I also noticed a downfall of participants... I would say it is because of 2 things:

1. The TW serie just does not hold up... Shogun was great, medieval quite ok, rome a disaster untill patched... Then they still havent sorted problems with medieval 2 and dont even get me STARTED on empire...

Think medieval 2 was the killer, they launched a game with an inactive AI... Most people had 15min of fun surrounding opposite army with cannons before moving on to games that cared about their customers and had some beta-testers (note that major bugs are still not fixed).

2. That is why the forum has lost life cause of the GAME SERIES it represents. Another point is that the forum in itself has scared away a lot of members. Either members gets banned for being too immature, or they get banned for being to educated (actually arguing against mainstream). This, at least, is my oppinion.

This leaves a very small bunch of mediocre people, who others have no interest in and who are irrelevant to each other.

Aswell as some KICK ASS people in the very secluded sections, only, new members doesnt even know about them...

As it is now, we lose 2-3 for every 1 we get.