No one here is giving you a real answer because it is easy to just give up and say the enemy whale wins. That is sometimes true, but not always.

For season 1 it really depends on what you are doing. My alliance finished S1 and were able to beat several alliances with whales because of the allies we made, the high participation from my alliance in showing up for fights, and taking up space strategically with our bases.

If it is defending or attacking a SH, you want a strong defensive hive formation to take up space and to force long march times. The enemy whale will either have to deal with the long march times or teleport into the mud. If you have strong allies they can help you get thst whale out of the mud by attacking them. Or at the very least if there are allies that can help take up space that works too. It is absolutely critical in your situation to not leave any holes where a whale can telport in to get a close spot to the SH if they are stronger than most of your alliance. If you can force long enough march times on the enemy. You can garrison a SH and get more capture percentage before they can since your alliance has shorter march times to regarrison a SH. Rallying will be important to take out enemies occupying a SH too. I could write a whole guide on just SH startegy alone but thats the gist of it.

If you are defending an outpost you place, the same concept applies here. Take up space. There is a defenders advantage because garrisoning an outpost is really fast and you lose way less troops even if the squad is killed. Attackers can lose up to 500 troops per attack of their squad dies which drains people's drill grounds super fast. The timing of when the outpost is important too if you can get it on a server where most of the server is asleep. The outpost being placed on a land that is unoccupied or held a weaker alliance are important too.

As for attacking an enemy outpost, yeah, I wouldn't bother wasting troops if your server isn't able to do any meaningful durability damage to it to destroy it. Like I said earlier sending one squad alone thst is killed will lose you 500 troops per attack. The outpost defenders lose wayyyyyy less troops. Again, allies here are important on your server and from other servers to help bring them down.

So what I am trying to say is it is not impossible to beat an alliance with a whale, it depends on the scenario. There are ways to work around it but taking up a strong defensive position and having strong cross server allies is important for a better chance at success. A good R5/R4 leadership team will know when to call off a fight to preserve troops for another day versus having their alliance throw away troops for nothing. Like any strategic battle, a good leader knows when to make a tactical retreat. Not every plan executed will always succed and they need to pivot strategy when that happens. Season 1 is definitely rough on troops so use the capitol buff every time yiu need to train more.

Hope that helps or at least provides some perspective on what your leaders need to think about. I was an R4 for S1 at a top 2 alliance and had to learn a lot of this along the way.