I got to disagree with you on many points here (not because I hug bend, but because my opinion is different then yours).
First of all there are many players who prefer to spend their time recruiting units and killing stuff then writing on forums. I try to read forum whenever I get time, but honestly nothing much to read anyway. I liked some sink or swim posts, helps some people to understand how alliances around look to people who know players on this world (I could be considered new to US, since I played only one world before, it was two years ago and I left at 11 cities).
I've seen a lot complaining, mostly from Scurvy Dogs how this server is dead, mas cuddle, etc. Alliance cap is low, and every alliance is trying to fight it own way. Some with quality, others with quantity. It happens that beer currently is lucky enough to posses both traits, giving them upper hand in fights. You were so obsessed with creating coalition against beer, that you forgot looking at your courtyard and making sure it's everything sorted before looking further. Beer is aggressive alliance, and most (if not all) alliances next to them will start fighting them back, because will be attacked at some point. You were first Rim alliance that reached top 12 (am I wrong?, my memory is fading). All you had to do is fortify north / north east border and go aggressive south, west or east and grow. Instead you let alliance smaller then you beat you. You had whole ocean for yourself, you had much easier time then us for example. We had to deal with fall of Rim Kings, and Overdose / Pharmacy invasion from North. Also kitties were attacking us from east daily. Yet here we are breaking rankings every day, while your strongest alliance isn't even in top 12 anymore.
Also this world is very active in my opinion, and far from over. People who complain, ghost, and cry are just weak, and server is better without them anyway. No morale world is real challenge for people joining late, since they will face much stronger enemies hitting them as soon as they're out of BP. It's reason why world seems to have seemingly low number of players (I know few players that we rimmed 3 or 4 times now, and they are unlucky to restart near us again :/). I think you should instead find alliance that suits you, and get some attacks out. Try to help this world go forward, don't make it go down by leaving.
I hadn't real Grepolis challenge last few years, since I didn't play over 20 cities in a while. Looking forward how this world will look like in few months. Excited to meet you all, and hope we'll share some good fights and even more laugh on this world.