Each and every player in Sparta: War of Empires can reach TOP positions. That, however, requires a lot of time, Resources, Units, and considerable effort. Alternatively, you can use a special Resource - Drachmas - to develop your City and increase military power to dominate the map. Everyone can get Drachmas for free simply playing the game actively, i.e. participating in Tournaments, capturing Emporia, completing quests and Achievements, etc. 

Some players decide in favor of in-app purchases to save time. It allows them to progress a little faster. Sparta: War of Empires is free-to-play, and like any other game of this type it gives all players free access to all game features and an opportunity to accelerate their progress with in-app purchases. It is not unfair that players taking this route, thus supporting the development of the game, enjoy certain advantages. Again, all these advantages may be summarized in one word - time. It takes less time to advance, but does not change the core of what every player needs to do to develop their City and grow military power. Moreover, there is a number of in-game limits so no one player can dominate an entire server. Therefore, when we develop a new feature, we make sure it will not negatively affect the game balance.  

Yet another thing to consider is the social aspect of our games, which is extremely important. We want our players to unite in Coalitions and build Alliances to become stronger. We understand that it is hard to compete against stronger players -- it has always been, in any game -- and that is why we pay so much attention to various Coalition activities and give players an opportunity to unite against a stronger enemy. If you have any suggestions as to how this part of the game can be improved, we will be happy to hear from you. 

a canned response from a marketing type that can't admit it is a pay for play game under US laws...but your supposed balancing is not working very well....leading to unfair advantage ( notice the words used ). AS you can tell on your own, there are numerous instances in the blog concerning coiners and their advantages..your premise is that they only have the advantage of time and eventually every player can get to their same point of accomplishment for free. It only takes more, or slightly more, time.

While a reasonable sounding premise,  it fails the giggle test because your basic fiction is that everyone will stay in the game and eventually get to that same point ...even after repeatedly being punished pummeled or zero'ed out of troops by the overpowered coiners with the many advantages...in point of fact, don't many of  the free players eventually get discouraged and quit...making more in=game resources available for the coiners that are left. This is seemingly evident by the large or massive number of cities abandoned on each server. In fact one of the coiners told me that his goal is to hit players over and over so they get frustrated and quit....giving him free resources any time he wants them. And he mentioned the higher the level of the player is he gets to leave, the more resources he eventually obtains.

To demonstrate this imbalance, I offer a specific example that occurred on server 2  - where 1 player and a small henchman took out in one attack almost the entire defense of 131 players in their cap......and that defense amounted to 54% of the total defense that the 131 players had available which was amassed over their time in the game.....whether it was 90 days or over 120 days or 180 days or 1 year or whatever.....and the defenses per player ranged from a couple 100k up to 13 million....all taken out by an over powered offense owned by a coiner who supposedly only " bought time ".....lol..   Under what logic or rules do you think that is balanced???         2 vs 131       ???

And following your advice about banding together, it appears one would need a coalition amounting in the thousands to be balanced against a coiner or partial coiner coalition made up of the players described above, which as you already know is not allowed or possible under your game guidelines, rules and software.

 I don't know if 1/3 or 1/2 or 5% of the 131 players will quit ...but it won't be zero...all because you allowed such an imbalance to occur in a supposedly free and fair game...

I wonder if a US Attorney will have a different view of your marketing approach/ploy...I wonder what happens when gaming entities change the odds in blackjack or roulette or slots in favor of the house......have you done the same thing, by overly favoring the paying player ???  and at the expense of the free player??........under the fiction "that it is only time you are buying"???........this  may get interesting.....lets see what happens next...and if you need a screen shot of the battle mentioned above, you can ask the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York for it.....he will have it by the time any of you read this.

To demonstrate this imbalance, I offer a specific example that occurred on server 2  - where 1 player and a small henchman took out in one attack almost the entire defense of 131 players in their cap......and that defense amounted to 54% of the total defense that the 131 players had available which was amassed over their time in the game.....whether it was 90 days or over 120 days or 180 days or 1 year or whatever.....and the defenses per player ranged from a couple 100k up to 13 million....all taken out by an over powered offense owned by a coiner who supposedly only " bought time ".....lol..   Under what logic or rules do you think that is balanced???         2 vs 131       ???

How did Nordmann take out Mayhem Makers,House Of Batiatus,La Horde and many more?

All top 10 coalitions with coiners

They had more coiners with more purchasing power.