The major part of our disagreement stems primarily from play-style. But again, you mistakenly assert it has to do with lower skill or attack rating. While there is some truth in what you say (because there are some players with either of both of those), you are 100% wrong to assert that Alcatraz is trash for non-GvG players. It benefits the vast majority of players more than the AO, assuming the caveats (limited time, whether they need happiness or not as you mentioned, etc).
Edit: You brought up some excellent points about the AO (FP production, smaller size, help defending your city, etc). One downer about the AO I don't think has been mentioned is that it doesn't help against lower or higher aged troops, but against the same level troops in GE 2-4 it certainly makes the fighting easier. If we were to discuss further, we could compare the costs to complete GE __x___ with the Traz route and the AO route. There is no doubt that auto-attacking (much more quickly made possible by the Traz route) is much cheaper in FP terms (and goods), and that the increased FPs you get from AO would take roughly 2 years to over-come the higher cost of leveling an AO vs. Traz if you go the AO route.
Again, there is a HUGE caveat. Do you want to save time and auto-attack, or manually fight?
My conclusion is that if you play like TA152 and manually attack, follow his advice. If you prefer to auto-attack, build the Traz!
Again, you are misquoting me. I mentioned if you had to do auto, Traz could be helpful. As helpful as the AO? No way. AO is DEVASTATING.
The issue we were talking about was with this guy claiming I was sheep, and was fabricating what I was saying about my loss of troops. You've completely distorted the context to make your point. He thought I was lying about it, and told him it was relatively easy to perform what I was saying, unless you have low GBs, or have no skill, which he obviously must suffer from to believe it is difficult.
The same age "downer" is very minor. Level 1 is trivial, and therefore it is essentially not a negative at all. If you can force someone to attack you with a lower age troop, AO has done its job anyway. Traz has zero protection. The only really salient negative is if you attack with higher age troops on a map than the defender has, and that does happen when you get units ahead of your age. But, it's not a big deal, and compared to the power AO gives, relatively minor.
Traz does not allow you to win an encounter you wouldn't be able to win without it. It's a false comparison. AO makes combat much faster too, extremely fast in some ages. For example, in CE, that weird artillery is extremely effective against tanks if you have AO. And you knock them out before they even get to attack you. So, another way to look at it is, Traz can not get you over the hump. AO can. More than that, Traz does not speed up manual combat, AO does.
You also leave out that the opportunity to auto-attack is much greater with AO. You can win battles you'd lose with Traz.
I have no idea how auto-attacking is much cheaper in terms of FP. I don't even see any connection between the two. Bizarre statement.
It's also bizarre to make a reference to needing more goods with AO. You'd need less. Because it would allow you to win battles you can't win without it. Traz owner must yield with his weak GB, and nego where the AO would pound through it. And the nice thing about the AO is, if you get poor results on your first attack, surrender, try again. YOU WILL sooner or later get good results, and get through it unless you never had a chance. Traz, just cower and nego. It's not to my taste at all.
And yeah, there's that 21 extra squares you glossed over. 21. That's a decent amount of space.
So, unless you're doing GvG, you're better off with AO. You'll lose a lot less, you'll have more space, and you'll get forge points. Traz? You'll get to fail more often. And when you want to buckle down and manual, AO will take you over the hump. Traz just gets humped.