Tis, my apologies. I was very tired when posting my first reply to you, and in a hurry for the second, and I guess I took it a bit too personally. Still, your attitude wasn't helping matters...
I agree partly with what MotoX said. IPC had a similar structure, by round 6/7, to the alliance I'm currently in, which is ND. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING!!! We were very well organised for such a 'crap' alliance. ND of course is better than IPC; but when I joined ND (round 10.5) it did not seem quite as well organised, though evilTone has done and is doing a great job
The thing is, Tis, a lot of what MotoX said is accurate regarding IPC. We often did have a number of good players, who left part way through. However, we were never particularly good as a whole, overnight. But the fact is, I stayed with IPC because I liked the people there, and that was more important to me than doing well in the game. Same reason I'm still with ND