I started playing Tentlan on STEAM in July 2018 (shortly after it opened) and watched it grow quickly. The credit card warriors were already making their mark on the server. There was one particular player and tribe that spent most of their time in general chat complaining about and giving lots of grief to those CC warriors. It continued for a couple of months until the CC warriors got tired of hearing (dealing with) the complaints and quit the game. That tribe then moved up 2 spaces on the leaderboard as they wiped out the cities of those warriors and their tribe. The tribe had been riding on the coattails of those CC warriors and were really defenseless because they had depended on their big guys to protect them and did not really learn how to play the game. Their tribe withered and has been slowly disappearing from the board as other tribes get stronger. A few months later, as the tribes settle into a few "wars of domination", a few new players joined the server and were using credit cards to build great empires quickly. They joined the tribe that had been the most vocal about "credit card warriors" and everyone seemed to be happy. When we mentioned that credit card warriors were once again destroying the game for the rest of us, WE were accused of being "sore losers". It is funny that the very player that spent so much time criticizing the CC warriors has admitted in general chat that she also uses her credit card, and she has allowed the current credit card warriors to carry her tribe up to the top in a matter of weeks, where they continue to dominate as the other players and tribes quit the game. Now it is April and Xlapak is 9 months old. a look at the leaderboard will tell you how sad it is and that it is dying a slow death. Players #1 is 62,384,908...#2 is 19,096,898...#3 is 18,070,404...#4 is 12,179,556...#5 is 11,969,255...#6 is 11,373,137..... can you see the credit card warrior that continues to play? 
I have read so many complaints about dying servers on the Forum and I agree with most everyone that the credit card warriors are destroying the game for all of us. It is sad that this happens to almost every game I have played. I understand that the developers need to make a profit off of their work to create these games, but there needs to be a way for them to "reign in" the credit card warriors, in order to preserve some integrity for their games. Sadly, I do not see this happening with Tentlan. They just continue to create more servers, and different types of servers (faster builds, peace, stronger barbs, etc) instead of dealing with the issue of paying customers getting the biggest advantages in the game and ruining it for everyone else. I am very disappointed in the lack of discussion by the developers in this forum. It appears that they do not care that their servers are dying and only want to merge these dying servers to watch them die as well. I will not be playing this game much longer since it has become just a glorified version of Farmville.
I started playing because I am a history nut and I wanted the chance to create a Mayan city and play in a "Mayan environment". It was fun for a while but has now lost all its charm. I apologize for the length of this post. I just needed to vent some frustration and hope that the developers eventually figure out what has killed their game, before they go bust as a company. Good luck to you all and may the gods of providence continue to bless you and your empires.
Dying Servers
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I understand your frustration, but while it's easy to blame credit cards, reality is a bit more complex than that. We've worked hard to make Tentlan "PvE friendly" so to speak, but at the end of the day, Tentlan is, at its core, a "hard" PvP game. And it is our experience that regardless who decides to make purchases and who doesn't, as servers mature the tendency is always for winners to reign and displace everyone else. This is a core design question that some players enjoy and some do not, but it does cause servers to become less active as time goes on.
It's complex, but it is not an issue that escapes us, nor something purposely designed to extract money at all costs (we don't do that sort of thing). I cannot promise to make Xlapak better in the short term, but I can say that we are not oblivious; this is on our radar and we do not intend to go bust.
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Here is a list of suggestions that would help with these problems:
1) Make it possible to reduce travel with turq. When you have already sent your troops you should be able to spend turq to reduce travel time. This will make it easier to coordinate several walks, and help avoid attacks timed with nahuals.
2) Only build cities some distance away from other tribes. This would prevent the strategy where some tribes place low lvl cities close to other tribe's hives and hit them with troops from their own high lvl players.
3) Make all killed troops go automatically to Itzna Temple. This would keep many players playing after they got killed.
4) Write a better guide about how to avoid attacks. Many players simply don't know how to stay alive in this game, even when they have been playing for years. Some ppl just start on new servers every time they are killed. You could perhaps even make a tutorial about defense.
5) Make it possible to research better survival rates when you are killed.
6) Remove flags from ppl's profiles on the international servers. It is way too easy to guess when ppl are sleeping when you can see what country they are in.
7) Make it possible to slow down enemy attacks using either research, buildings or some new unit. This would give you better time to coordinate your defense or escape. Speed kills
