Suggestion Biggest problem with GR

Snowballing is a big problem, and I only see one way to fix it without making it unfair for the team that is winning. The problem is that there are essentially NO PUNISHMENTS for constantly rushing. If your team decides that they want to rush constantly, and they've already gotten enough upgrades, their team is essentially unstoppable. You lose 1/2 of your gold (which isn't a big deal if you've already spent the gold you've had at your shops) and any items you bought in the shop (which you either didn't have any or can be easily replaced because they are cheap late game), which isn't harsh enough. If you're on the losing team and the opposite side just had a big rush, which you managed to defend, they can just rush again. It's not like anni where there are features that prevent this. Let's look at the three things in anni that prevent a team from constantly steamrolling the other team by rushing.

• Large maps: The maps in anni are larger, so they take longer to traverse. meaning if you die it takes longer to get back. A fix for this in GR without changing every map would be if you died shortly after damaging a building/being in the enemy base you would take longer to respawn, which would give the enemy a chance to counter rush you
• Loss of all gear: In anni if you die, espically on a raid, you lose your gear. If you don't have more, then you got to make more, which takes a large amount of time. As I've previously stated, GR has light punishments for death, which means unlike anni you can go right back into the battle. I don't know exactly how you'd go about fixing this, as you don't want people grinding in this fast pace game, but harsher death punishments should probably be a thing.
• Buffing the team that successfully defended: In anni, if you get killed, the other person takes all of your stuff. In GR, you get 1/2 of their gold, which likely isn't much considering the person rushing probably already spent it. I'd suggest letting people pick up the shop items (the ones lost on death) so it helps out the team that is being attacked more.

Another problem is that you can't make your defenses better. Early game walls and gates take forever to destroy, but late game they are essentially useless against more than 1 player. Upgrades to increase the permanently hp of walls with gold should be added.

TLDR: Snowballing is a problem because of the insignificant punishments for dying and lack of defense options in the second half of the game.

Even without upgrade, right when the game starts you can literally rush their smelter. Most people will be mining, just run around and hit, you'll deal 200+ damages.
Do the same with 5 people, easy win.

Another problem is the gate, as it opens for everyone and trust me, people from your team will open it for enemies, you can just come, wait at the door until someone from their teams open it, and rush the smelter. Even worse, you get slowness for damaging the door, why would you bother damaging it and be slow when you can just wait and take a few hearts ?
You don't even need to destroy side gates to enter.

Thanks for the reply! I do agree that early rushes are annoying, so I think smelters could also use invincibility for the first minute or so of the game. I'm not sure if attacking the walls/gates shouldn't give slowness, but maybe that should be considered. However, I don't think the ability to pass through the gate while it's open should be removed entirely, I think that's a neat move that is a fair strategy, although maybe the door should be opened with a click instead of automatically so you can more easily attack people at the front door without opening it. Also, the side doors should DEFINITELY exist at the beginning of the game without needing to be repaired, it's dumb that it is not currently like that.