I don't believe this to be true. There are always seasonal declines and surges in activity here on the forum, and in the game itself. I have not seen any significant decline in number of players from what I have seen.

I have been playing over a similar time period and anecdotally think that the game has been loosing steam the whole time, sadly. You could get in on all kinds of maps and they filled up pretty fast. While there are more map types now, you can only join a couple. The forum seemed a lot busier in 2016 for sure. Are any metrics posted, like daily unique user logins? Or number of accounts active within the last week? Those would be interesting for both the forum and

That said, i think the advertisements i still see are decent enough to get new players in, but retaining them is the key. In addition to retaining players, having more players actually do anything in a map once they join would make the game more interesting. The last couple start when full event maps I have played have been the absolute worst for player activity. They start the game and don't come back for some reason.

Maldrid, It may be advertising and making it more basic is a piece of the puzzle. I just don't want more of the same new users that don't follow through with or even not do anything in a round, so advertising the game without improving wont help keep me here. With so little interest in posts like these and no one with actual feasibility or metrics info knowledge (i dont) able to put forth ideas or even agree to define the problem, it can be frustrating for guys like you and I.

I made a post calling for ideas to think outside the box and offered up some ideas in more of a brainstorm fashion to see if anyone had any thoughts or interest and no one did. Perhaps, they don't see a problem or a need to improve things. I threw out some ideas that I thought could widen our player base and make games more interesting. I figured some were never going to happen, but might be useful to consider. I also asked if anyone has any ideas and what can we do, and crickets. I am sure there are a million more ideas sprinkled through the forum to consider or bring up again, but not many want to discuss them right now.

Besides my observation of ghosts joins, map availability/speed filling, and forums activity: My anecdotal evidence of declining users is very skewed by observation bias because where my alliance once had 20 active members, there are now only 5 and the leader is MIA so I cant even get officer status. Also, in the beginning, I was a new player, so I likely had a wider net when considering how many players are legitimate adversaries or allies.

I like your "basic idea" theme, but most new development makes the game a little more complicated and the additions that make it a little more simplified and automated are reserved for high command. Below is the link of my post:

We need to think outside the box to address low retention and frequent ghost joins in maps

I disagree, COW should remain complex and variable in its method making, being complex makes it a strategy game and that is what COW is; if anything the game needs to be modified so that tactics can further be elaborated by players, at the same time it may be explicated, so as to offer a medium approach to the conditions that a descent strategy game/map might be able to offer.

I don't know about you, guys, but I feel that the developers are forgiven the real players, the ones who want new modes and updates according to the neccesities of the community, the ones who are always looking to bugs, gameplay, tactics, etc... in other words, US, the NOT-GOLD USERS.

In the forum we have already realeased pages and pages of new forms to become the game more satisfactory for everyone. But a lot, not to say, all these titles and solutions are passed like **** , no more.

I know that the updates are hard to implement, and all the errors that comes after "obstruct the progress", but we only need real updates, not "boats that kill you if you pass trough it only if you don't are GOLD MEMBER" , "bunkers that cost amounts of steel" , or "parachutes that no one use because of the inneficient of his balance effectiveness/cost". We need developers that take care about us, listening, and have approach to the real player-base.

I think that the forum didn't answer your post because we were already publishing solutions to the problems of the game...