On the whole banner issue, I'm one of those who does abide by banners. If they don't want their allies hired, then I'll v move on. Experience tells me though, that those people will be bitten by more sudden inactive allies than I will. I VERY rarely buy back. I've been burned too many times that way, and I'd rather find a new one. Think of it this way: Are you big enough to suffer the consequences of hiring from the wrong person? If you are, go for it. If you are like me and can't really stand up to it, then move on and find another. There are plenty out there. If all the active ranges you are searching are overran by bad allies, take a peek at the inactive pros around that range. I do it from time to time, and it does work.
I don't buy allies unless their owner is genuinely in an osw, most the time though the banners of owners are full of crap. Buying underpriced or market value allies is part of the game, if you get hit for it, hit back, if it causes a war, so be it. This is after all a war game and there's been massive wars started over a lot less than an ally hire Saying that though, if you're buying overpriced allies from someone in an osw, don't complain when they accuse you of supplying strip funds etc
Nice post and observations. In addition to misunderstanding max plunder, I've chatted with a few new players who were actually trying to sell their crappy, inactive allies to slightly smaller players, and upgrade or consolidate the quality of their mp Allie holdings. The problem with this, of course, is that its really unnecessary, a waste of time, and a waste of WC bandwidth. There isn't a functional difference if the player has five 1B allies with min stats (300,300,150,150), or one 5B Allie with 10k cs if all are inactive. The BFA differential is less than the cheapest atk pot, and is inconsequential in PvP or likely any eb above warbeast. To put this in perspective, the BFA difference in the example above is 5,500, compared to, say the 700,000 BFE from the hooves leg equipment from one of those early level ebs. So while BFA and allie quality become more important at higher levels, small players dealing with allies under say 10B can really ignore stats and focus on price and maintaining mp while they grow.