Low pop bonus is trying to incentivize people to play, even when they are outnumbered. The idea is that even though they're outnumbered X-1, they remain in the game so the map is not entirely PVE.

I agree, its a dumb bonus because only hardened PVP players will stay and fight when that outnumbered, and hardened PVP players have more AP than they know what to do with.

I've been saying for years that they need buffs and debuffs that scale with the population, so that when Red has a 2 bar advantage vs. the other factions, their defense and offense is actually debuffed when engaging one of the other factions over which they have a significant numbers advantage, and the outnumbered faction has offensive and defensive buffs that scale up to make things a more even fight between the factions. This would also drastically reduce the incentive to simply call in more numbers to overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers.

The only other viable alternative is to have people assigned to Alliances by the system at entry based upon the current conditions of Cyrodiil. And to eliminate Alliance switching by account. I dont think they'll ever do this and I think its always going to be a problem for Cyrodiil. Any time people aren't winning, they switch. I see it almost every time Im in Cyrodiil