I would agreed with this statement:
Mindlessly clicking auto battle in a race to take a GBG sector is not fighting in any sense.
I agree it in no way resembles any kind of battle or battle strategy. The “winner” is simply who has more people on who can mindlessly click auto battle the fastest.
But, this is the system we have to work with. I was no recalc enthusiast, but have watched and helped in GvG. Even in GvG, the guild with the most auto clickers who are the fastest wins that sector. That mindless finger banging is how "battle" is setup to be in FoE. A guild can use all the strategy they like, but when that sector opens, who is going to take it? The ones who are fastest at mindlessly clicking auto battle. Lol!
Strategy does come in, in between mindlessly clicking auto battle. This is where timers are important to make sure your guild has a few seconds (or preferably more) to mindlessly click auto battle on a sector before your opponent has a chance to come on and mindlessly click auto battle faster!
Certain parts of the game can be manually battled, which I would think is using a bit of strategy to pick units. The current Meta is to win the Tournament and gain the most fragments of the tournament trophy. How is the winning guild going to do that?