How did it come to be that this game would come to be dominated by the folks we all call the "Bottomfeeders"?

In every other aspect of life, outside this game that is, if you were to call somebody a "bottomfeeder", them would be fighting words.

How did this get reversed here? Anyone?

because in real life "bottom feeding" has something to do with Uranus?

we have mostly bottomfed since player base dropped to few ks.

I think it's due to the retal policies that have been established in the game by the alliances. Instead of being geared towards being fair to the individual player, they are calculated to allow some players who get out of the gate faster to prosper because a retal is NOT limited to the country that was hit, but instead is open to all players from the tag that got hit. Thus to avoid a succssful retal, players make sure that they can hit people that have no chance of retaling the hit, and have no clanmates that can make a retal either. And if someone does get cheeky enough to successfully retal, they usually wind up on an alliances kill list at some point since they can retal, they are a threat and they don't have a horde of other players who can kick some ass if they get abused by a large alliance.

Thus, it's the retal policies that force players to bottomfeed.

ok so get them to change

it's just common sense. you don't mug somebody who can mug you back.

It's a numbers game. Moar numbers=win.

example: icn member hits laf member and gains 2.5k acres and laf retals with 2 hits since 1st hit didn't get 80% land back so icn member loses 3.4k to near 4k acres and no ghost acres can help icn member to gain land (unless his/her ghosties were ~2k acres) instead he/she loses land.

mehul's game was better due there were alot (small and medium) countries to grab but now there are ~100 countries which all grabbers farm.

That doesnt make it better, that just means theres more noobs.

It's a parasitic game in nature. You hit someone, steal their land and force as many ways as possible to hold it.

This is as close to the truth of the matter as you can get I suppose. Even in RL the usual mugger is looking for weak prey, not somebody who might be able to kick the fluff out of them.

I believe all the bottom feeders join LAF