I don't think I have ever seen an equal balance between all countries fighting each other. Two are always, if you want to call it ganging, the third country. All three countries are on the receiving end of this, so I am not making any distinction between countries. I'm just saying based on the numbers you posted, where was the fighting going on? If both Knights and Rooks were fighting the Bishop at that time, with minimal fighting between them, then at that given time, the Bishops were actually at a disadvantage, especially if there is Eny involved.
I'm just saying, the numbers are not reflective of what actually is going on unless the map is posted with it.
Exactly.
That's why ENY does nothing whatsoever to address side imbalances. It's possible, even common, to have 2-1 odds against you and a 10+ ENY, or 3-1 odds in your favor and the enemy has ENY, depending on how the players are distributed between countries and between fronts.
Hordeing has nothing to do with overall side balance. Even the lowest-numbered country can get a horde of 30-40 guys together if the other countries' players are all fighting each other.
A formation of B24's can carry 8 1K bombs each for a Total 24 K, even if you only hit at 50% you still only NEED 3 B24s to take down enough for a small field/town. Add 5 guys in fighters to clean up any defender that get out, and a goon you have 9 people.
And then one 262 zooms in from another base and kills the goon, and the whole effort is wasted. Or more likely, 10 defenders up when they see the buffs coming in and now the attackers are badly outnumbered.
You're a base-taking legend in your own mind, Fugi. But you never actually do anything like this, so you have no idea how it actually plays out in the MA. (Do you even
play in the MA any more? I can't remember even seeing you on, much less running into you, in the last year at least, and I'm on a lot.) Very little in life ever goes exactly according to plan, and only an idiot assumes it will and leaves no margin for error.
Anyway, it's not the attacker's responsibility to make sure the defenders have fun.
So what you NEED is 9-10 guys, what you bring is 40-50.
Nobody brings 40-50 guys. What happens is you bring 10-15 and another 30-40 tag along or show up later. But there's no way to control that or know it in advance.
With the smaller force you might run into 5 or 6 defenders, but if your hitting 4-5 bases (10 x 4-5= 40-50 guys) at once odds are good your still going to capture a few bases.
Except you don't
HAVE 40-50 guys to dispose of like that.
You have an absurdly naive view of how hordes work. I've tried to explain this to you many times before, but you're too stubborn to listen. Hordes in AH are like any other mob. Nobody has 40 guys from one squad on at a time (even 15 on at one time is a very high number for us, 6-10 is the norm, plus we usually have a few regular guests on vox). NOBODY
commands a horde of 50 players. You command a small nucleus and the rest just show up. They may or may not be in the mission, if a mission was posted - I often post a mission and get 8-10 guys joining only to see 30 taking off (OTOH sometimes you see only 6 actually taking off). If you're lucky most of them cooperate to the extent of actually trying to do anything useful, if you're unlucky 20 of them dump ords and scream off chasing the first low con they see. If you hit resistance they may stick around to furball and even get bigger, or they may just blow away like so much smoke. OTOH sometimes you'll get 40 well-disciplined guys who all actually cooperate and know what they're doing and it ends up being a slam dunk. There's no predicting it and no commanding it.
There's certainly no dividing it into tactical units beyond the most basic task allocation at the target base (i.e., "Jugs hit town, ponies hit hangars") - and even then half the attackers may or may not listen or do what they're supposed to. The core of guys you know and can count on their having their act together is much smaller, and since they're the only ones you can really count on, you need most of them on the main attack.
If you ever actually tried to execute all the oh-so-neat-and-perfect plans you advocate here, you'd find out that the cat-herding exercise known as running missions in AH isn't anywhere close to as easy or simple as you imagine.