Maybe the devs had the time to craft a proper responsible reply for those threads. Maybe those threads had to wait a bit of time as well, you certainly weren't timing them all I hope? Can't really say how fast the devs responded other than by timestamps. Proper dev replies require taking some time to get it right, not just kneejerk reaction posts.

I believe the gains throttling exists to, ya know, give the rest of the average server a chance against superior kingdoms waving them nonstop for days just because they can. You waving a larger kingdom and feeling the affects of the throttling is one of those rare circumstances when the mechanic is not ideal, but overall it does what it is intended to do for the majority of the server I think.