I have a couple ideas how to make the war fair again, as our alliance has been getting horrible matches for quit some time now.
1.
Finding a match is not urgent. I dont mind waiting for 6 hours or whatever it takes to find a fair match instead of getting a horrible match in 15 mins and being locked in it for 2 days!
2.
Similar to the previous one, allow wars only every hour, 2 hours , 4, 6 or whatever. So there are enough participating alliances to get everyone a good match.
(So lets say matchmaking only starts at 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, 12am, 4am, and if I start a war between them, I would be on hold or something, waiting for the matchmaking to begin.)
3.
For matchmaking purposes, consider only the top half or a certain portion of the participants.
The major problem now that it is not possible to successfully fight against higher age bases thanks for all the "reballancing" so 10 Industrial is no match against 5 atomic with 5 classical age. Half of the participants are enough to win a war, and that's what the sandbaggers are abusing.