Philosophical point

This has been hinted at before, but the key to this games longevity is getting away from the “zero sum” model, where you have one winning side (+1) and one losing side (-1). You get iterations like this:

Start States: High morale all around, everyone excited about killing lightie or darkie
Campaign 1: Side 1 wins after months of hard slogging, gets high aether rewards and has high morale. Side 2 has a significant percentage leave dejected.
Campaign 1: Side 1 has greater momentum from the start due to high morale and higher % of returners. New recruits to Side 2 quickly see odds stacked against them, become inactive. Repeated outcome.

This is a negative feedback loop, and it contributes to early game death. CP Bonuses and algorithms are bandaids, not addressing the underlying problem. Get away from zero sum and you greatly increase player retention and game longevity. There have been several map models proposed and discussed, any of which would be preferable to the current one.

Just my 2 cents.

I still think that the ysosad and johntheright idea of chokepoints was a good idea to solve this issue because, chokepoints are special regions that give cp bonuses to the faction or guild that own it, choke points were accessible regardless of the map, (don't need to be connected to the capital) and these chokepoints can´t be conquered just by cp grinding (where numbers/big hitters can win) these were supposed to have special conditions to take it like only pvp, only coop, and limit of how many players can fight for that chokepoint (to prevent numbers win) for example 5 darkies vs 5 ligthies.