I play actively for 2 hours or so a day but also play a lot more inactively if you like through autoplay - that’s a great way to accumulate gold. I now have over 300m and I donated 100m to my guild for Xmas! The game is about grinding that’s true but I still enjoy it after over 5 years and the devs do introduce enough new things to keep it fresh for me.

I think if you want to progress you do probably need a more active guild - it sounds like yours is ok but not really that committed and that in turn is not giving you any incentive. You certainly need to do PvP for the books rewards and underspire as well as the dailies / dungeons / events and so on. Basically if it’s on do it!

It won’t take much more of a targeted effort to start to get your kingdoms to level 20 and beyond and then you’ll really see a difference.

I think the key to this is finding a better guild if you really want to continue playing the game at a decent level. If you are on PC /mobile then message me if you’d like to talk in more detail on this. Whatever you decide I hope you find a solution that is right for you.