Enevhar Aldarion
Oh Wise One
After reading all the discussion and feedback on the tournament changes, I get that at or around chapter 16, a bottleneck occurs that effectively sucks all the joy out of the game and turns it into work that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and anger in your spirit. This bottleneck seems to involve a combination of penalties imposed in the form of negative metrics that impact progression in the game and in tournaments. What I gather is that having Ancient Wonders in your city at a high level imposes penalties on you even though those Wonders are supposed to be a positive and natural progression for your city. The same can be said for expansions to your city, i.e. the more you place, the more they count against you, even though they are supposed to be a positive improvement to your progression. Also, at that point in the game, creating troops to keep up with the losses these penalties impose is nigh on impossible with or without buffs.
I am probably a mid-range player, in that I don't have all the premium expansions and maybe a little over 300 AW levels and I can fight the entire Spire and fight for about 4000-5000 points per week in the tournaments. I am also at the end of chapter 18 and impatiently waiting for chapter 19. I have been playing for a bit over 5 years of the 6 1/2 that the game has existed, so I have seen a lot of the changes. None of them have been so bad as to ruin my fun or make the game unplayable for me. I do the same amount in the Spire and tournament as I did before the big changes last year, so I am not in the ultra high-end of players that these changes impacted. That means I can comfortably do the same points now in chapter 18, as I did in chapter 15. I have accepted the changes and adjusted my play when needed and still enjoy everything about the game, except the FA, of course. lol