I agree this game is much better without in game ads and I don't fault IG for trying to make a living, but I have a question...
I use the Administrator, so I don't know about the details of the notifications without it. So someone correct me if I am wrong. If you look at Res's screen shots, does mousing over, or clicking on the attack notification icon on the bottom right of the screen give you the info of what town is being attacked if you don't have the Administrator activated?
The reason I ask is this...the Administrator is a nice feature and pretty much needed once you go over 20 or 30 cities, but does anyone buy the Administrator so that they can mouse over the attack notification icon? For the non-premium players why not have the notification act as it does in Res's second screen shot? If you don't, it's not impossible to figure out which town is being attacked as some have already stated, but it is a handicap and I could see people getting frustrated and not playing.
There is a difference between giving premium players some extra stuff so that IG makes some money and programing the game to intentionally handicap non-premium players.