Yes, militia made farming barbs much better than farming players. Farming players always had risks of players rebuilding once cleared or getting support, so barb farming was arguably better even before militia, but after militia farming barbs was vastly superior due to the risk of cleared players calling militia and making you lose lc.
There's no way to make no hauls worlds benefit early aggression, or even early troop production IMO without a radical rework of the game.
But at least on farming worlds I think the removal of barbs and militia would solve the issue most likely. Then you'd be able to farm, but to do it you'd need to clear people. Well, someone would need to clear people. Which brings up another issue, even then optimally I wouldn't clear people, I'd want people cleared, but I'd still be better off if my neighbors did the clearing. I'd only clear people if it became apparent no one else was going to. Tools like tribalwarsmap.com that you can use to monitor ODD gains would still allow you to watch neighbors OD increases and spot when someone got cleared and swoop in like a vulture.
So, I guess perhaps you'd need to remove OD from the game as well so people couldn't vulture-mode. Which would psychologically dissuade aggression, but strategically promote it.
Actually, perhaps not remove OD, but remove ODA and ODD, and just have OD, that way you wouldn't know if someone got cleared or someone was attacking. Unsurprisingly playing vulture doesn't work with someone who just got ODA.
EDIT: Simply delaying ODD increases by about a week would likely eliminate vulture mode farming as well.
