This thread has completely gone off topic.. but to shed some light on the discussion i will offer my opinion...
There have been some good points made about a pattern that has formed in this game. Alliances are now trying to buff themselves up with members and allies early on in order to allow them to grow safely. Limit challenges, pick your fights, and focus on a single front. It isnt bad strategy, but the players that are more battle hungry will always disagree with it.
There are two types of players in this game. Well really there are more, but lets say that there are two successful types of players in this game. The first are the true warriors. They want to fight. They like small circles of trusted players and they either spend enough gold or are experienced enough to take down larger alliances. However as we saw with warlords, this is hard to do in the core. These alliances typically can make lots of enemies and with early success become the focus of many other groups. This is out of fear, respect, and even anger due to the way these war groups typically conduct themselves. These types of alliances can be successful on the "rim" as long as they have 1 solid ally. That way they can focus on offense, pushing in a single direction while their threats are limited.
The other type of player is one that is in the game for the long run. While the aggressive style players usually either run out of gold or interest, their life span on a server is usually not long term. All alliances suffer from attrition and bad luck. They lose players, and small groups are not typically recruiting enough to stand along for the length of the server. As US players become more experienced, the ones that want to play for the crown begin to plan for the long term. You expect attrition and you make choices that are opposed to stunting growth. That doesnt mean these players are of low quality. You can still be towards the top in BP but still think for long term success.
And thats what you have here in Sparta. Several alliances are trying to plan for the long term. Now also consider this point. Sparta literally opened 2 days after the crown was won in upsilon. Many of those players came here as groups. For wonders, in order to be successful you need a large group of active players. In upsilon the alliance limit was 100. GOS, Wheel, and Matters all brought large groups over from upsilon. Some have turned out to do more mass recruiting while they got here, but others exceeded the 65 player limit just from coming to this world from upsilon.
What you have are different players that define success in their own way. Some think Warlords were a success. They were the top in BP .. but their time has passed. Some define success as being able to get the crown. Others look at it somewhere in between. There are many good players on this server that wont even make it to WW time. That doesnt mean they arent any good. it just means they choose to play the game differently.