Bottom line is alot of players are afraid to fight because they dont know how or they are afraid of losing assets.
War continents will not fix the problem. FB is the war world and I can count on one hand the number of PvP wars there.
I think because there are so many aspects of the game that players need to use GCs(space docks,purchasing products only available from space, etc.,buying population,monthly 30GC fee, etc. people are trying to make GCs rather than spend them for weapons to fight with.
I believe the war game is dead except for the few who are at the same war lvl if they choose to fight.
One suggestion, instead of winning a players country maybe the winner can receive 100GCs or something along those lines.