[Wandows]

That totally depends on the play style chose. Everyone (being the alliances competing for the win) seems to be used to building up the first 2-3 weeks through galraiding, which indeed does make the time to actually beat your opponent rather short. But wars could start alot earlier though, with decent intel within a week hell could break lose if anyone is up to it (given the motivation is there, members are up for it and the scoring system doesn't make it a waste of time), rather then spending half the round "building up". The cons/res/initiating shouldn't really matter since everyone has that problem early on, so any fight in that sense is equal.

[edit]Although i personally find 7 weeks to be rather short (it doesn't feel like coming to an end yet), for the round outcome it doesn't really matter as long as the alliances/players involved properly adjust their strategy to fit with the total time they have to win