you stated.  It is not a FACT that despot alliances do not fight each other, they do, when there is a reason to do so. 

There can never be a balance of a despot alliance attacking collect and despot alliances equally, because they don't behave the same way, giving reason to go to war, and also, because the ratio of collect versus despot alliances does not support this fantasy you have.  The FACT is, collect players do not need any more defense bonuses.