There I was; a newbie level 4 getting my towns completely destroyed by a level 30-or-more-player... Is that really the way this game is supposed te be played? It made me seriously doubt wether I should continue to play.Don't get me wrong; I am not totally against PvP; it has its pro's and con's. And I do think that collectivism-players should work hard on their millitary-skills and buildings to defend themselves, and not just being focused on growing culture. But maybe a sort of "moral system", like The Traveller is suggesting above, is not a bad idea!
In final launched game, when there is a steady flow of new players starting out on the map all the time, the players will be surrounded roughly with players who started at the same time and thus of similar strength, so situations of uneven players will be less frequent, however since this game allows anyone attack anyone, no "moral" or other system will allow you to stand alone against multiple players and in the end you will have to be part of the alliance anyway. Currently Collectivism provides enough higher ground to spend some time necessary to get used with the game (like a month or so) and decide how to deal with more serious challenged (or your own or together with someone else). Adding even more power to the peaceful players or making the attacks even more complicated (and playing warrior-type of player is currently not easy at all) will only make less and less people willing to be warriors and it will turn TT2 into another farm game, which is not the plan.
To solve problem of attack defences we better improve alliance features so people will be able to defend together easier, instead of powering up individual defenders or making attacks more complicated.