What's your local meta like?
There's about 55 gyms in an area previously covered by a 20 square km map. It leans slightly Valor, though there's a good Mystic showing and a few, sad, poor little Instincts scattered throughout. Raids are active throughout the day, with peaks at lunchtime and after standard working hours. People are mostly interested in legendaries (with the local viable minimum usually able to come, up to about double that), but Tyranitar, Absol, and the odd other raid getting traction too.
As far as gyms go, they're mostly held by a Blissey, with other mon as needed. Chansey makes appearances, as does Snorlax. A lot of Tyranitar and Aggron, some Salamance and Dragonite, which are mostly used as candy fodder I expect. It's usually fairly easy to take a gym, though whether you last 10 minutes or 36 hours is usually down to how dedicated people are to taking it and which side of town you're on. At least three gyms are located on property that closes at night, but the gyms don't close. Spoofers are a mild problem, almost all Mystic. Active community of roughly 200 players of varying dedication and level.
Answers
Very similar to the OP, with a couple changes:
Mystic is the strongest team, not only in # of members but in dedication to the game. Valor has high numbers, but many are more casual. Instinct is the weakest but has the nicest and most knowledgible players.
Spoofers have drained up considerably. Most known ones are now walking around and interacting (win/win).
Gyms are held by Blissey, Chansey, and Snorlax. Dragonite, Clefable, and Gyarados are quite common. Most gyms have a couple show mons and many can have themes.
Time in gyms varies greatly but is predictable. If its an EX eligible gym, it will have high competition. Also any gym accessible by car. You can keep an out of the way gym for more than a day. The best I've seen was two weeks, but that was when the EX system was explained and everyone started focusing on the best gyms. More recently, a week is possible if you happen to get in with someone who really wants gold on that gym.
Very similar here too. Midsized (small) Scandinavian town.
After a massive domination by Mystic in the old gym system it is now pretty even between the three teams. Rather high gym turnaround.
About 40-60 players that play active each day, a couple of hundreds in the weekends or a few times a week. At least forty have reached lvl 40.
60+ gyms spread over about as many square km. The local Discord is a nice tool, but many (most?) people do not care much about announcing if they will join a raid or not. Unfortunately the spread out area leads to a lot of driving around, and the addition of not really knowing how many will show up to a raid, make it very hard for walkers to catch more than an occasional legendary raid in the weekends. Occasionally walkers may end up hitting several undermanned raids in a row.
Many of the high level players drive around in small groups capable of taking down everything, and do not see much benefit in announcing where they go and maybe get delayed. To their defense it is very stressful in those drive-arounds, with a lot of multitasking going on inside the cars.
Two main Exraid gyms, and one spare that only get raids if the other two where closed down. Exraids have this spring gathered as many as 60ppl.
Very little spoofing, but loads of multiaccounts.
Most people are friendly and helpful, a big change from under the old gym system when the atmosphere between the active gym players of the teams grew really toxic.
We have 4 main EX and 2 more we try not to trigger unless necessary. We had a good 100 people at one convenient weekend EX Raid back in March. Most of the town is walkable, and about 15 gyms are central, with clusters of others based around where Ingress players have added them (we went from 3 to 5 visible from my house in the last week!) Sounds pretty similar to my situation, except few people drive consistently.
Big city, residential portion (have to drive to gyms). Lot of parks, churches, Starbucks/Sprint. I have 20 gold gyms within 4 miles of home--can get maybe 15-20 more in that proximity. A lot of yellow gyms in my immediate area, they generally lose damage/team bonus but have more dedicated players that take and keep gyms.
Generally know of everyone that plays/raids in our two main discord channels (I more commonly raid in the more quaint area/channel, we need our regulars esp the 40s that help organize). Other channel anybody could float with Aggron/Shuckle, they don't want to leave anyone behind but also could never convince any of them to do a Rayquaza with 4.
I could manage a Ray with 3 (if I talked to my local low guys about it), but 2 guys (see the above!) managed it at 2 in a blizzard. The video is great..if only because the one guy has to avoid reviving the mon I knocked out earlier that day!
I have 12 gyms gold in the previously-map covered 55, with 5 of those being within walking distance, 5 in the town centre, and the other 2 driveable and nearer where I used to live (rural at first, now semi-urban). In your terms, 11 of those are w/in 4 miles, with probably 40 of the remaining 45 within that driving distance. But, as a decently sized British town... everyone else is within that distance too! I have 3 or 4 Sprint and another 2-3 Sbux gyms from a visit to the states in November - How do you tell them apart?
Also...yes, probably 2/3rds are either churches or parks. Unfortunately, at least 3 of the 55 are literally 20m or less away from parkland on the map that Niantic uses...including the two nearest my house. We have 6 EX (of which 5 are commonly known - we discovered the 6th last month by accident!) and almost anyone who tries can get them. I've tried only by convenience .and have acquired 6 Mewtwo; my kids have either tagged along or I've needed their account to make the raid viable and have 3-4.
It varies a lot here. It seems like normal gym activity is way down. There are some gyms that turn over every few hours but some gyms that sit for days. A gym right across the street has had pokemon in it for 11 days but only flips when I flip it. But I don't really have interest in doing gyms, because frankly, they aren't any fun. I have no interest if battling weakened pokemon, nor do I have any interest in battling golden razzberry pokemon 20 times each. The area is heavy Mystic, so they run the risk of getting their pokemon stuck in a gym for days. The raid scene is pretty bad as this is very spead out in the suburbs. I basically resort to doing legendary raids at the Mall of America, but even there it can be difficult. No one cares to do a level 4 raid, and if you aren't there the minute the T5 raid pops, and aren't in the first group, forget it.
I will say that on community day I was happy to see so many people out playing, but if it wasn't for that, I would think most people aren't very active any more.
Are you level 40? My motivation (get it?!) to flip gyms is two-fold. One is that 150-650 xp adds up fast and two, I need that steady income of items as I have 16 (finally properly counted Sunday) spawn points reachable at home.
I'm about 2mil into 39, managing 40-50K a day, with another 70K every 3rd to 4th day on a mega evolve streak.
I'm level 39 (that is with taking winter months off) and I'm not in a huge hurry to hit 40. The main issue is I just don't find the gym system fun, rather I find it a burden. I have no desire to dragon breath 6 500cp pokemon, nor to I care to battle a Blissy 20 times as someone feeds it. I used to take down 1-3 level 10 towers a day in the old system and worked to expand my territory. The only thing I need is stardust, and gyms do nothing in that department. Very few things in this game are challenging as a solo player, they are either painfully easy or impossible. Only a few level 3 raids are truly difficult, or even impossible since I don't have Groudon.
