So I'm going to start my reply with something I normally wouldn't share (especially before the age is over), but I think needs said in this case: my strategy for this age as a player (not Creator related). To be clear, this is what I was thinking. Not necessarily what my allies were.
At the end of the last age, Felic and Shylah decided they wanted to be allies this round. Since Felic and KR didn't think it would be good for SL and EC to be on the same, Felic asked KR to take SL to the Shadow side this round (or at least that's my understanding; one of them can correct me). KR and Kev were reluctant, as they have always fought for Light and had started up a RP backstory with them as Light. KR told me they were thinking about it, and it made me debate which side to take NVS on next time.
Then I came up with what I thought could be a third option: make it a 3 way fight. EC and WT could fight for the Light, SC and their Shadowy allies be Shadow, while NVS and SL could make up a neutral alliance. After last age's cut and dry "Light vs Shadow" battle, the thought of what could happen in a 3 way fight intrigued me. I thought it would open up a lot of possibilities for the game and make it more fun for everyone.
The Age started and that's how things went with the 3 sides. Everyone set up their own territories and as we expanded we started pushing against each other. The way things starting coming together was more based off geography than anything else. Based on their locations, the Band allied with CS as they were there best hope to hold their cities from the larger clans. (I'll admit my original plan with NVS was to push along the southern coast after securing the Waste). EC and WT had nice strong hold on their areas, but they had little overlap so it was hard to help each other out. And in that, I saw an opportunity.
I saw EC and more specifically WT, as a much bigger threat to NVS's cities. CS was kinda weak then, especially with Sam losing days of activity due to RL issues. Ironically, it was fear of CS collapsing against the weight of being out numbered by the Light players in EC and WT that made me open to the idea of a temporary alliance. Amador, Illian, and Fal Dara were spread out and shared no wilderness areas with each other. With a coordinated effort between NVS, SL, CS, and the Band, we could divide EC and WT's forces and give ourselves the best shot of winning against you guys. We hoped we'd be able to win 2 of the 3.
It worked great, but partially because we got lucky. We caught EC and WT off guard, which tends to happen with the first CBs of the age. But we were supposed to declare our battles over 6 hours before we did, except the Band accidentally took Illian the night before. We could still do it if we got SL or CS to drop support of the Band to give control back to WT, but due to scheduling we couldn't coordinate it. In the mean time though, WT dumped a lot of turns to take back the city. Therefore, when we declared the battles they were immediately at a disadvantage. If we declared when originally planned, it would be a different story.
I'll also conceed that in those first 3 battle, yes the WT got screwed over on participation points. There were 3 level 1 WT members logged out in the city for much of the battle and the brought down their average level to low to earn points. That took a bad situation for the WT and made it worse. That freed up our side to throw more support into Amador, which was a fairly close battle. That led us to win all 3 which we considered a huge upset.
I'll also admit that our side did 'run up the score' by adding support in each other's cities to flip control in a few of the closer ones. This made the defeat even more crushing and yes we were patting ourselves on the back more than we should have, but we assumed there would be a counterstrike coming and we'd be on the receiving end very soon.
At this point, I still planned on ending the alliance with CS after a while. To the NVS, they served to keep EC busy in the West. After ages of NVS being a relatively small 'tag along' clan, I was terrified of taking EC and WT on at the same time, even with ally support. Even after the success NVS has had this round, I still am.
After the first battles, NVS had the enough to declare a CB in Tar Valon. I laughed at that. The idea of NVS taking TV from WT seemed ludicris! It was just so impossible a thought. However, having that ability made me feel a little more secure. Something to keep in my back pocket in case WT or EC tried something in one of my other cities like Mayene. I wanted to keep the option, but was reluctant to use it unless I needed to (my allies can verify that one).
When WT shifted to Black Hills, it came as a surprise but a welcome one. Gave us some room to work in the East. And even though he wasn't as active as usual, the loss of Seth and his characters was a huge blow to EC and WT. Not sure who else left after those first battle so not sure the other impacts, but I agree you guys were weakened. And even though Seth and I didn't see eye to eye sometimes, I HATE it when the game loses players.
The next battle between EC and EM in Tanchico I stayed out of. I do have to commend whoever's idea it was to do the battle and then have them switch sides to be allies. It was a great move that caught me off guard. Well played there.
Next WT started the battle in Illian. I sent Rufus over there to help out and expected a contested battle. Not sure what happened though, but it didn't seem like WT put up much of a fight. Perhaps I just overestimated their strength or perhaps they held back their turns to use elsewhere (looked like they did a turn dump in Black Hills, but I'm not sure). I will point out though that as much as you like to blame participation points, WT got 900 more points from participation in Illian than Band did (1400 if the 500 bonus points would have been working). Only 150 points short of the max possible for 1 side to earn...
As for these last 2 battles, I thought we were screwed going in. I hoped we could squeek out a win in one of them but didn't think we'd be able to pull off both. What saved us is your splitting up the clans to try and get the max participation point. Not sure who's idea it was, so I'm sorry to whoever it was, but it was just a bad plan. Sure, you locked up being able to get at least 1700 more participation points than us, but at the cost of:
1) all your members that were in your main clans but are now supporting only earn half the points in the battle.
2) all the Ji earned by these members now go to these new support clan which only translates to half that amount when added to support of the main clan and also doesn't help protect your cities from future clan battles
3) you now have to maintain at least one person in all these new clans from here on out, else all the Ji earned there goes to waste.
Besides, you guys were already earning more of the participation points in most of the battles anyways. Yes, the formula for earning participation points are weighted in favor of clans with less players. But duel and NPC points are weighted in favor of the clan with the superior numbers. If a clan with 20 members loses to a clan with 5 members, then either a) that 5 member clan had a TON of support, b) the 20 member clan didn't have the turns to fight, or c) the 20 member clan didn't fight as hard.
Even with the split up strategy, I was still concerned enough that NVS pretty much emptied themselves of turns for this fight and members I talked to were pretty well full. Also didn't help you guys that WT members (counting those now in support clans) dropped over 300 turns taking down the horde last night instead of using those turns towards the CB.
To be honest, I knew WT and EC were outnumbered, but didn't look at how big a difference it was. Still, it's not an 80/20 split. CS, SL, Band, and NVS have 60 members between them currently. EC, WT, and their many sub clans currently have 30 between them. Important to note that pretty much all 30 of those have logged in in the last 24 hours, where I know there are some inactive characters in the "Shadow" clans. Not trying to say it's an even fight (it's still probably almost 2 to 1), but I'm a numbers guys so I do like accurate numbers. But is there any way to ensure each age has balanced sides? You can suggest limiting clan members, but all that will mean is that we'd have 6 clans vs 3 instead of 4 vs 2. We were blessed last age that both sides were fairly evenly matched, but I can't guarantee that will always happen. It sucks being on the disadvantaged side (I've been there often enough in the past), but if you have suggestions on how to make sure both sides are equal, I'm happy to hear them. As always.
Oddly enough, the Light side had a slight edge last age and lost the Last Battle. The Light clans this age (EC and WT) are at an obvious disadvantage, but looking at the individual alignments of players on the "Shadow" side I'd bet money on the Light winning the Last Battle this age unless some of us make a concerted effort to drop our alignment fast. I myself will probably end up with Alcar and Gera fighting Light and Rufus fighting Shadow (dueling all these lean light players is bad for alignment).
One final thing I want to make clear: I am not trying to drive anyone away from the game, nor do I want to "feel like a big fish". I'm simply playing the game. My strategy for NVS this age of not worrying about Light vs Shadow freed my up to make alliances that best worked for my clan for control of cities. Do I like being allied with the Shadow? No, I don't. Had to change the name of my clan to even make myself open to it since I couldn't make myself do that with the Nine Valleys Sept.
Do I have an advantage since I understand game mechanics better than other? Yes. But I pride myself in trying play fairly. I always try to make sure all players on all sides have all the information they need. Any questions Felic, Rasina, or others asked me about game stuff I've tried to answer quickly and fully, even when them having a good explanation of how things works goes to my disadvantage. I'll also be the first to admit that I'm bad at explaining things so if there's been confusion from my explanations, I sincerely apologize. Maybe being Creator I shouldn't be as active a player as I am, but one complaint I always hear about the game is that we wish there were more players so I've been reluctant to step back. If I'm untentionally driving players away, perhaps I should reconsider that plan next age. Losing players is the thing farthest from what I want. I'm just trying to make the game a better experence for all.
You can blame Clan Battle participation being too complex as a problem and I agree it needs to be simplified, but I'm pretty sure that if you discounted participation points for every battle this age, the results would have been exactly the same. All they did was force clans to actually fight each other in the battles, and I see that as an improvement. It frustrates me that some of the ones complaining loudest about participation causing problems and forcing you to park in cities are the very ones that always complained previously that clans should have to defend their cities and not just run and hide from the battles.
Just realized how long this post got and I really do have work to do (going to have to make up some of the time I spent writing all this later). So enough ranting for now. I just hope we can get this resolved so the game stays/goes back to a welcoming place for all.