I played 4 games (all until the end) as a coastal country on either 100player world map or 50player Pacific map. Even in these it made pretty no sense to research carriers. Which is a pity, because they're a beautiful unit that's fun to play with. Also they actually did play a role in WW2 - they were of essential importance in the war between Japan and USA and that would have equally been the case for any major or medium powers fighting each other with an ocean in between.
Latest balancing update made it worse - increasing the oil consumption of planes made carriers an even less considerable option.
So carriers in CoW need a buff.
Increasing their values or reducing production costs would be too strikingly unrealistic. Therefore I propose reducing costs and time required for researching them. Result would be that it would then make sense to research carriers and build a few of them in some situations, but still never to build very many of them. Which would improve both gameplay / variety of reasonable strategic options as well as realism.
Latest balancing update made it worse - increasing the oil consumption of planes made carriers an even less considerable option.
So carriers in CoW need a buff.
Increasing their values or reducing production costs would be too strikingly unrealistic. Therefore I propose reducing costs and time required for researching them. Result would be that it would then make sense to research carriers and build a few of them in some situations, but still never to build very many of them. Which would improve both gameplay / variety of reasonable strategic options as well as realism.