That's a bit simplisticly one sided. Astralis quit strat because Astralis quit strat. They quit strat because they lost a war. Surely they had the choice to regroup and carry on, or quit and not be arsed. That bit was their choice and not much to do with AoW/WoN.
No. We had a fief and a regroup area, but AoW attacked that and took it and then sold it to w/e the desert alliance is now. You'd be surprised how many "no we can't attack them cause AoW" or "To big" or...
Losing all your fiefs usually makes clans not want to play strat. especially when the leader doesn't want anything to do with this "meta Alliance BS" that is/has gone on.
It's also easy to blame it on the players for not caring, but when you have a fief(I do believe you or your faction does, please correct this) it's easy to look down on someone. Astralis still plays, but without a fief to defend most players don't care.
By removing astralis from the map, you removed roughly 15 players from strat that moderately cared. No one in the faction wants to spend the effort to actually organize anything because that kills your life.
Now can we scrounge up the player we need in a battle that happens to be ours? Sure. We do have nearly 20 people on in TS daily, but most prefer not to play strat because there is nothing to fucking do beside trade trade trade, since we can't really attack anyone.
Jesus, you're as bad as Murdertron. STB is pretty broken - and this is more accessible anyway. Good job Arty and Rhalzo!
And I'm not putting either of them down, but that setup and layout come almost from that. What's nice is that he Adds faction names to it, and a cool fief icon.