Sorry if this is a question that's been asked before, tried the search function with out much luck. Also, I'm relatively new around here and haven't played much earth since the swirve days.

Restarted a country after a few days in alliance server. Started with 0 turns and 0 in reserve after deleting my original country. Is this by design?

I think so yes. if you delete it doesn't make sense since you could then potentially take more turns than what is given in a reset.

did I read it correctly that you restarded a few days later though? then it seems a bit harsh tbh... I have had similar happen to me on other servers though...

Yes, you did read it correctly. Essentially I wanted to restart with a country name I'd been using in another server to make myself easier to find.

Seems like this will put me at quite the disadvantage :(

if you delete and restart you start with 0 turns for that set to prevent abuse.