While it might give even me a chance to finish a game while the event is going on for that year, I think two months is likely to reduce participation even more...

Meanwhile, I'm doing quite well with Fantasy General, and it's grabbing me enough to play during matches at times, listen to match and play, pay more attention to match when something important happens.
But so much depends on how the map goes, on the one hand which area you pick to attack, for example 2nd battle on 3rd continent had me choose between capturing multiple villages scattered over a large map, so needed cavalry and bombers probably, to spread them out and capture while the rest of the army kept the enemy army busy, and a smaller map with many enemy units and a victory condition of killing the large majority of them. First one was impossible with my army, second was easy. And there's plenty of randomness on the maps themselves, may find yourself in a bad place when you start a battle, or for example maps that have optional reward spots and others that don't, and then start again and have things be significantly different.
And tactics really make so much difference, once you learn just how to play. Problem being that as the game progresses and units get tougher, certain aspects start to have less impact, the raw power of units counting for more, so as you learn, what you learn may become less relevant.
And an annoying thing was in the last battle, today. Seemed easy, map had really helped me with a river in the right place, but towards the end I pushed forward when the enemy was nearly defeated and got my elf chariots surrounded by my own units in all but one hex, and enemy attacked them, they'd have withdrawn, couldn't and surrendered, so I lost those and the magical item they had (why you can't recover those items after the battle if you win I don't know), and didn't like that and tried the battle again... on a worse map (rivers less well placed, enemy forces split in two while the first time around all had been in one block, so I could have all of mine in one block too). But still won, and with no losses.