*what Empress said...
@Atilla: you mentioned that in a few months, you could be the size of larger players - this part is true, very rapid growth is achievable in Illyriad if you spend some prestige, and more importantly: take alot of time to keep building ques full and ship resources from resource-rich to resource-poor cities.
The other part you mentioned is that you being bigger in a few months is useless because the big players will be even bigger - This part has a fallacy in it: limitations in the maximum population provided by a maxed out city, combined with the limited amount of food each city can produce when maxed, and the increasing population cost of settling each new city means that all top Illyriad members will eventually reach a plateau where there rate at which they can grow gets smaller and smaller.
This means that any new account created today has every opportunity to close the gap and compete with accounts created a year ago given some good tactics and a little activity. The only thing they will miss out on is witnessing a year of Illyriad's evolution.
Anyhow, call me a selfish right-wing troglodite, but I'm of the old-fashioned school of thought that believes those that have worked hard for a long-time deserve to have an advantage over others from time to time.
Edited by Createure - 13 Apr 2011 at 02:23