HR:
The mockery of family tribes is a generalisation (or series of Alliances that are supposedly connected to a main tribe) stemming from poor co-ordination, inactivity, mass of players lacking the ability to effectively play, wavering loyalty and ultimately.. disjointed leadership within each 'separate' tribe and as a collective 'family'. This stigma has been created essentially by atrocious Duke's (Essentially any twit who has the ability to insert a word as a tribe name, then press the invite button on tribe less players.. and place a sticky thread somewhere declaring himself as the mighty ruler) who follow the philosophy, 'safer in numbers'.
You won't be able to understand the complexities/shear amount of social variables that exist within this game until you have had lengthy periods on at least a few worlds. While you can grasp the basic game mechanics of tribal-wars through guides, you simply cannot comprehend the limitless extraneous social variables. The level of understanding and logic to conclude well founded knowledgeable insights into tribal activities within this game require direct active lengthy experience in my honest opinion.
Obviously you can always break the scenario down to the bare-minimum, reductionist ethos but you'll only touch the surface. Regardless, most worlds after several months typically emerge with only a handful of robust tribes via appearance. Appearance in it's self is a tricky concept, you have several indicators available to an outside eye; rank, member-count, OD(A), enemy nobling statistics, individual player growth charts, positioning charts etc.. Each indicator can be interrupted slightly differently, no indicator is particularly final.. an overall view has to be achieved using logic - and even then you cannot determine the current internal relations.
Generalising to an ideal format; the tribes that are usually seen/have the reputation of being formidable are the tribes with high ODA (Indicating offensive orientation, ability to take villages, intensify farming thus creating resource wealth for more/faster troop production, greater amount of nobles (trains), a sustained member count of core members, nobling stats displaying the ability of players to work together to remove (rim) enemy, activity/growth throughout each member.. To sustain these sort of top ideals, the leadership has to be active/vigorous with their approach - inviting positive potential members, removing dead weight, ensuring all members are playing to the best strategy possible and showing teamwork. Rules are vigorously enforced. If players do not meet these demands (providing team-work) then they will be actively removed and internally nobled.. at the same time the leadership has to listen to it's members and the general consensus in difficult situations, while retaining good communications/relations with the majority of the tribe (As well as disputes being sorted out positively otherwise internal faultlines can appear between members). This final point is the most disastrous and precarious to achieve; I've seen many a fine tribe dissemble it's self before my eyes as a drama occurs > A leader reacts particularly heavily (kicks player from tribe), and suddenly a protesting uproar is created by that player's tribe friends resulting in a revolution, as half the tribe follow (leave, join friend) the person they feel injustice has occurred too.. leaving a massively fractured tribe, further spiral of depression happens with players now opting to join tribes that are close by and seen as far more 'powerful' and so on.
The above is a very simplistic, but general idealised view of the traits that 'top tribes' process.. and that is for just one tribe. When you consider that usually only a few of these tribes typically evolve themselves on each server world (Require highly active skilled communicative intelligent leader/council with a strong support base), you can now begin to imagine how difficult it would be to have a line of tribes all aligned to a particular group that are of all of the same 'elite' standard.. and consider each other as equals. Consider a 'family' tribe - each tribe has a different leader who believes he is in a privileged position, each tribe believes he has the support of fellow member tribes when facing enemies but then factor in each 'family' tribe has their own K - meaning the likelihood is that each tribe within the group constantly has an enemy they are facing, eliminating the 'bonus' of potential troops to be sent as support.. Which is another issue altogether, due to the fact that the tribes are in fact separate/quite a distance away - players are usually very reluctant to help out other individuals who they do not know/are a long duration away. How does that effect the relationship between the family? Disgruntled is the usual end, that also reflects upon the members of the tribe wondering why their 'Mighty large family' are unable to help them > This leads to players feeling let down > Tempted to spy to prevent being nobled by their enemy.. and this leads to a massive array of problems. If you are unable to effectively carry out plans on enemy members then the tribe becomes disheartened further, players start swapping sides/deleting accounts/inactivity increases. That's without mentioning that players sandwiched between families with no expansion room tend to go inactive/quit for more exciting pastures.
Tribe's are only truly tested when they face a foe, that is tribe(s) vs tribe(s). Without opposition, a bunch of mediocre players with poor leadership can easily sit in the top 10 and look fairly impressive. The ability of members to cope under a sustained amount of pressure for a lengthy duration is a massive factor, as well as create successful co-ordinated attacks back. Tribe warfare doesn't occur on a player v player level since potentially the chances are that you will have several good/bad players on a front line - each side will successful swap villages.. with no real difference being achieved. In warfare, players are removed at once by a collective team eliminating the player instantly (Everything lands within a few hours)/preventing him from having every village covered and this is exactly where leadership has to be of sterling quality (both offensive and defensive) otherwise the tribe taking the beating will more or less disperse at a fairly fast rate as players start to evaluate what tribe they could move too before having their game (spent hours, days, weeks, months playing) wiped.
The above is just a casual glance at a few potential issues/reasons. Family tribes are mocked because they are seen as hiding behind numbers with an array of members with terrible quality. A formidable 'family' tribe force is rare.. and that is why there is the stigma. It just isn't as simple as this tribe is x2 as big, therefore the tribe with half the members will be destroyed. Individual skill is invaluable, a highly talented player/fully active/willingness to not sleep.. can hold off a large party of attacking players endlessly without intervention by his/her own tribe.
