This 50 allies explanation is the best way I feel to think about it. In addition you can think if you are HLBC and you add one HLBC ally, it's like adding one land and building of the stat composition of that ally.
Even further, an HLBC acct can be bought for around 600B (low end) so you can think after HLBC your next relative land and building cost (in ally exchange rate) is 600B .
Ok the main confusion seems to be that everyone is looking at your bta when Val and Eric said raw stats. If you look at your raw stats in comparison to your Bta they are considerably differant. So yeah the number you see asyoir bfa is real. That is what you get. You just need to compare to your raw stats to see that it's not that much.
These are your raw stats. They are not used commonly as all you can see on someone's profile is their BTA (bonus to allies) so it's easier to use those to judge a build rather than doing the math to see what their stats actually are. As you can see, the numbers are a lot larger than BFA These numbers reflect your BTA (bonus to allies) these are the numbers that everyone uses when talking about stats. As you can see the numbers are smaller and easier to deal with everyone from ally traders to war clans use these when buying/referring to someone's build. These numbers reflect 2% or 1/50 of the raw stats I posted above. Hope that clears it up a bit
100% dante. Exactly as I've thought for the last 2 years. I hope the people that read this come back and see it.
To add to what -Dante- said, I believe your total power when you attack or defend is figured like this: Your raw stats from your profile page (the big ones) multiplied by any percent modifiers from reset, pro pack, and achievement bonuses. Then add on top of that your equipment and ally bonus. Then last but not least, add any defense or attack items from the market. Defense items are used automatically, up to one of each per defense. So basically, your bfa doesn't do much unless you have trillions invested in allies. The people at the top of the ally leader board have so much in allies that they are too strong for most of the rest of us to be able to attack.