I will return the favor... reopening the topic of the gap between CC players and free players is a waste of time.  The CC players are not going to pay for marginal advantages.  The only way for Plarium to continue collecting revenue (and keeping the game alive) is by selling new features to them.  The gap between a small time CC player, a mid-level CC player and a mega-CC player is just as big. Even a player spending several hundred $ per month will not keep up.

I've never been able to compete with any of the high level players.  I've seen coalition attacks where 3 players lost 90,000 agemas, 70,000 Promachos and 5000 champions in a single failed attack... and I saw a string of 10 consecutive attacks of that magnitude until my coalition capital fell. We had over 3 billion defense. Replacing such an army will cost tens of thousands of dollars.  I lost 100% of my defensive units.  I don't know why it happened but I think bragging rights and egos were heavily involved.  There was only minuscule rewards for the huge losses so it made no economic sense.

The point is that the gap is huge and how huge it is is pretty irrelevant.

The city name changes is ruining my daily enjoyment of the game so please don't dismiss my post so lightly.