Now you're getting to the heart of what's REALLY wrong with the game. But you have to give these guys credit. They say they're not looking for coiners with an absolutely straight face. Bullies with credit cards most definitely try to control the game. It's a real flaw. The game would change with a more even playing field and they know it, but as long as some players flood them with money, they could care less. look what it takes for them to even respond to a simple query here. But your payment? That goes right through. Any issues related to payment? Immediately addressed. At least they deny it with a straight face.
You're such a cynic! 
We considered this, but while a maximum of 2x would be beneficial for new players, it would also become a pretty major hindrance for advanced ones (say a player with a score of 13M attacking one of 2M). Player protection is a very tricky thing, because too much protection and you end up favoring new players at the expense of experienced ones, but too little and the reverse happens. We settled for the three mechanisms that I mention on the other thread, but it's not set in stone, we welcome ideas on more protection methods as long as it strikes a good balance between too protected and too loose.
experienced players know how handle atacks, they move trops while they are afk, atacking inactives or barbarians carryng all his resoruces whith them, so there is not problem, also experienced players just need trops and cereal, and can became killers machines,
Honestly, I don't think limiting the range makes sense at all. At that range you'd actually see the game turn stagnant as you will almost always see significant troop losses in any battle. Given that a large number of players never make it beyond the 5k mark before quitting (we have ~4792 players on our server but only 522 of those have hit even 2400, ~3800 never reached 1000) It would also make it very difficult for cities just leaving beginner's protection to make use of all the inactives to grow with anything other than resources and barbarians... a distinct disadvantage.
On the other hand, after 5 days or 2400 points when you leave beginners protection, you could be attacked by someone with 24k points.. a score at the point of building a 2nd city.. most likely with eagles and certainly atlatls.. you have no chance of even causing casualties to.
So imho viable options are,
* Make no changes and teach new members to walk like the rest and nurture them to grow quickly.
* Extend Beginner's protection to 5 days or 5k
* Make different scale (or perhaps a form of beginner's protection buff) that limits who you can be attacked by between 2.4k and ~10k e.g: you can only be attacked by someone 2X bigger at 2K increasing to 10X bigger at 10k
The ultimate truth here, is the more you coddle new players, the harsher the truth they will face once they are no longer under protection.. just like any other game the ultimate answer is to learn to play.
the harsher the truth they will face once they are no longer under protection
I think the whole idea is to make that truth a little more...reasonable. It's not like new players don't know that, at current time, it's possible to lose all their troops and half their resources because someone 9.9x bigger just had to have 2k more resources right now. It's just too much and is probably a huge part of the reason new players don't stick around.
It's not always 100 pt beginners deciding they don't have the patience. When I was starting out, one of my nearest neighbors had gone inactive and actually taken the trouble to change their name to "Inactive" and their city name to "Attacked too often to progress."
Going off of that, another possible change is to make that "same player can't attack too soon after attack" expand to everyone. That way people can't be the recipient of 3 DIFFERENT ATTACKS IN THE SAME HOUR BY PLAYERS OVER 5X THEIR SCORE (yes this happened to me and if I hadn't recently learned that walking was a thing that would probably have been the moment I left the game).
The low protections don't exactly encourage bullying, but they make it a little too easy. What possible reason would someone have to attack someone 10% of their score when they could attack someone with 70%, still lose no troops, and get a lot more res? I can only imagine it's just to keep the little guy from climbing at all, just because they can ( = bullying). Try explaining the logic to people who do this. The playerbase shrinks, and everyone loses, even the bullies, they get a smaller victim pool. As for everyone else: people who are big on the team playing lose potential tribemates/allies, people who are in it for a HEALTHY competition lose some of the field, and people who just mind their own business have a higher proportion of bullies to deal with.
I think the whole idea is to make that truth a little more...reasonable.
The main post seems to be focused on the 10X system. If the proposal was along the lines of "Players recently attacked cannot be attacked by out players for N hours" then I would agree. But I think that the 10X range is probably the right one for the game to be playable. While there are people out there who do it because they can I think it's more likely that the majority attack because they need the resources. If you restrict the pool, you'll also restrict growth and so ultimately the number of people who can attack you will end up being similar just with higher stakes. If there's a tribe or group who are out there to bully you, you might cause more damage back to them but they will still bully you.
the majority attack because they need the resources
Again, once you get above about 5x it's chump change to the attacker. Close to 10x? It's not even worth the corn. Literally operating at a loss just to keep the little guy down.
Even 5x might be a little excessive but it's way better than 10x and remove a lot of the "just because" unbalanced attacks.
If you restrict the pool, you'll also restrict growth and so ultimately the number of people who can attack you will end up being similar just with higher stakes.
I think you might have misunderstood me here -- I don't want to restrict the pool. The current state of the game is keeping the pool small. If protections were increased, more people would stay, and it would increase the competition while actually lowering the stakes for a single attack to a more reasonable level.
you might cause more damage back to them but they will still bully you
I'd actually bank on the extra damage as a deterrent. Bullies bully because they can. Just like in real life, many stop the second they get actual resistance. It's the only argument people like that listen to.
I see both sides of this argument, and agree that there needs to be some tinkering with the percentages for safety. A small percentage of new players have never played this type of game before, and they are usually the ones that quit before getting to 1000 points, or before they even get to 2400 and their protection ends. I believe most of that is because they don't like this style of game. A lot of new players get really frustrated when they get attacked shortly after their protection ends and they lose all their troops and resources. Feeling defeated, they leave the game before they have a chance to really learn how to play it.
I have experience from Evony and Kingdoms of Camelot, so I was expecting to be attacked as soon as I was free of the protection. I searched for a small tribe to join because I am not comfortable being in a big group, although I understand the benefits of those groups. I prepared as best I could but was indeed attacked 44mins after my protection ended. This player at that time was just over 3200 and I was 2510. Close in size but he had a big army to attack with and has wiped out many of my troops on several occasions, being near me in-game. In real life he lives on the other side of the world from me and is online while I am offline, and vice versa. I have learned to send troops and resources to the inactives near me, but they always return during my absence and he manages to attack at some point while I have many troops there. I have been playing solidly for almost a week and am almost at 4,900 points now, he is at 8,700 - about 40% bigger than me. I will catch him at some point and exact my revenge, because I am stubborn that way. In the meantime, I am enjoying the chance to get back into the action and see what I can do on this game. Thanks for listening, and maybe this will help the devs realize the scope of the situation, as far as new players are concerned.
I think most ppl in this thread are low lvl players since they seem to think you don't get anything out of attacking a player 10x lower than yourself.
Think of a high lvl player with 20 mill points. He can get several millions of ressources out of attacking a 2 mill point player and it is definitely worth the reward.
A limitation of this kind at the high lvl would kill off the high end game since there are much less ppl to attack when you are high lvl. A limitation of 2x would mean I could only attack 10 players in the entire game, some of which are my own tribe members.
hi all,
So, I think you have the right attitude for the game 
I am also an absolute fighting nature and never give up !!!! 
keep up the good work, recruit jaguars, shamans and quipus 
Lancer you need only as a first task force
glg wyrda
