Has anyone else noticed (hard not to) the increased losses for fighting (everywhere)? Are they putting the 'squeeze' on fighters?
The battle system is an absolute farce in this game... though mostly, there's 2 massive 'walls' that players end up getting smacked with;
a) Ch.1 - Ch.5 world map provinces.
The research tree does not actively build your unit size large enough to counter the sizes that the enemy will naturally have, even when you only scout the bare minimum required provinces to advance across the chapters.
AND
Your units are still absolute crap being limited in general to just 2* barracks units, though the odd event building plus the craftable Valorian Valor + Grounds of the Ork Strategist can give access to some of the more specialised units.
b) The tournament + Spire formulas actively punish players for advancing in the game, as every expansion you place, every mandetory research you complete, AND, every AW level you gain will make your tourny/spire encounters go up in cost. (both negotiation + fighting)
If the devs had a brain among them, they'd instead just front-load the difficulty increases for fighting/negotiating when you begin a new chapter, and then completing researches would actively *decrease* the costs, thereby rewarding progress instead of actively punishing it at every turn!
The expansion cost could then stay, (as many people tend to add expansions as they begin new chapters, especially the guest race chapters where the guest race settlements simply grow bigger & bigger!), as your active researching would then lower the costs that those expansions have incurred.
Oh, and also, remove the damn AW's from the formula, since many of them are sub-par at best, meaning that due to how the formula currently works, there's even
less incentive to even build the stupid things in the first place!lol.