Has it really been 10+ years? Help a bro out.

[Persain]

I've witnessed first hand wars between top100 in the between ages 9-13ish and i don't recall the kind of provincial carnage i've witness in the month or so i've observed in this age.

i started playing age 8 or so and went to age 16 or 17 like you. I cam back from genesis in the mid 40's to find the same concept of waring you're seeing now. The rational is that to "win" any wars not only want acres from your enemy but u need to "stop" them from hiting back. Back when you remember playing

Provinces have scary offenses, non-existent defenses, push out 3x the amount of attacks, and the primary strategy is chain, chain, and chain to the point of it no longer being particularly beneficial to chain as far tangible gain is concerned.

people just assumed that the best way to win was to not get hurt. when you actually look at the math and see that there is a 7% loss/hit on offense and a 5% loss/hit on def it makes sense that i'd rather hit you twice lose 7% of my offense but cost you .95^2=9.75% of your defense. This + the fact that you can cause desertions/nm away someones def rather easily caused the entire game to shift to a i can attack then raze->kill your people faster than you can do mine if i run more offense. whichever kd has more people left at the end of 3-4 days "wins".

When razeing in war stopped destroying acres the same concept of i hit u more than you hit me basically became a requirement. i.e. why would i ever run def if on average i lose military to overpopulation when only a "few" attackers hit me. I never want to lose military for "free" so the less def i run the less military i'll lose to overpopulation. In addition the only risk to someone running low or 0 def is losing all their land which means what? my prov takes zero lasting damage going from 2500 to 500 acres if i retain all my theives/wizzards/science/military. The only way to really hurt me is to ensure than when im 500 acres and army in i'm overpopulated and have to release my offense. Its why wars right now are basically broken up into 3 parts.
1 chain away the enemy def.
2 deep chain away their offense if they have low incoming land.
3. deal with hybrids and T/m's.

Both #'s 1 and 2 are why you seem shell shocked with war, however in "most" wars its still the most effective way to win