hello milt..

im really sorry to see u this upset

it happened to me too,alot.iv been crushed,defeated and lost so many times when i was a lower lvl player

i was so upset..but i didnt give up.i tried to become powerful myself too and i did

there will come a time that u will destroy a big dragon army easily,then u will see that its not always the army size that wins.at least not in a castle fight

edit ! i hope u will recover ur army in time

It's very sad to see your post but all too familiar, over the years.

I won't patronise you by assuming I have some superior understanding of the game and if only I share some hints and tips it will suddenly take the blinkers off your eyes enabling you to see have got it all wrong. That would be effectively trolling you. You haven't got it wrong, it is unbalanced just the way you see it and your feeling are opinion are valid.

You can after all buy an infinite quantity of troops, immediately, on day 1 of playing. So the only thing that stops a day 1 player dominating and completely changing a server, from day 1, is whether they want to pay enough to do it. You don't need to analyse anything else about the game to question it's balance.

I have been trying to explain for a few years here, what I think is the undercurrent of your post.

When players feel they can't compete anymore they become angry and frustrated as the game loses any point for them. Eventually they will quit if they don't have any hope it can improve.

It's a long and complicated post  but I tried to explain this in the context of the academic research into what motivates people to play games. As most of the developers will be aware of that research and use it to some extent in their game development, the hope is, it might talk in a language that resonates with them.

The thread is here if you want to try it:
https://plarium.com/forum/en/stormfall-age-of-war/51_game-discussion/201882_importance-of-game-balance/

What really motivates players to play an RTS is a sense of achievement. What gives people a sense of achievement will differ from person to person but the common thread is they can all be destroyed if the level of imbalance becomes too great. All except the desire to dominate which of course can actually be enabled by pay to win.

So we are doomed here to a tiny player base, where the majority of veterans are big spenders who find the game suits them as it enables them to dominate, without the need to be particularly skillful, knowledgeable, or having to put significant time into the game. You just press one of the various pay to win buttons. There is very little room for anyone else.