CC is going downhill because it picked the wrong business model. Rather than working on appearing welcoming to new players, CC decided to cater to veteran players, many who seemingly have no friends in RL and decides to spend their time excelling at some of the game's most obsolete settings. CC's efforts in trying to 'modernize' itself by introducing all these different styles of game play essentially backfired because it brought CC away from the typical risk game that everyone knows into a type of game for a closed community. When I returned about a year ago, I was pissed at many of the changes and I still am today and I would imagine most, if not all, returning players would agree with me and new players even more.
Here are some correction methods the site should take into consideration:
1) focus more on team games. Team games is something that the original risk and many of our competitors do not have. Team games are easy to learn the only additional thing it involves is trust and coordination. This is the only unique aspect the game needs to differentiate itself and it also helps to build communities. More players should be involved in teams and clans so that there are always friends and competitors, an element essential for any game.
2) get rid of some of the insanely complex and unreadable maps. Sorry for all the hard work you did cartographers but these complex maps are ruining the beautiful simplicity of the game and catering to those no life score whores who do not give a rat's ass about the game's decline and only care about winning.
3) I would even go as far as to say get rid of freestyle. I know its been around for a long time but freestyle simply gives too much room for abuse and is not how risk is played. It destroys a big part of the risk element and instead leads to time tracking and clicker add-ons, and a whole lot of other unnecessary stuff for the average casual risk player.
4) get rid of nuclear, zombie, and no spoils. really, it sucks when you have to nuke or zombify your own territories because you have no other choice because you got 5 cards and they are all your spots. Ultimately, all 3 of these settings delay the amount of turns it takes to finish a game. The average casual risk player wants to play quick games that finish in under 20 rounds, especially freemiums. No one wants to spend another 20 rounds to win because you have so many territories you end up always nuking and zobifying your own. Same thing with no spoils, no one has an incentive to kill or even hit someone else. Takes forever.
5) get rid of parachute. the whole point of reinforcements is that you have troops from the back line to send to the front line or vise versa. Or to stack or spread out. Basically defensive vs offensive play. Parachute is just random. Too much freedom, there should be no reason for the troops you are stacking up on NYC to magically fly to Sydney in Classic imo.
6) restrict trench to certain maps. I can see trench lux or classic being fun but not trench hive or feudal. These big maps are deadly with trench. Also, TRENCH ESCALATING. nuff said. Annoying as hell when there's 3 players left each with 20,000 troops. Obviously no one's gonna attack or else you lose. Therefore, the game goes on for an eternity.
7) And while we're at it... please add a surrender button. Maybe put it in when the winner is twice the size of any other players by troop count or something to prevent abuse and destroying the quality of games. but at a certain point, a player should be allowed to surrender. especially for trench. PLS.
Round Limits. It shouldn't be that when it reaches to round limit, the highest troop count wins. This encourages people with a lead to sit there and not try at all because if they keep their troops, they win anyways. And it makes logically sense because why take the risk when you can win without doing so? This needs to be changed. Maybe no one wins if the win doesn't come before time limit is a bit too strict but I think half the normal score (ex. 1% rather than 2%) should be fair.
And last but not least...
GET RID OF THE FUCKING SIDE CHAT!!! We do not need it! Stop trying to make this like FB because guess what, it doesn't work that way. For example, when I'm trying to look at the maps under the maps tab on the top, I can't even x out of a map that I clicked on because this stupid chat is in the way of the x button. And it makes the screen smaller and doesn't fit in with the rest of the site's colors. Just looks bad, inefficient, and hindering some of the basic functions of the site.
Hope you see my point in at least some of these. I'm no CC expert but I think it is pretty obvious where CC went wrong. It is not about the specific site owners or volunteers, they have done their job. This change needs a group effort and the veterans to support it. Sadly, the latter might be difficult.
But as I said, if they could make the button only appear at a certain point, when its basically 99% obvious who will win, then I think it shouldn't cause much problem.