Very true. A favorite tactic in the 2000's, was for one side to just harass the other over a period of many, many months, denying any opportunity for decisive battle, until they became demoralized -- only then to bring out their big guns.

The alliance I was involved in kept almost winning battles, when the server would crash, then the devs would come in and reset the node, undoing all the enemy damage we'd caused. I think there were some shenanigans going on.