The problem is that the vast majority of people, including most top players, do not understand the ramification of proposed changes. The developers listen to proposals made by committees, and the result is consistent backward movement in the quality of gameplay. This has been most evident the last two ages, with exploration removed last age [1] and war removed this age [2]. The result is that these have been the two most boring ages of utopia in recent memory.

Most of the responses I've seen to my proposed suggestions follow this same pattern. Opposition ranges from "that's just stupid" to "but I like being in range of top kingdom's chained provinces, please don't change that" to "it's not fair to let you propose changes, because you'll sneak something in that you can take advantage of". (In response to goodz - you are not in range of top provinces. Dicers are all 6k by now. You are in range of chained provinces in top kingdoms. This would not change under my proposed change, particularly when your ghetto province would be able to dice for 10 acres/hour if you wished.)

There is no reason that one set of rules cannot encompass both top play and regular play. Making the top be something to aspire to rather than something that midlevel kingdoms try to avoid because of all the politics required to maneuver through the game's crappy growth mechanics, would be good. In fact, it would be more than good.

[1] Again, the changes to exploration last age had the effect of doubling exploration costs. This was done after people complained about cows being too strong. The result is that now only cows explore. I would be surprised if there was a single province on the server doing significant exploration that's above 1000 acres and below 8000. This is a perfect example about how the vast majority of players cannot follow through the ramifications of a proposed change. While most kingdoms avoided cowing, thinking it would be too expensive, mine adapted to the changes and ran an unstoppable cow that was able to explore all age on 20% draft because nobody else was close to her range. My point is that the results of this change were very easy to predict.

[2] My own kingdom has spent about half the age at the #1 spot, without a single war. We have given the button to several kingdoms, who declined to use it. Not a single kingdom has given us the button. One kingdom did slow us down by waving us from below declare range. Even after dropping 20k acres and keeping 30k barren acres we were unable to get into declare range on them. Most other top kingdoms have been slowed down by a similar amount, with repeated "waves" from kingdoms attempting to abuse declare range. The next logical step is for top kingdoms to farm out to each other to drop into declare range of smaller kingdoms that wave them. This age, being in the top is not something anyone would aspire to. More than ever before, it is about diplomacy. The one top war so far this age ended with both kingdoms netting -15k acres out of it and falling out of their top spots.