You know, banner balance is only one of the issues that people have to face. In my opinion a bigger issue is the mentality of people that actually supports "us" (big, more or less organized battle groups consisting of clan members) in the stomping. People doing the banner leeching are a perfect example, and before in this thread it was mentioned that "out of 15 byz banners only 9 of them are real and a real threat, the rest are banner leechers who are not dangerous" - nothing more wrong, those guys become twice more dangerous than other randomers, and here is why : people follow the "big guys" around. Often I see people outside my clan but with our banner sticking more or less around us and helping us greatly just by being there. Thanks to those random additions to our already intimidating group we become an even bigger force, they stick to us so it gives the whole team a bit of organisation - battle servers are often won by simple sticking together and picking off the small, seperated groups of the opposing team. The banner-leeching randomers are just as a big problem as clan-member stacking, because as long as they keep around the experienced and organised group - they automatically become a part of the "rape train". They may not even kill anything, but they provide "cannon fodder" and make the group look more scary. How often did you see battles lost because when two groups meet one of them has a bunch of people who decide to retreat, misjudging the situation, and end up as two smaller groups completly dominated by the big one that stuck together? A lot. All the time. And stacking banners just plain helps people feel like a single unit. There is no mechanic going wrong, no system or math - its just the people.
Hard to blame anyone for doing that, to be honest. Hell, I've been "raised" in the cRPG times when there was no autoexp and we would get exp and gold by being around kills. And as a low level newbie with a low and cheap equipment what would I do? Follow the big guys! Stick with the big crowd, stick with the tincans, stick with the organised clan squads - because around those people die. And people going down is fun, its exp and its gold. The first thing I learned in cRPG was how to recognize the groups that net a lot of kills and follow them around. Something similiar happens here, people want stuff to die, they want the exp and gold going, they stick to the strong guys...and make them even stronger by that.
Also, Gnjus is lovely.
Edit:
Also, the whole problem seems to be a bit exaggerated. Byzantiums, even when there's a lot of us, often get stomped by the opposite teams.
