About three years ago, gold was very scarce, and it was a challenge to keep a shield up. I had to be really inventive in protecting my troops overnight and keep my rss low or they would be lost to raiding enemies.

About six months later, gold became richly available. So by the time I was getting stronger (development went much slower then), most people had shields up and it became harder to find an enemy to raid, but not impossible. Then SH boosts became richly available at the bank and I quit the game for a year because it was just the clan who spent most money to their sh that would win cvc. No skills needed. It took a long time for Plarium to realise this, but eventually they did. Although the new system is still flawed (attack & defence can easily cancel each other out is the defending clan plays it right), it is a solid improvement. 

Nowadays everyone is used to shield discipline and it is pretty hard to find an unshielded enemy over lvl 22. The checkpoints we make 'destroying enemies competition' rarely move beyond the first two.

And then what does Plarium do? Domain guards. It was ok to have some sparsely available. Since Furious resource hun however, everyone has them making it even harder to 'destroy enemies'. What once was a tactical wargame has evolved to a development game with a few big kills a month if you are lucky. Strategy is mostly gone, fighting is mostly gone. 

Vikings has become boring.