Thank you Kyllmen.
Just after I posted this I did contact support directly. I was disappointed in their reply. It seems that in order to receive the reward that I activated I would have had to have 720 total population available, which I did not. The reply was that the Wiki addresses this and hopefully I can avoid the same mistake in the future.
My solution to avoiding it in the future is to refrain from spending money with Inno, lol.
As a new player, I had no idea that this was necessary. In addition, I purchased this reward with real money and I feel that it is unacceptable to allow something like this to happen with items purchased by credit card. I've been navigating the labyrinth of links and reading the Wiki and forum like mad trying to learn everything necessary, but this game is complicated (which is what I initially love about it!). I guess lesson learned and I'm glad I learned it with such a small amount. I hope future new players don't get caught by this (hopefully unintentional) exploit of the initial knowledge gap.
-sad Grepolis player
