afk 26pt players will eventually barb, don't see what the problem is. 26pt players hardly produce 2k of res an hour anyway. You either get lucky who you're next to on day one or not, same old story.
It's not the settings that spoil this game and suck the life out of it. We all play and adapt to whatever the mods decide on each new world, or you skip and play the next one. The servers need new players coming through otherwise the game will die, people failing after 1 week of game time aren't as enticed to play as they were previously at what is a niche game due to the effort you need to put in for what is very slowly reaped rewards, it doesn't suit everyone's lifestyle.
What does ruin the game is the people spoiling the game for others. How many won't attack someone because they once played with them in a tribe 6 worlds before and had a brief 3 mail convo? It's a game and it needs remembering, doesn't matter who wins because once the next game starts it's all forgotten about anyway. It used to be a social experience where you could laugh at someone's mistakes, now it's taken so seriously by some the humour has failed and you are #1 enemy for life. Before long what used to be a social game will stop being that because every startup will be the identical, the same 20-30 players in the same tribes from one map to the next due to either silly loyalties from 2011 or the fact you just can't trust anyone you don't already know.
3 weeks in and the rank 4 player on this world, Sinister Villain, is using spies, seriously? Spies are spoiling the game for most already, some will argue they are a legitimate tactic but look how many have been screwed over and vowed to never return. The game is becoming toxic, it's not a matter of who has the biggest numbers anymore or is active beyond belief, it's all about who knows the most dickheads prepared to sell out the people they are playing with and bizarrely the quantity of these seems to grow from one map to the next. I guess it's not just a matter of fewer and fewer people coming to play the game for the first time but also a steadily increasing number of players refusing to come back because after 6 months of tireless work it can erased by the selfish actions of a talentless fool.
Until the dawn when people wake up to the fact that using spies yourself encourages others to do so to you then there will always be spies, and the game will continue to spiral downwards until there are next to no regular players left to play the game.
It's been said I don't like people, I wouldn't be here if I didn't like people and my inbox wouldn't be so full there's no room for threads more than a month old... I just don't like the people who decide, for whatever reason, that playing dirty is the only way forward. It's not sustainable and the game will be lost for everyone but before then every map will be the same joyless grind that they have been of late.