I'd agree with you normally - family tribes usually mean a bunch of people who aren't good enough to make a decent tribe, so take comfort in numbers rather than comfort in skill.
Normally - i'd take the mick out of people who ran family tribes - as I've taken the approach that its better to eat the rubbish and help the decent players grow, freeing up space for a continual process of head hunting and upgrading the quality within the tribe... and having a family essentially means you've forgotten the basic idea of... one tribe, one winner...
This world is different though, its the first i've played that the warfare is so slow, that the tribe most likely to win is the tribe that has enough members to keep the tribe alive for the next 2 years... so in that respect.. a family tribe at this stage - however much I shudder at the thought... is probably a wise move.
I've quit the world now having deleted on Friday evening - but in my last week, I challenged someone in the top 10 to a one on one. Whilst I only had 50-60 nukes to send, he had about 190 (I think).
Normally - i'd expect either... I'd have all my stacks completely wiped out and need to rely on sniping, or I'd have expected a lot of my confusion tactics to spread his defense so widely that some noble nukes (real or fake) would get through....
As it turned out, both of us came away with nothing. lol.. I had 10m OD for the days work, and we'd both managed to achieve one village each being reduced to below 50 loyalty...
That is the story of the world for me. Lots of effort... very little progress. Not just on a personal level, but at a tribal level also.
We'd have a good month and gain maybe 30 or 40 more than the enemy did... then the following month it'd be reversed and they'd gain 30 or 40 more. After 6 or 7 months both sides of the war had achieved about 350 nobles against the other... level pegging.
Growth only being achieved through nobling barbs... or recruiting. Thats not how i've been used to playing worlds... it just doesn't seem right to me that you get more out of turtling than you do warring.
I'm not quite sure what precisely has made the world feel so sluggish... perhaps the 500ms noble gaps, the too heavy reliance on mass faking due to lack of any fake limit, and the sheer density of barbs has made the world more about who shouts the loudest rather than who has the most skilled and dedicated members.
I've not seen a world so densely populated with villages, barb or otherwise... I'm not sure if thats a setting behind the scenes that isn't published... but the combination of things made the world very slow to progress.
Perhaps that was the intention... to make a world to benefit those that have the stamina and determination to trudge on whilst others around them get bored or disheartened by lack of progress...
Hats off to spurs tbh
he's so far got the combination right - with enough players who will keep on going through thick and thin.