A realistic protection period

    The existing time limit may be ok, though I would make it a week, but the points limit is ludicrous. No one is in a position to protect themselves at that level. I feel the points limit should be eliminated completely or else made much higher (e.g. 50k). The time limit alone would suffice.

    You make some good points. However the only thing the devs really care about at thispoint is how much money they can make off the servers. Why do you think the newest one started up so quickly off Copan? Because most players quit playing Copan after the coiners destroyed it. Same thing is currently happening on the new server, and the coiners have been spending like mad. This justifies the greed of the devs.

    To clarify, there are currently three protection mechanisms that apply:

    • Beginners protection which lasts until 2400 points (full protection from everyone)
    • 10x score protection (players with a score ten times higher or more simply cannot attack the lower score player, and viceversa)
    • Beaten city protection, in which if a defender whose score is 75% or less that of the attacker has one of his cities defeated, the attacker may not attack the same city again for 12 hours.

    1. is admittedly low, but that's why 2. and 3. exist as well. See also: FAQ - 8.5. Defense and protection features

    #1 is ridiculously low, and #'s 2 and 3 are no protection at all. Admit it, the game is made for bullies. Say someone has reached the marvelously high score of 2500 points. If he has an army at all, it's small and weak. Now someone with 24.9k points can attack him and reduce him to ashes. After that he is still fair game for anyone else. So player 1 defeats him and he has protection from player 1 for 12 whopping hours. No defense against player 2, 3, 4, etc.
    There is not a scrap of fairness in this anywhere. It is completely unbalanced.