Alvin you are talking about some of the players, not all buyers are like this and we non buyers should maintain the decorum and not speak ill of others. You cant claim anything you like. Even i have bragged to my friend showing my army hehehe.

Plarium is not a charity organisation first of all, they introduced their talents in the online gaming sector and created a game to be played freely. This helped players like us to do something exciting in our spare time and interact with players globally. Now, the Plarium people are not robots who work tirelessly for others pleasure, they need the compensation for their work, so they introduced the buying system which facilated them to earn money from their playing community.

If you don't play persians, you won't get an army, period.

Try to build them yourself... Tell me when you're done, in 50 or 100 years... LOL

Else about the topic title :

You "must" not join a coaltion if you do'nt want to. It just makes the game more interesting, and it's clearly aimed at coalitions. But you're never forced to do so.