Currently in 10th, constantly being attack by the guy in 1st. Any time I try to attack back I'm told my generals won't attack such a powerful enemy; so I'm left to slowly get destroyed and not even get the vindication of one attack?

On tourney you must be within 1/8 to 8x someone's nw to do any attacks/ops. Everyone is in gdi which means you must be within 1/2 to 2x their nw unless you declare war. It also won't let you attack if what you send is nowhere close to being successful.

Buy/research warfare tech. Build spies. You are a landfarm and a successful round is not realistic. Spam with missiles, bomb structures, bio, Rebellions, demo, attack intel. They either grow out of range or bleed resources rest of set.

peebles if you are a new player and would like to learn how to run a country so that people cannot do this to you as easily private message me and we can chat on Discord about how to play!

Okay, so basically I get within that NW range, he attacks me till I fall out of it; I can't attack back so I use up my turns rebuilding which puts me back into range.
Frustrating

The bigger guy can sell military to drop back into your range and then buy up to get out of it. The smaller guy can save cash to stay out of range and avoid getting hit by him then save turns until you're ready to hit. Spend your cash on one military unit which will put you back into range and hopefully(for your sake) you can break him with w/e kind of attack you shoot for. You could also stock missiles while you're out of his range before jumping into range and dumping them.

Just get your spies up and declare war

Bio terrorism is all the rage these days ever since Wuhan got the ball rolling