While Kansas is very much dead, why should trolls/newbies get free passes? If the ones you are calling newbies actually cared to try fort battles, they would not being doing the same thing over and over again with the same bad results. Battles are a team based activity, which means team building and also requires responsibility on some level, ie showing up, ranking, leading and perhaps finding supporters.
You say the first few got support, well that sounds like some players gave the newbie a chance and he probably didn't even do the basic of being online to rank and lead.
Also the actions you are calling out now are not out of the blue, he went on for awhile before being reported. So not like they threw the book at him on his first go at digging. He had plenty of time hands off and instead of improving he stayed the same.
Highly doubt mod interference is why players are leaving, as there is a good number of long time players leaving just as much.
Though I do wonder, troll digs are being heavily punished but the push battles on Colorado are being ignored. A small select group of onliners have been farming free wins, bond, experience with no risk to themselves(ie no chance they will die in battles). Then turn around and transfer the farmed forts back to keep their non competitive battles going. They make no efforts to balance the battles, they are perfectly happy digging assured wins with no resistance,
I understand moving forts if there are also efforts being made to have competitive battles, but to move them to feed a small group to be able to push rewards out of the game mode seems worse than trolls digging to annoy players.
But anyway, spank the trolls and leave the rule breakers to farm unmolested, sounds good.
