It's always a pain to get quoted paragraph by paragraph, but alright...
1) Among Them, you find players.... Players that played the game for a long time learning the game – Thats why they can do what they do.
Never said anything otherwise. I'm just explaining an statement of the first line in case OP don't know the community
2) "living in USA/Europe/AnyOtherCountryWithReasonableCurrencyExchangingRates for whom big packs of diamonds are relatively cheap."
The price it costs to buy Diamonds are not exactly cheap by any standards – and since you include "Any other country" it does not really have to do with what country you live in, but the individual players finacial situation. There are people all over the world whom are considered well off and/or rich – Asia, China, South and North America, East and West Europe all included. Players who are willing to spend a considerable amount of Money on the game are essentially financing the game, so that it can reamin a free to play game.
I'm terrible at Geography, in all of its aspects, so I restricted myself to the two regions that have the most impacting money exchange rates if compared to my country's. But my point wasn't trying to diminish people around the world, I was just, again, reassessing to OP what really dictates things in a "free to play" game.
And the game can be played wihtout using money on it...
2.2) "a comfortable financial situation..." I started to play in Guild that used no Diamonds at all – Still managed to be present at the top 10 Guild on the server and one member being in top 10. We tested it and the conlclusion was that people who did not spend money/diamonds on the game were about 3 weeks behind, if they played regulary – that is not much considered how long term the game is.
Yes, it can. I play without buying Diamonds, but this 3 weeks playtime-span doesn't reflect exactly why I think money kind of ruined the experience of this game. Many complaints can be brought to the ground because they're covered by free resources. Military units? Alcatraz! FPs? Arc! Goods? Dresden (and many others, just to not repeat Arc), Happiness? Atomium (and many other, just to not repeat Alcatraz)
But, to me, the biggest unbalance here that directly involves the money factor is the RNG of BPs.
Since we can't get BPs of a specific age anymore, we rely on the RNG that continuously delivers a totally un-proportional amount of low-aged BPs -OR- BPs of GBs we haven't built yet. It's like the game doesn't understand we have no interest in them and keep feeding us "thinking" we're still trying to get a full set for it. In the end, we must donate to other players to get what we wantand here "small" players can't get nearly as much FPs as the top dogs, getting smashed in the rankings or sniped by phone users that have a quicker reaction time. But when eventually they do get high enough in the rankings to get BPs, the amount of repeated BPs is ridiculous.
I've sat with SEVEN full sets of The Arc EXCEPT for the last one for months, constantly donating to others' Arcs and trading BPs is of no use as I don't get that one BP I need whatsoever. Sure, sure, RNG 1:9 would be like 0.1 chance of getting what I needed but I'm certain that a little tweak in the RNG algorithm can be made if the developers have interest in doing so. And that's a big IF.
3) The Historic Card vs The Warplay Strategy card: History had an immense amount of Wars in all ages – so perhaps it is not fair to use the History Card as an excuse not to expect War or Startegy in the game. But I agree to you pointing out "How it is sold" and the Expectations vs How the game is.
I was not defending a side in here. I was just argumenting exactly what you understood. Game is sold as one thing and delivered with something else that has a tremendous impact later on.
4) "an apocalyptic scenario with scarce of goods and the need for bigger buildings to produce small amounts of resources".
Nearly all standard buildings becomes bigger with time - The amount of output does more or less exactly the same. Take the current Event – I have achieved to get the level 7 Mill on two servers in the same day. One city is in Iron Age with only the Oracle and Zeus as GB´s. The other city is fully teched in VF. The war play in Iron age is as challenging as it is in VF. Using the city space and gathering goods proposes different challenges in all Era´s, but essentially the challenges are more or less the same. And why should some parts not become slighty more challenging in higher Era´s?.
Again, no problem in here, just explaining the feeling of the wrongness of being plundered, especially, but not limited to, when new Ages turn in.
To the aspect if it is outrageorus that players can have GBs from far higer Era´s – yes that certainly affects the game and has also been debated a lot.
But it is not somthing that can be done entirely using only Diamonds (it can in principle, but the majority can not at all afford it - someone recently calculated what it would cost to get fully teched only using Diamonds and the number was sky high) – A player still needs to be dedicated and create connections, join a good guild and play well to get these advantages.
I play alone, in one world only, so I can't tell if there are players that save free Diamonds to buy-off entire sets of newly released GBs or not and I definitely didn't even consider someone who buys-off the tech tree because I now that would an insane "investment"
But, even if there are players capable of saving 1600 of an endeavour like this, they would be capable of doing this once in a very long while. "Rich players" (as it's a relative term) can do this many, many times with multiple GBs. I've been attacked by players with PvP/GvG GBs close to level 100 with nothing else but SoKs and Terrace Farms in their cities. No effort in thinking through the game at all, just feed Diamonds, buy levels, use their own FPs or their guildmates' and Auto-battle.
The VF future is not exactly Apocalyptic in concept and even if it was – what is wrong with that?. Most Sci-Fi IP´s has narratives evolving around various aspects of apocalyptic scenarios. InnoGames has to a great extend proposed scenarios that includes several sides of future speculations. As for me they could include Aliens and Space Demons whatever – I would still be fine with that – We already have Turtle Atillery and other Non Functional based designs = Fantasy Genre.
I'm also OK with the concept, no problems at all. But you'd agree with me that if compared to the game up to the Colonial Age in which we needed one Building to produce one Good and now, depending on the GBs built, their levels or even the luck we might need even up to three, it's certainly an apocaluptic point-of-view.