Andy,
you don't need to invent rocket and just to admit to yourself that game shrinking strategy did not not work and roll it back to old times proportions. I mean:
1. Decrease army maintenance to the level nobody cares about these costs - army employment limits the army size per population, not the cost of maintenance. weapons can cost many times more, but not the maintenance. let the people clash with armies they can buy.
2. Improve profits to 3-5B per corporation a month at least(it used to be 10b-20b and that was not trivial)
3. limit game cash movement between countries/CEO/account - I have said this from the moment you have added this with Jossi many years ago, and this is still wrong - game assets should remain in game domain, not outside of it.
4. Prohibit CEO to store weapons - this is bug, nothing more to say
5. Allow CEO corporations to be destroyed in war - again overprotecting people who cry too much on forums. I will be hurt the most by this change and I don't care.
6. War protection - remove these protections and let people play game with full features.
Game was perfect already years ago, but trying to protect players crying on forums from war/mistakes you sacrificed game dynamic/economy/learning/war and many more.
Regarding gold coins - just remove them from all possible rewards at all, rewards should be military professionals, cash, population, boosters - anything that has value in playing. Let people to trade their assets in the game for gold coins(it worked before). New people will buy gold coins, old players will sell cash to new players and everybody will be happy. W3C can sell cash 1T for 1 USD as a default, and I think many will use that option.
I play this game not because I want to earn something, as most of other people, I just want to have fun around playing federations allies/enemies/economy etc. The current feeling is that everything is very very very slow.
I love this game, you know it - or maybe I love the vision of this game therefore spending time on forums to contribute with my 2 cents.
br
Mndz