I'm C15 (was 14 for most of the war), and I can safely say that this wasn't the case. My tier was fully slotted throughout the war (you'd see time periods where almost everyone was beiged lol), and we were constantly fighting octopuses or near octopuses. You can check out my war history if you don't believe me.
We were however constantly helping each other find targets, and helping/encouraging people with various tactics to do maximum damage at all times even if we weren't going to win that particular war. As a result, despite being outnumbered at all times with counters being super rare, we (at least I was able to do so personally, along with many others at my tier) were mostly able to slowly claw out more net damage with each beige cycle. It was a lot of fun to fight despite the odds, and certainly way better than the previous war vs Swamp, which was boring because we just stomped everything.