When other players that have more than 100,000 points difference attack and can beat the army that is defending the city, the only way that we can defend ourselves against people like that is to spend 9000 silver for a city shield. A lot of us can't make 9000 silver every 24 hrs to protect ourselves. I think that there should be a limit to who you can attack just like there is in the G vs. G. Even when they are in the same age as other players, they have a lot of real money that they are spending to make themselves invincible. Please make it more fair for the rest of us. Thank you.
First: Yes, you can make 9k silver per day. Plenty of people do. What you need is a good friends list, a big table with all the trimmings, and the opportunity to spend 30 seconds on the game once in a while through the day, and, once a day, long enough to visit all your friends. Plenty of people manage this.
Second: You don't need to make 9k silver per day. There are other ways of dealing with your situation. You need to develop your city, rather than just rush into the next age. Build and level the right GBs. Do the GE for reward buildings to improve your stats. Play for the right prizes in events. Gather a defensive army. Get ahead of your age on quests and Continent Map, to win higher age unattached troops, perfect for defense. Be active, and collect on time. Have a sufficiently high production that you can loose 1/4 to looting, and still do well. Once you do enter a new age, be as prepared as you can be, and have a plan for what technologies to develop and buildings to build.
Third: No one is invincible. The AI may be dafter than the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, but a strong enough defensive army will stop anyone, even with the AI around to sabotage it. High defensive boost, from GBs, other structures, and tavern. Troops one age ahead, chosen to maximize the effect of boosts. Irregular changes in army composition. You can win several defensive battles, and, even when you loose, you can bleed the attacker of his/her strongest and favorite troops, troops that he/she needs for other purposes.
Fourth: Attacks are a game feature, not only for the attacker, but also for you. Dealing with attacks is a challenge that all players are facing, some more successfully than others.The game has done what strategy games are supposed to; it has provided you with a challenge. When you're unsuccessful, that's not because you're being unfairly treated; it's because your strategy is failed. You need to come up with a new one.
Finally: "Real money" can speed things up. You can reach the top of your neighborhood faster.
Slightly faster. You'll still have to go through the same stages, though; there's no instant fix, even with diamonds. In fact, excessive use of diamonds carry a risk of getting an unbalanced city, advanced in age, but weak. Mostly, diamond spending just removes annoyances, making game play smoother. What takes a spender 3 weeks and few annoyances, may take you 4 weeks and many annoyances, but you both end up in the same place. If you have the same strategy, you can both end up at the top of your neighborhoods. The reason why you're not at the top has nothing to do with money, real or imagined.
I suppose that beating the little guy is the only way that you can gain anything and that strategy means nothing anymore.
"Beating the little guy" is a completely valid strategy. You build yourself up to become the stronger player, and then you reap the rewards by "beating" the ones who didn't become stronger, either because they didn't try hard enough, or because they followed a failing strategy. If you're the weaker player in every new neighborhood, you are, quite simply, not very good at the game. The reason why you keep loosing is that strategy does matter, and your strategy is bad.
In fact, though, I agree that the strategy aspect of the game is far too weak; that means that a strategy has to be
very, very bad, in order to fail completely. A stronger strategy aspect will make the game more competitive, and create greater differences between good and bad players; small strategic flaws will get big consequences. It's the last thing you should wish for, if you're "the little guy" when the competition is weak.
What do you think points represent if not stat boosting structures, such as watchfires and wishing wells, and high level GBs?
They can represent military boosts, or other things entirely. Here's the thing that will really surprise you: You can also build such structures! With the right strategy, you can be the one with all those points. If you fail to do it, that isn't because the opportunities aren't there, it's because you're not utilizing the opportunities properly.
Is it that they've put more effort in? Or is it that they've been playing for years but avoiding progress
"Progress" can be a lot of different things. It most certainly is a lot more than simply advancing in age. You need to build your strength along with your advance. Fail to do so, and you become a sitting duck to those who did build their strength. And, guess what? That's because they progressed relative to a multitude of parameters, while you followed a simplistic idea of progression. In other words: They've progressed much farther than you.
I often encounter new neighbors who, quite obviously, have delayed advancing in age, in favor of other types of progress. What you do is build your own strength to where you can resist effectively, and then you move past them. The strength they forced you to build will serve you well later; if you keep building on it regularly, you won't have to scramble every time you encounter a developed adversary. You'll even come to relish the challenge.