Tournament Changes

[SoggyShorts]

This keeps being brought up. I cant be the only one who hits tournament timers with a handful of speedups to keep my sleep undisturbed.

There's a significant segment of players who don't play every day, or if they do, not more than for a few minutes on most days and then "really" play 2-3 days per week. A handful of timers won't help them.

Personally, If I had to do the tournament more than 2 days per week I'd quit again, but I have a TW and I don't go for more than 2k points so I can get it done in ~36 hours.

 

[qaccy]

Beta has already documented the tendencies for enemies for each relic type:

Marble: Heavy Melee
Steel: Mage
Planks: Light Range
Crystal: Mage & Heavy Ranged
Scroll: Light Ranged & Heavy Ranged
Silk: Light Melee & Heavy Melee
Elixir: Light Range, Light Melee & Heavy Melee
Magic Dust: Light Melee, Mage & Heavy Ranged
Gems: Light Melee, Heavy Ranged & Heavy Melee

Huh, that's a really interesting breakdown. T1 relics favor one unit type, T2 relics favor two, and T3 relics favor three. That makes it appear as though T3 relics are now the 'hardest' tournaments, at least on paper. It's harder to fight your way past a mix of unit types as opposed to just one, and these tournaments look to be set up to make that a lot more likely compared to what I'm generally seeing with this marble tournament.

Speaking of this current tournament, my strategy has now changed to scouting out every province in a new round to see what the enemies are, and just picking the ones that have an easily winnable battle in them. The amount of provinces I clear will decrease each round, but losses should stay relatively low. And it's still a heck of a lot faster! My one big gripe with the new system is how small the tournament indicators are now compared to the old ones. They blend in surprisingly well with the world map! Hopefully they get enlarged or modified in some way to stand out a bit more.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Here is a number to throw out there for people.

Up until this week and the change, squad size started at 5% of world map squad size and then increased 5% per province. That means with my currently maxed out world map squad size of 5316, my tournament squads would be 5316 in the 1st star of province 20, in all 6 stars of province 20. In the new system, my squad size now in the 1st star in province 20 is 16,507, or a little more than triple the old number. If the enemy troops were still 85% of my squad, like in the old system, no big deal. In the new system, in the 1st star of the 20th province, the enemy squad is 25,088 or 51% bigger than mine.

But also on the new numbers, completing 8x5, 5 stars in the first 8 provinces for 1680 points, is easier in this new system than it was in the old one, so let your borderline fellowship members know. Anyone not going deeper than the first 10 provinces and getting around 1000-1200 points, should now be able to get that 1600.

 

[DeletedUser7462]

I've been reading the forums on beta and EN. The only players that are happy with the changes are low chapter players. I understand that Enno wants to make the tournament tougher. I'm not happy about this, but I'll let that be. I have a major complaint that I haven't seen in the forums. It's about troop producing buildings. I'm end game, Have about 8 orc strategist that produce 380 every 12 hrs. That was enough to aid in the tournaments. Now 1 full queue at province 23 uses 74000 of them for 1 battle. So, that's 12 days of collecting for 1 battle where 74000 would be more than enough for a compete tournament getting getting 16k score instead of my 5900.

 

[DeepTerminal]

If a player can't play every day, then they don't deserve to get the same reward as those who play every day.

If a fellowship is full of casual players and only 1-2 hardcore players, then they don't deserve the same reward as a fellowship full of daily active players.

It's that simple. A fair system rewards people for the amount of work they put in.

If you're an active player and want to get good rewards, look for an active fellowship and play with other active players.

Despite the nerfs, I like the fact that now, tournament rewards are less tied to how advanced a player is or how many fire phoenix they have, and more tied to how active they play (i.e., whether they can clear 6 provinces).

This means players of all levels are able to contribute their fair share of 1600 points, as long as they are willing to work for it.

In this sense, it's more fair than the previous system, where it's extremely difficult for less developed players to reach 1600 points and they have to rely on hardcore players to carry.

If we think of tournament not as a reflection of how advanced a player's city is, but more as a weekly event that rewards based on how much effort a player puts in that week, then the outlook is completely different.

Just like a major month-long event, just because a player is at end game doesn't mean they are automatically entitled to getting more rewards. They still have to log in every day and finish the quests.

 

[Deleted User - 4750465]

Huh, that's a really interesting breakdown. T1 relics favor one unit type, T2 relics favor two, and T3 relics favor three. That makes it appear as though T3 relics are now the 'hardest' tournaments, at least on paper. It's harder to fight your way past a mix of unit types as opposed to just one, and these tournaments look to be set up to make that a lot more likely compared to what I'm generally seeing with this marble tournament.

Speaking of this current tournament, my strategy has now changed to scouting out every province in a new round to see what the enemies are, and just picking the ones that have an easily winnable battle in them. The amount of provinces I clear will decrease each round, but losses should stay relatively low. And it's still a heck of a lot faster! My one big gripe with the new system is how small the tournament indicators are now compared to the old ones. They blend in surprisingly well with the world map! Hopefully they get enlarged or modified in some way to stand out a bit more.

I don't fully agree with that. Light Melee and Heavy Melee is an easy combo, because you can take out the light prior to having to deal with the heavy.

 

[Deleted User - 4750465]

I've been reading the forums on beta and EN. The only players that are happy with the changes are low chapter players. I understand that Enno wants to make the tournament tougher. I'm not happy about this, but I'll let that be. I have a major complaint that I haven't seen in the forums. It's about troop producing buildings. I'm end game, Have about 8 orc strategist that produce 380 every 12 hrs. That was enough to aid in the tournaments. Now 1 full queue at province 23 uses 74000 of them for 1 battle. So, that's 12 days of collecting for 1 battle where 74000 would be more than enough for a compete tournament getting getting 16k score instead of my 5900.

There are plenty of mid game and even early late game players in a FS that can't quite break through to 10 chests. Push weeks for Marble and Steel seem really doable.

 

[DeletedUser2870]

Not having to click so often anymore is nice, sure.

But seriously, province 15 in ROUND 1 would cost 15.000 orcs to cater? A fully developed armory produces 1600 orcs/12 hours. So basically that province alone would require about 120 hours of armory time for me. Explain how that is 'better'.
So the claim that catering costs have gone down is utter bogus. Yes, the amount of goods needed may have been reduced, but that reduction is more than screwed over by the increase of orcs needed.

This is screwing people twice over actually. People like me, who fight 95% of the encounters, have multiple armories anyway and yet, even then it's not possible to cater even a relatively small amount of provinces. Fine, I'll fight the last couple as well or just stop going on at that point.
But people who were set up to cater mostly often have way fewer armories as their need for troops isn't as high, so how the heck are they supposed to cater anything now with these amounts of orcs needed?

As for the fighting part, I'll have to take a look over several weeks, but so far the losses have been significantly higher. Those people who say they fight everything manually may do better, but even with 1 encounter/province that takes forever. Some people actually have lives outside of elvenar. Not to mention that one doesn't even have that ability on the app, severely limiting that possibility.

 

[DeletedUser2870]

There are plenty of mid game and even early late game players in a FS that can't quite break through to 10 chests. Push weeks for Marble and Steel seem really doable.

They were. But with the new requirement in amounts of orcs needed I doubt it. Fellowships like my old one where we would push once every 9 weeks are obviously NOT set up to fight most of the time, a lot of players depended on catering a lot. There is no way one can store up enough orcs to do so unless you want to fill your city with almost nothing but armories and orc-nests.
I have 3 armories and 19 orcnests, whichproduce a max of 27840 orcs/day, IF there is no time lost in resetting the armories. Plus my Heroes Forge for another 2650 makes 30.490 orcs/day. At best. In reality my armories are idle some hours every day due to my workschedule.
But these 30.490 orcs/day don't even cover the needs up to province 15 in round 1, and then province 15 itself would require another 15.000.
So assuming the costs increase/round, there is absolutely no way that I could cater my way to 15 provinces for even a few rounds.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Not having to click so often anymore is nice, sure.

But seriously, province 15 in ROUND 1 would cost 15.000 orcs to cater? A fully developed armory produces 1600 orcs/12 hours. So basically that province alone would require about 120 hours of armory time for me. Explain how that is 'better'.
So the claim that catering costs have gone down is utter bogus. Yes, the amount of goods needed may have been reduced, but that reduction is more than screwed over by the increase of orcs needed.

This is screwing people twice over actually. People like me, who fight 95% of the encounters, have multiple armories anyway and yet, even then it's not possible to cater even a relatively small amount of provinces. Fine, I'll fight the last couple as well or just stop going on at that point.
But people who were set up to cater mostly often have way fewer armories as their need for troops isn't as high, so how the heck are they supposed to cater anything now with these amounts of orcs needed?

As for the fighting part, I'll have to take a look over several weeks, but so far the losses have been significantly higher. Those people who say they fight everything manually may do better, but even with 1 encounter/province that takes forever. Some people actually have lives outside of elvenar. Not to mention that one doesn't even have that ability on the app, severely limiting that possibility.

lol around that time I had to p[ay 180K mana, the highest mana I have seen was either 520K or 580K insane numbers at least.
This was indeed a fairly easy fighting combination on manual where you could if you had enough boosters have like 50% of the fights without losses or extremely little losses, the other fights also where not to bad for losses but at least more than none

The downside was that you need manual combat which makes it horribly slow and boring. it also takes so much more time than 80 provinces in the past.

 

[Deleted User - 4750465]

They were. But with the new requirement in amounts of orcs needed I doubt it. Fellowships like my old one where we would push once every 9 weeks are obviously NOT set up to fight most of the time, a lot of players depended on catering a lot. There is no way one can store up enough orcs to do so unless you want to fill your city with almost nothing but armories and orc-nests.
I have 3 armories and 19 orcnests, whichproduce a max of 27840 orcs/day, IF there is no time lost in resetting the armories. Plus my Heroes Forge for another 2650 makes 30.490 orcs/day. At best. In reality my armories are idle some hours every day due to my workschedule.
But these 30.490 orcs/day don't even cover the needs up to province 15 in round 1, and then province 15 itself would require another 15.000.
So assuming the costs increase/round, there is absolutely no way that I could cater my way to 15 provinces for even a few rounds.

You can fight your way to 1260 points without breaking a sweat or losing sleep. When all it takes is 1600 per member in a 25 member FS there's really no excuse regarding catering costs.

 

[SoggyShorts]

If a player can't play every day, then they don't deserve to get the same reward as those who play every day.
...
It's that simple. A fair system rewards people for the amount of work they put in.

The number of times you log in per week =/= work put in.
If I did the tournament on Fridays clearing provinces 1-30 in the morning and then 1-30 again in the evening and you did just 6 of them every day are you saying you deserve more rewards than I do? That you worked harder in those 36 provinces than I did in my 60 provinces?

This is probably my biggest issue with the change; the reduction of choices in how to play.
Getting 1600 points was pretty equal in difficulty whether you did 6x6, 8x5, 11x4, 3x15, or 2x25 but now the later option(s) have gotten much more costly.
And that's just 1600 points- If you go further because you are in a short-handed FS or you have accepted some newer players into your FS the choices become even narrower and the costs rise significantly at one end.

 

[T6583]

You can fight your way to 1260 points without breaking a sweat or losing sleep. When all it takes is 1600 per member in a 25 member FS there's really no excuse regarding catering costs.

But not everyone fights. Some are against fighting for whatever reason. I am aware of a player in particular who won't fight and only caters. He has really bad PTSD from serving in a war to the point that he avoids any kind of fighting. Players should be completely open to choose a style that works for them. Some of the new catering costs such as orcs, mana, and seeds(?) could be problematic for those types of cities.

 

[Deleted User - 4750465]

But not everyone fights. Some are against fighting for whatever reason. I am aware of a player in particular who won't fight and only caters. He has really bad PTSD from serving in a war to the point that he avoids any kind of fighting. Players should be completely open to choose a style that works for them. Some of the new catering costs such as orcs, mana, and seeds(?) could be problematic for those types of cities.

I understand that concern. To be clear I meant you can autofight the first 6 provinces easily and never see any of the battles. I don't have a Phoenix, only have a level 6 Brown Bear, and not nearly as many fighting AW yet as others, and I don't have a problem. I think perhaps it's time for those others to adapt, and perhaps this will cut down on those alternate push cater cities.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I understand that concern. To be clear I meant you can autofight the first 6 provinces easily and never see any of the battles. I don't have a Phoenix, only have a level 6 Brown Bear, and not nearly as many fighting AW yet as others, and I don't have a problem. I think perhaps it's time for those others to adapt, and perhaps this will cut down on those alternate push cater cities.

Some people are different. In past fellowships I have been in, there were members who were so against fighting of any kind, that they would refuse to make troops at all and did not want any kind of military buildings in their cities, not even armories for the orcs.

 

[Iyapo1]

But not everyone fights.

Some of the new catering costs such as orcs, mana, and seeds(?) could be problematic for those types of cities.

How are the catering costs hitting players who are not going out more than 10 provinces? Players in woodelves and above?

 

[NightshadeCS]

All I know is that my chapter 5 city has been able to do MUCH BETTER in this tournament than the ones of the last few weeks. Now, I know this one is historically easier than T3 tournies, but I still think the change in format has a lot to do with it.

My two cities that are higher, I have not had any trouble meeting what I was doing before, which was a modest performance.

The decrease in monotony is a definite PLUS in all of them.

From my very narrow perspective, the goals of the tourney changes seem to have been realized. Easier for my little city, not much different for non-hard-core players.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

LOL, we've already had an FS on EN who got all 19 chests in the new tournament setup. And now apparently there is a player who repeated his feat of hitting 30K+ points - now in the new format.

I am so looking for additional nerfs from Inno as clearly tournaments are still too easy. /s

 

[Dominionofgod]

I just finished my tourney run of 2 staring 22 provinces and here are my initial thoughts.

I do love how much faster it is now. When your doing ~25 provences or more, on the old system that is 25*4enounters=100*2star=200 encounters * how ever many cities you have. ... in short.. its a looooot of time involved to do that. So the one encounter is a lot faster and easier to work with.

I have noticed a increased lag on elvenar during the tourney. But iv also noticed this increase the last month or so as well. Im sure my older comps dont help that matter any. But i think that's just something ill have to deal with.

One suggestion: Increase the space between each reward in the tourney menu. They are very close together and there is enough room to give a little bit of space between each of them.

And my one concern is the negotiating costs. Now i mostly fight, i only negotiate when i think a battle will be lost or my troop lost is far to high, so i only payed a small bit of attention to negotiating costs on each encounter. And i know that since it changed form 4 encounters to 1 that the single encounter would naturally be higher over all; even despite the adjustments to negotiating. But... i did notice on one fight that i had to negotiate, that the cost included 40,000 supplies for that single encounter. And it was the first star, some where around prov #12~. That one caught me off guard; seemed very very high.

 

[Pheryll]

LOL, we've already had an FS on EN who got all 19 chests in the new tournament setup. And now apparently there is a player who repeated his feat of hitting 30K+ points - now in the new format.

The Elvenar team sets themselves up for things like this (why was the enemy ratio a curve that could be overcome with boosts rather than a line?). Not the first time they have set themselves up (the first bear event the quests and currency were supposedly designed so that you would only get one bear for free... without the time instants being factored in to overcome the quest difficulty). Carelessly leaving loopholes, and then punishing the community for the few that are able to take advantage of those loopholes seems all too common.