Nah, I'd say that it's pretty broken. Have fun voting between 2 parties both in the pocket of the same corporations when you next have an election._Gunnar wrote: (b) some of what you are saying is true of the real world as well... its not broken that bigger, more organized and unified groups of people do better.
As far as a game goes, big groups doing well is fine but if it completely destroys the smaller players it doesn't work. The loss of social mobility is a bad thing on society and in a game it ruins it because effectively it removes the ability for a lot of people to win. If you combine that with the inability of small factions to fit below the raider by constraining themselves and not being a threat you have a problem. The predator/prey relationship doesn't exist, this is a child stomping ants because they're bored (I used to do that). The problem is that the ants are players and if they're repeatedly stomped they'll just leave. (inb4 fuckyouImananteater.jpg)
People are being raided for no gain. People should be able to sit out on a fairly crappy bit of land with low quality resources and play without the mega alliance just bulldozing them for no reason. Maybe some lower level raiders might hit you, but the sort of people you can aspire to ever be able to stop. As far as it stands, you might as well just have a volcano spawn on the village and incinerate everyone instantly for all many players can do to stop them.
I've been lucky so far. However there have been raids all over my area. The resources are crap, there's nothing worth taking but there's been palibashers alarmingly close. Of course I suspect in this case it also has something to do with all the nub villages on my coastline. I'm tempted to sack them myself just so they stop drawing raiders in towards my own hermitage by virtue of making people step onto the chunk of land I live in and wonder if there's more inland. Hell, most of them don't even have palisade. Or anything of worth either.
Oh and a) doesn't apply to combat skills does it?
