FoE has some brilliant business people working for them because level 4 is just a clever way to extract real money from players. FoE makes battling impossible by giving themselves a outrageously high attack & defense bonus which is a clever way to get players to negotiate and buy diamonds.
This is exactly what I have reported to my guild, this 4th difficulty is designed to make players spend diamonds trying to complete it, especially for anyone above Contemporary Era. Those in my guild in CA and below with maximum attack boost GB's (all 3 GB at level 10 or more) are just able to do level 4, and those in CE can also do it because anti-air troop retaliates, but the TE, FE and AF levels have SUCH high defense boosts, it is impossible to do level 4 by fighting.
The scale of the defense boost increases INCREDIBLY from age to age in the GE, but the same GB's and attack boosts are available to all! Players are forced to do negotiating in level 4 if they are above TE. And the negotiation game is costly and you're going to want those extra chances with diamonds or you have to start all over, right?
What I want to know is why especially FE/Arctic players are being penalized going up against 200% and 250% attack and defense troops when the max available in the game is about half that - unless you fill your city with 30 strike teams!? I have 131%/93% while attacking and can get another 30% from the tavern boost, and there was no way to beat 200%/200% boosted enemies in 2 waves! Talk about unbalanced, is that what you're trying to encourage, we rip up all our other buildings and fill our cities with just barracks for boost?
I would be better off if I had stayed in Contemporary and never gone up in eras, at least the enemy defense boosts would be reasonable and I could win with the attack boosts available in the game. Is that the lesson you wanted to give, don't go up to higher ages because you will make it impossible to play them? Level 4 feels like a giant middle finger to all the players who stuck with the game, played for 2 or 3 years, unlocked all the ages and finished the tech tree, have all their GB's up over level 10 and built up the ability to fight - because we want to play the game! - and then guess what, Innogames release something that is impossible for us to do by normal game playing and essentially MUST be bought with diamonds if you want to do it. Really? This is the kind of thing people leave games over.
And to add injury to the insult of my Arctic city and all the GB's I've worked to build up over 2+ years aren't good enough to participate in level 4, the prizes were in no way equal to the goods our guild spent opening it, or the personal goods, promethium and diamonds that were spent trying it out. We won't be doing level 4 again, unless and until it's rebalanced.