Jakob, lets be realistic. You can make statements about careful consideration of team composition all day long. For 90%+ of the teams in the top 100, all this 'careful consideration' means is how many iron ages will it take to make sure their match is not competitive.
I will give you this - your team is amazing, some of the best planning and skill in the entire game. I never for a moment think 1D would aim for non competitive matches. You are an exception though, with maybe another 5-10 teams that are already ranked very high where you belong. Because none of the teams in your peer group go in full weight, you are forced to do things that lower your weight to even get a match. Because you, GP, KA, Encore, UA and a few other teams are SO good....the other teams around or just below you in weight drop their war weight by 20-50 levels by sandbagging, instead of having to face you. They dont want to face teams like yours, there is an easy way out, and it is rewarded more than any other strategy in the game. Instead, they match with teams like mine.
On our team, we put a ton of thought of who to put in our lineup, our war strategies, etc. We run 25-35 person wars with a 49-50 active person roster. We assign targets, preplan attacks, record hits, share intel, have a very strategic upgrade strategy, try very hard to have good base designs, communicate very effectively, etc. Before glory and sandbagging, this led us to be very successful. Now, none of this matters. Because we decide not to use iron/classical undeveloped accounts to artificially lower our weight, but instead take our real, developed top 25-35 skilled players....it actually hurts us more than helps. All of the planning, design, intel, strategy you mentioned....it simply does not matter when your opponent is 40 levels higher on average than you after removing their sandbags. In some of the matches I posted above, we were able to clear every one of their difficult 210+ bases....but we would lose because we just didnt have enough offensive coverage to cover SO many high level bases - these teams, no matter how good or bad or what strategy they had, had manipulated the matchup by more than we could overcome. You could take the worst atomic heavy team, and they will handily beat the best emerging teams without breaking a sweat by doing this. And they are rewarded for it.
We could adapt to this strategy and use it ourselves, we discussed many times doing this. It is tempting, let me tell you. But, there is nothing forcing us to sandbag, we can get matched going in full strength. We would only do it to get matches that were decided before planning day started and we took advantage of lower level teams. We would have to hold out some of our great attackers and active players in order to sub in inactive or alts created just to manipulate matches. We would have to remove players from our alliance to make room for these inactive undeveloped accounts, which would make it a less fun atmosphere, etc. And we hold out hoping some action will be taken to improve the situation. Many of us are looking for the AMA tomorrow to make our final choices on whether to stick with the game or not.
I truly hope that they have a plan that will both reward the best heavyweights for going in and battling their peers, and prevent the non competitive nature of most wars in the middleweight and lighter weight groups that has been ruined by sandbagging.
I recognize its a choice, but many people feel that in a game in which the absolute best strategy is to load your team up with undeveloped, alt or inactive accounts, in order to get non competitive matches or avoid your peers....is not good. And its not the teams that should have to adapt to work around this, it is the game and developers which must adapt to drive true competition and a more fair player experience.
