The portals are there to mitigate the teleportation of olympus. To make that work you need a base near a portal. If you have that then it doesnt matter where Olympus spawns - granted if it pops up next to you thats an advantage for that rotation but all worlds need several rotations (minimum 3).
I think its a balance between fighting and coring. Bigger cities speed up growth but smaller cities/colonising in the right location helps later. If Olympus was in the centre then stronger alliances have an advantage - with a random olympus I think smaller groups - especially smaller pacted groups have a good chance if they plan it right.
While yes in theory, in play it's not 100% true. There's still the TT to the portal and portal TT in a speed 2 takes 1 hour to get from portal to Olympus.
THAT is where the problem is. How much slower of a TT is it in S1? How much faster in S3+?
That said, while I understand your point of smaller alliances get a chance, you're also talking of alliances that either come in late to the game, or "leftovers", or people who only play just to play with a small number of people and have no desire to win. The point of the world, and any game, is to win it. The game's mechanics rewards people for actually playing it. The token buffs increase and the coins you get from quests increase as your city count/point count increases. After a number of time of your account being active, you are rewarded with free buffs - such as those who hit 4 years recently got a 4x BP token for free (or multiple) on "random" and it's because of the anniversary. What you're saying is to reward the people who did NOT put in the time, work, effort, and sacrifice with the opportunity to win. So, with that being the case, what's to stop me, or anyone, from making a strong big golding team, and waiting until a certain amount of time passes, drop into a world, and quickly take over and merge in dead alliances and other stuff, inherit temples and/or take easy ones, and then take the world win because we're FAR more "fresh" and not "beaten up" by months of fighting, drama, and other crap this game brings (because people)??? At that point, that's the best strategy to win a temple world, every time. And since Olympus pops in various COs after specific time, if it pops in my premade's ocean, guess what? I definintely just won without putting in much work at all. That absurd. Small alliances should not be rewarded for being small
IN THE SENSE OF them not playing, joining late, or being leftovers. There's a reason why they didn't make the cut. There's a reason why this is a WAR game. At the end of the day, Olympus is a "war" to conquer it and with how it's currently set up, there's not much fighting for it vs "oh golly I hope the timing is good!"
What I've suggested, will also prevent people from doing the strategy I stated above because if I did so, an established bigger team STILL has to move through my "premade" and thus, eliminate me if they want to win, OR absorb me. In which case, I still have to put in the work either way, and far more than just simply joining late, and capitalizing on a dead world. And we all know there are PLENTY of people out there who will gold that much in order to make this theory a reality.
Should I be rewarded because I choose to play part time or barely while the player whose willing to actually fight and deal with alarms and sleepless nights, and drama etc not be? That doesn't make sense. Morale was introduced to HELP PREVENT the small player from getting crushed by the bigger player immediately. Not to reward them for being new or small. And eventually, morale doesn't even matter when you're big enough that you don't have to be efficient in your attacks anymore and can just "throw mud at the wall and see what sticks".
If I haven't made this point clear enough, you're saying that people without guns whom are standing up to people with guns in a war, should be rewarded for not having a weapon.... That's not how reality or any war game that I know of (or Grepolis even) works. The small player should never be rewarded. That's the WHOLE reason why we took away LMDs. But now you're saying to reward them again??? Then bring back LMDs while you're at it I guess??
Personally, I feel like a lot of the counters have never played a temple world honestly.. Idk about you Hydna, but people seriously need to play it in order to understand my points in action. It really does solve a LOT of things that can be exploited in the current EG with how it's built. And it won't be long until others catch on and we have another LMD scenario happening with this EG as it is. It needs reworking.