I have spent the 6 years I've played this game in the cavalry community. It's a smaller, very different community from the 'infantry', more global community of the game. We've always kind of been seen as the serious guys, even though we had our fair share of toxicity, I don't recall it was ever as high as the rest of the community. Fewer people so fewer idiots probably.
I have been hosting events for the cavalry community for nearly 4 years (since March 2014), back then it always brought a ton of new people nobody knew shit about to the game, they would join the competition, and it would most likely always lead them to cavalry regiments (or the other way around, joining a reg first then participating in tournaments).
It's been different for one and a half year or so. Now there are little if no new players at all, but a very solid core of mostly non-toxic players. A couple of hundreds perhaps, but active, involved, skilled and competitive. It took a few years to form up, but now I'd say it really is the large majority of cavalry players on NW.
I'm currently hosting the Cavalry Nations Cup, it's an international cav competition with country teams instead of regiments. We gathered 10 teams of about 20 players each. Out of 20, maybe 2 or 3 are NW-infantry or Native players, so that's about 180 NW active cavalry players, just for that sole competition (you can add at least another hundred if you take the players who don't partake).
My point is: After 6 years of existence, the game has fewer people playing it than a few years before, but it has a stable and consistent core and community that plays it regularly. Many other games that have been out for 6 years are either dead or in the same situation. I honestly wouldn't say it's that bad.
Taking a CS:GO turn a few years ago and bringing the game to E-Sports would have probably made a lot more people playing it, and competition much more thrilling, but it would have been a lot more toxic as well. Things like that go together.
Hope my input was helpful, the cavalry community is as I said smaller than the infantry one but I don't think both communities are this different at the end of the day.