Tournament Changes - Community Feedback and Data

[sam767]

With the help of 2 DAs, 2 UUUs, and other boosts, and a lot of free time , I finally finished first in Ceravyn.
Pro:
The cost to win the tournament is such that we see different winners rotate through.

 

[sam767]

Another week, another first place tournament finish in Ceravyn. Again, it was mostly with manual fighting. It will be many weeks before I can make another run.
The second place player only plays on the app. It blows my mind. I would never get past (say) P35 with auto-fighting before I run out of troops.
Con:
Now that I am bitten by the win-tournament-bug, I’m going to stop advancing in CH17.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

The second place player only plays on the app. It blows my mind. I would never get past (say) P35 with auto-fighting before I run out of troops.

Not sure where you're getting your info, but second place in the current tournament is not playing on the app. I should say was. He just quit this game for good, frustrated with the recent changes in the game - tournament, chapter 17 and inability to play non-mobile version. He is not the first 1mm+ player I know to quit in the last few months.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

After many weeks now of the new system, I really only have one issue in my chapter 17 city, and that is the more randomized enemy unit types. I always auto-fight everything, but with this new system, at least once or twice a week I run into fight deep in the provinces that has enemy troops that are such a bad combo, that I have to cater the encounter instead. Everything else in the changes I can work with, but being forced to cater a near impossible fight just bugs me.

 

[DeletedUser8890]

I haven't read through all the comments, but I want to add my two cents. For the most part, I love the one rather four plan, but in the past few weeks, the addition of using mana is killing me. I can't afford to use what I have accumulated or I'll never progress out of the chapter I'm in (Halflings) let alone do the next one. 15,000 and 20,000 mana for three or four of the negotiations means I am not getting past ten of them in the tournament when I was able to do at least twenty before the change. Bad enough it's requesting way more goods and soldiers than I can produce in one day, but I was able to keep up for a while. This is not making me happy. I have other cities that are not yet using mana and now I feel inclined to not progress them to the point where they would. (Ditto for my beta city.) One -- just one-- of the seven cities I play had managed to finally claim a blueprint, then this happened and now we're lucky to get seven or eight done. Please take the mana use out of the equation. Oh, and I don't have enough of either troops or goods to play the spire. (And why the heck do you lose coins, supplies, and goods when the deities reject them? Seems like you shouldn't.)

 

[Clusseau]

Wow... ive been Away, for several weeks.. now catching up, and seeing very Little Catching Up to do?!

INNO wants to make the Hill Less Steep- for beginners to become Champions... (Ok, Yes! that makes some sense, as the Years add Up)...
Champions Still want to Benefit from progress.. at least a Little Bit... (Providing rewards for Progress?!)
Those interests must be Balanced, but they don't appear to be in Conflict!!!

SO many ways.. (Sooo Many Ways!!) ....have been presented, to achieve both objectives!!!
I Dont Know if Inno has (figuratively) chosen to Walk, or Chew Gum.. .but clearly they have chosen.
Early Players have received a Skyrocket Boost... Late-Players a Waterfall-Fall....

WHY NOT... make tournaments (and Spire) entirely based on CHAPTER???
So simple... easy to include Gradients.... So easy to Tweak early vs Late... so Simple, so Comprehensive....

Instead.. INNO has Convoluted and complex? (ridiculous??) - formula..... aiding Early Players until they peak... Then Punishing them for Every Gain, Thereafter and Forevermore.

Most Players have not reached "The Peak".. and have No Idea.
Some Of Us are Way On The After-Side... and our voices run silent?

Sheeze... "BAD" for top Players means "BAD" for almost-top!!!
Bad for "Almost Top" means Bad for Everyone with Aspirations...
That means (KEEP GOING with this) ... Bad for TOP means Bad For EVERYONE....
(Must we Spell It Out- Draw the Lines- again and again??)

 

[Shyama1]

Besides Tournament difficulty itself, there is another point I wanted to mention, with my city numbers.

The problem is related to game progression and its result.

Ok, let's see the effect of completing Chapters 16 and 17 in my city:

Province 20 / Round 1	Own SS	Enemy SS	Enemy/Own
End of Chapter 15	33,820	51,407	x 1.52
End of Chapter 17	48,100	73,112	x 1.52
Increase	+42%	+42%	0%

As you can see, it results in an increase of 42% of Own and Ennemy Squadsize (for any province, the squadsizes change depending on the province, but the increase remains the same).

And what did I get as a compensation ? A slight increase in Military Buildings production speed:
+11% for Barracks and Mercenary Camp
+35% for Training grounds.

Which is very far from compensating the huge increase of an already tremendously high squadsize.

This is another wrong effect of the tournament changes, that brings the question: "why would I want to progress further in that game if the only result is to make me even weaker in tournaments ?"

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Besides Tournament difficulty itself, there is another point I wanted to mention, with my city numbers.

The problem is related to game progression and its result.

Ok, let's see the effect of completing Chapters 16 and 17 in my city:

Province 20 / Round 1	Own SS	Enemy SS	Enemy/Own
End of Chapter 15	33,820	51,407	x 1.52
End of Chapter 17	48,100	73,112	x 1.52
Increase	+42%	+42%	0%

As you can see, it results in an increase of 42% of Own and Ennemy Squadsize (for any province, the squadsizes change depending on the province, but the increase remains the same).

And what did I get as a compensation ? A slight increase in Military Buildings production speed:
+11% for Barracks and Mercenary Camp
+35% for Training grounds.

Which is very far from compensating the huge increase of an already tremendously high squadsize.

This is another wrong effect of the tournament changes, that brings the question: "why would I want to progress further in that game if the only result is to make me even weaker in tournaments ?"

Can you continue to make enough troops to compensate for the increase? If yes, then no big deal because the actual difficulty of the fights did not change at all. If no, then you just need to increase your troop production to keep up. Again, not a big deal. Us fighters have it easy when compared to caterers, though. I think it is much harder to increase the goods production, than it is to increase troop production. And when you add in the need for orcs, mana, etc to catering costs, end-chapter players who try to mainly cater are hurt much more by advancing in the game. For fighters, it is a tiny blip in comparison.

 

[SoggyShorts]

you just need to increase your troop production

Well @Shyama1 has all max level wonders, so I'd say she's gonna have a hard time doing that...

Even for a middle-of-the-road player such as myself, I think you're making it sound much easier than it is.
I mean I could increase my barracks output by 1.666% for 620 KP and my barracks is responsible for less than 25% of my troops.
So "Just increasing my troop production" to cover that 30% additional troops loss would cost somewhere around 65,000 KP(accounting for the diminishing returns on KP invested), which would take at least a couple of years after I stop spending any KP on research.
Of course, during those years of dumping KP into my wonders trying to just get back to where I was in chapter 15 there will probably be more chapter releases, and if they follow the same "one step forwards, two steps back" formula, I can literally never improve or even maintain my city if I chose to move past the start of chapter 16.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Well @Shyama1 has all max level wonders, so I'd say she's gonna have a hard time doing that...

Even for a middle-of-the-road player such as myself, I think you're making it sound much easier than it is.
I mean I could increase my barracks output by 1.666% for 620 KP and my barracks is responsible for less than 25% of my troops.
So "Just increasing my troop production" to cover that 30% additional troops loss would cost somewhere around 65,000 KP(accounting for the diminishing returns on KP invested), which would take at least a couple of years after I stop spending any KP on research.
Of course, during those years of dumping KP into my wonders trying to just get back to where I was in chapter 15 there will probably be more chapter releases, and if they follow the same "one step forwards, two steps back" formula, I can literally never improve or even maintain my city if I chose to move past the start of chapter 16.

I did mean to add one qualifier in my reply, whether a person owns a Brown Bear or not. With one of those and plenty of time boosters and supply instants, it is trivial to make more than enough troops to last you to the point where the difference between your squad size and the enemy's is too much for you to win. I did not include that because I was assuming she has one. So yes, without the Bear, it does take a little more work to restock your troops.

But since this is the feedback thread, I was trying to balance the personal reply with the required feedback. So for the feedback part of my reply to you, I am close to done with chapter 17, all my current AWs are between level 11 and 16. I have maxed the Barracks for the chapter, have not done the research yet for the upgrades for the other two buildings, and just started upgrading my 6 Armories for the chapter. I have only used my Brown Bear once or twice since the change to the tournament, being able to make enough troops without it to consistently average 5k points each week of the new tournament.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I am close to done with chapter 17, all my current AWs are between level 11 and 16. I have maxed the Barracks for the chapter, have not done the research yet for the upgrades for the other two buildings, and just started upgrading my 6 Armories for the chapter. I have only used my Brown Bear once or twice since the change to the tournament, being able to make enough troops without it to consistently average 5k points each week of the new tournament.

So if you'd stayed at the start of chapter 16 instead, what would that 5K have been? 6K? More?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So if you'd stayed at the start of chapter 16 instead, what would that 5K have been? 6K? More?

Let's see, this week the gems tournament will make two full cycles with the new system, so 17 weeks so far. Chapter 17 was added 12 or 13 weeks ago, and I had finished chapter 16 a couple of months before that, so I did all of chapter 16 under the old system, which means there is no way to compare numbers for me. But my goal was to average 5k per week when the new system started and I have done that, except for a couple of weeks where my job kept me from having the time I needed. And I could easily do more than 5k, but that is where I choose to stop. Plus, under the new system, my fellowship is getting between 11 and 13 chests every week, so I think things are working pretty well.

 

[SoggyShorts]

And I could easily do more than 5k, but that is where I choose to stop.

Yeah, choosing to do less than you are capable of doing will generally mean that nerfs don't stop you from doing it again.
I mean if you never drove faster than 50, then replacing your Porche with a Pinto won't slow you down, will it?

 

[Shyama1]

I have 5 Brown Bears and a training time of 60+ hours (24 Armories), but I just can't use them every troops collect, because I would quickly run out of Pet Foods. So I'm usually using my Brown Bears once a month (or 2 months), when I gained enough Time Instants from Spire and Crafting to make it worth.
But that doesn't changes the problem for future Chapters, as SoggyShorts said "one step forwards, two steps back" . Wich means things will only become worse with next Chapters.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I have 5 Brown Bears

That says it all right there......

 

[SoggyShorts]

a production time of 50+ hours (24 Armories)

I'm curious: why?
Presumably the #1 player logs in at least once a day, so why have a queue greater than 24h long?
Since orc nests are better per square at making orcs, I can only assume it's for ranking points- So is the combination of
Armories+Residence+workshop support buildings significantly better on a score-per-square basis compared to
Orc nests+Factory+support+more tournament points(permanent ranking gains) ?

 

[Kekune]

why have a queue greater than 24h long?

Increased benefit when brown bear is fed? Just delay pickup.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Increased benefit when brown bear is fed? Just delay pickup.

Unless I don't understand how brown bears work, that can't be it.
I thought that you feed the bear, and it gives X% more troops when you collect from your barraks/TG/MC
So at most it would save some clicks
E.G.

1. Open barracks,
2. fill queue,
3. use timers,
4. before time runs to zero refill queue.
5. Repeat 2-4 as desired.
6. When you're done Feed bear(s) and collect troops.

So as long as your queue time is greater than your biggest timers (which are 20h ones since the 40s are super rare) then it shouldn't matter if your queue is 24h or 100h

 

[samidodamage]

I thought that you feed the bear, and it gives X% more troops when you collect from your barraks/TG/MC

Yes. So, if you delay picking up troops for 2 days (48hrs) & then feed the bear, you get the boost to all troops made over the past 2 days. Then you start with your steps and using timers.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Unless I don't understand how brown bears work, that can't be it.
I thought that you feed the bear, and it gives X% more troops when you collect from your barraks/TG/MC
So at most it would save some clicks
E.G.

1. Open barracks,
2. fill queue,
3. use timers,
4. before time runs to zero refill queue.
5. Repeat 2-4 as desired.
6. When you're done Feed bear(s) and collect troops.

So as long as your queue time is greater than your biggest timers (which are 20h ones since the 40s are super rare) then it shouldn't matter if your queue is 24h or 100h

You can pre store units

So if you store 50 hours of production in your barracks,
Then activate your bears and the harvest those 50+ hours you get 3*50% "extra" = 150hours

That makes a dent
This is how I did it in the old times.

I have 3 bears and I could spend pet food close to twice a week.

So I got full production on barracks, then spend a day and a bit of prodution on training grounds then spend another day and a bit on the mercenary grounds.

Wiht 3.5-4 days stored of production I activated my bears ad then harvested those productions for maximum troops.
Afther that you use boosters and production for another 12 hours after which the whole game starts again.

@en

Can you continue to make enough troops to compensate for the increase? If yes, then no big deal because the actual difficulty of the fights did not change at all. If no, then you just need to increase your troop production to keep up. Again, not a big deal. Us fighters have it easy when compared to caterers, though. I think it is much harder to increase the goods production, than it is to increase troop production. And when you add in the need for orcs, mana, etc to catering costs, end-chapter players who try to mainly cater are hurt much more by advancing in the game. For fighters, it is a tiny blip in comparison.

He already adressed this.
He showed that the increase in troop losses was 42%, the aditional production is not close to that.
You can get all kind of outside sources for units, but you can get the same boosts at lower chapters.

Those wonders and bears can also be used on chapter 15 improving your production rate at the same rate.

With each added chapter the growth of units lost will increase exponentially as a part of the formula is exponential.
Unless they make major changes to the unit production to match or outpace it it will not make a change.

for now, each chapter will make the tournaments worse and worse and worse and an exponential increased rate.