News from Beta - May Contain Spoilers!

[Henroo]

Has there been any indication in Beta when the new tournament format will reach the live worlds?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Has there been any indication in Beta when the new tournament format will reach the live worlds?

Not for a while still. It is just in the 2nd week of testing now and it sounds like at least a couple more weeks to go. Or more.

 

[mikeledo]

From the forum, it doesn't look like INNO changed much which means they are pretty much pleased with themselves and got the desired outcome. This week INNO changed the points under the chest icon to indicate all the points the FS obtained after they get 10 chests. This is in preparation for change. I would expect a proud announcement this weekend.

 

[Kekune]

Marindor has stated that they are planning some changes that take longer to implement. Specifically, a compromise between the old troop mixes and the new random version. He hinted at more, but that one he was clear about.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

INNO wants to level the playing field in the tournament between the seasoned player and the casual player. If that is the real goal, the easiest way to do this is to enforce the TOS and restrict those folks with push accounts, rather than re-engineer the game to bottleneck their KP which they don't need anyway. First INNO came up with ways to feed us KP through events and buildings. They went out of their way to make tournaments easier with FP, BB, VV, ON, UUU, MM, ELR, DA plus a few more acronyms I overlooked. Now they have come full circle on both. Stop the knee-jerk response to large push accounts. It makes you look bad and those who abide by the rules are always hurt more than those who don't.

This week someone responded as follows,
If I can't play the tournaments anymore as I please and that is taken away, the only thing left to do is to start pushing again into oblivion and just max out all the wonders

The goal of making pushing less interesting might backfire instead it seems.

I do not really understand this "anti push" move as they named it. because there are other ways to boost wonders without pushing.
I leveled like 8 wonderlevels last week without pushing a single point, if there is a will, there is a way.

 

[mikeledo]

This week someone responded as follows,
If I can't play the tournaments anymore as I please and that is taken away, the only thing left to do is to start pushing again into oblivion and just max out all the wonders

The goal of making pushing less interesting might backfire instead it seems.

I do not really understand this "anti push" move as they named it. because there are other ways to boost wonders without pushing.
I leveled like 8 wonderlevels last week without pushing a single point, if there is a will, there is a way.

Pushing is a violation of the TOS, rules that INNO made, and has the option to change. They chose not to change the rules nor enforce them. The statement is a contradiction. The writer claims they level 8 wonder levels without pushing and previously states "start pushing AGAIN" which is an admission they were pushing at some point. My time is capped out playing 3 cities. I can't imagine playing 25 separate accounts for KP. The game isn't worth it.

 

[Deleted User - 4750465]

I agree that we don't know what inno wants, what they have made clear didn't touch on this aspect. We don't know if it is KP related, competition related or something else. I do suspect they don't want winning a tournament to be about who has the most provinces. While this will obviously be a factor to a certain point, I don't think they want it as the deciding factor as it currently is.

I don't however think it is related to scoring 10,000pts discouraging other players and if it is they are seriously misguided. At the moment if people are dismayed by that it is only because 10-18K pts is top scores, wind that back to 3-5K as top scores and people will shift their understanding and then be dismayed by 5K scores. We have seen this already in reverse as scores grew. Currently it is a somewhat even progression in pts, with the new system the gap between 2K and 2.5K pts might be massive (picked random numbers). In current system getting an extra 500pts is somewhere between 10-20 provinces (approx) where you can do a bunch of round 1 or a bunch or round 6 or anything in between. The new system if you want to make up that 500pts it is going to be a pain staking slog of goods or troops. Of course I am talking about higher point levels not going from 500 to 1000pts as that is achievable in easy fights.

I am curious to see how many more 10 chest fellowships there will be, this certainly looks way easier for people to get to 1,600pts. But its the top end of the competition and the implications that has that will be interesting in terms of balance.

For those talking about the KP aspect, spend some time considering the massive jump in KP needed in chapters 15, 16 and expected 17. If they scale the KP back too far they will create a gap between players who got through with old system and those who didn't. This gap not only applies to tech but also to wonders. The places to spend KP are ever increasing (new chapters, new wonders, new wonder levels) but the sources of KP only increase as your town grows and you can farm more form tournaments (or certain wonders/event buildings). They need to be very careful not to create a large gap that newer players can't cross. Most changes over the past few years have made it easier and easier for new players to progress faster and faster than the first group...we will see what direction they choose to take.

I'm curious to see how much of a gap there will be for the newer players who don't have an evolved brown bear or fire phoenix. I hope they aren't developing a formula that assumes those buildings. They made a mistake in making event buildings so good.

 

[Jackluyt]

This new fellowship Tournament banner has arrived in the Live Worlds with the latest upgrade.
I would think that might mean that the Tournament Changes are not far away!
But apparently the designers are still going to tweak the enemy army composition before it gets released

Read more about the proposed changes here: https://tinyurl.com/yaez3js4

Here are some thoughts:

1. Overall I like the change! With a little tweaking it should make Tournaments much quicker, and one has to stop and think now rather than brainless identical click-click-clicks hundreds of times.
   It makes a big difference if you have more than one city.
   
2. This kind of big change does not usually jump straight from Beta into the Live Worlds. Usually the designers ask for player feedback, suggestions and acceptability, and tweak it one or two times before its general release.
   However, the Tournament counter in Live Worlds is showing numbers above 40,000 since the update on 21-23 July - so perhaps it is closer than we thought!
   
3. The problem I am finding in Beta is that troop requirements escalate rapidly province by province and round by round - so you will have 60 squads in province number one, lose almost none in fights - and by the time you get to province #20 you only have 2 squads to fight with!
   And if you use lots of time boosters to make another 30 000 troops - then that 2 squads only goes up to four -and you STILL don't have enough to fight with.
4. It may help now to do the optional squad size upgrades that you previously skipped - but my problem in Beta is not small squads; it is that I cannot make enough troops to do the higher levels, so I doubt if it would help much.
   Certainly there is no harm in doing the squad size upgrades you skipped - it will no longer make your tournaments more expensive, as things stand right now.
   But I would not advise doing anything about squad size until they have finalised the system; they may still change it a lot!
   
   NOTE: Squad size researches no longer ask for Guest Race Goods - so you don’t have to go back and build a Settlement.
5. It seems that fighting all the way is a thing of the past. Now you fight the first 15 or so provinces on day one and cater the rest, if you wish to go further...
6. The five-day-expiring military buildings still work nicely to save troop losses. It is just that at a certain level, fighting becomes impossible because one simply does not have enough troops. Up to that point, with 5 day buildings deployed, losses are minimal.
7. They more-or-less halved the amount of Goods needed to cater in the tournaments. That makes it much easier.
8. There is a wider variety of goods in Beta tournament catering - so it should not deplete one kind as much as it used to. Seeds and Mana come into the picture, as well as Coins.
9. It is odd that the old tenth chest gives 30 KP - but chests 11 - 19, which are a lot harder, only give 10 each!
   That really needs changing!!
10. Seeing that the enemy troops as things stand are virtually random, it is no longer possible to plan in advance; one just makes equal amounts of every kind of troops and hopes for the best.
    This means that the crafted five-day expiring buildings that boost Mages and Archers are close to useless - because there is no way to predict if you will need them that week. Perhaps it would be better to replace them with a five-day building that boosts the attack of ALL units?
11. Please feel free to submit your own comments!

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I'm curious to see how much of a gap there will be for the newer players who don't have an evolved brown bear or fire phoenix. I hope they aren't developing a formula that assumes those buildings. They made a mistake in making event buildings so good.

For the new tournament format? My Beta city is mid-chapter 4 and I got over 1600 points in the Elixir tournament last week, using nothing to boost attack or health. And I auto-fought all but two or three of the encounters, which I had to cater. I had 8 provinces open and did 5 stars in each. Once you have at least 8 provinces open for each of the 9 relic types, it should be easy to get 1600 every week, as long as you make enough troops or goods to complete the encounters.

 

[samidodamage]

The writer claims they level 8 wonder levels without pushing and previously states "start pushing AGAIN" which is an admission they were pushing at some point.

Mike, I think @CrazyWizard was reporting what someone else had posted in the beta discussion:

This week someone responded as follows,
If I can't play the tournaments anymore as I please and that is taken away, the only thing left to do is to start pushing again into oblivion and just max out all the wonders

He then went on to talk about what he did last week. With a tourney average of over 18K points in his main city and a score of 20K+ in last week's elixir tourney, it's easy to see where he would have gotten the kp to level those wonders without using push accounts.
From what I've understood from his posts over time, he has made his own game out of competing with pushers by maximizing his city by following the rules (and done a really good job of it from what I can tell, as well ) Also, he has been outspoken about the various game mechanics that, if or when implemented, actually increase pushing and that's what I think he's saying here as well.
If I'm wrong, he will no doubt be along to correct me.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

One has to stop and think now rather than brainless identical click-click-clicks hundreds of times.

Seeing that the enemy troops as things stand are virtually random, it is no longer possible to plan in advance; one just makes equal amounts of every kind of troops and hopes for the best.
This means that the crafted five-day expiring buildings that boost Mages and Archers are close to useless.

Your first point seems to conflict with your later point. Sure, there are less clicks due to less encounters. But with every encounter being randomized, it could end up taking *more* time as you now have to sit and analyze every encounter, especially with such high squad sizes where losses could be massive. And some encounters will likely only be winnable through manual fighting (like the Spire). Currently I use autofight for the tourney since I often go 30-50 provinces deep, but use manual fighting often in the Spire, especially in later stages. This slows us down considerably (and is even harder on mobile players who don't have this option).

The problem I am finding in Beta is that troop requirements escalate rapidly province by province and round by round - so you will have 60 squads in province number one, lose almost none in fights - and by the time you get to province #20 you only have 2 squads to fight with!

It seems that fighting all the way is a thing of the past. Now you fight the first 15 or so provinces on day one and cater the rest, if you wish to go further...

I enjoy doing many provinces. For elixir, I did 50 provinces for 6 rounds. Extremely rewarding, but it took time and effort. With the proposed changes, this may no longer be possible and that simply kills my enjoyment entirely.

If they did the following, it would be much better:
1. Reduce tournament encounters from 4 to 1 as proposed.
2. Make tournament difficulty scale based on *mandatory* squad size only, ignoring expansions and AW levels.
3. Make optional squad upgrades *improve* our ratio vs the enemy.
4. Increase the difficulty of later provinces, but at a much slower rate than is currently proposed. Province 20 in round 1 should *not* be more difficult than what we currently face in round 6!

And lastly:
5. Add a way to access "training fight" encounters from the barracks where players can practice fighting with various troops without any troop losses. This would allow new players to learn without being demoralized by crushing losses and allow even experienced fighters to learn nuances of specialized troops and how to tackle the more difficult encounters (such as multi-wave fights).

 

[Pheryll]

Seeing that the enemy troops as things stand are virtually random, it is no longer possible to plan in advance; one just makes equal amounts of every kind of troops and hopes for the best.
This means that the crafted five-day expiring buildings that boost Mages and Archers are close to useless - because there is no way to predict if you will need them that week. Perhaps it would be better to replace them with a five-day building that boosts the attack of ALL units?

They did note that they would be changing that a bit so that while there will still be some randomness, you should see the regular troops for the province type more frequently than the others.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Mike, I think @CrazyWizard was reporting what someone else had posted in the beta discussion:

He then went on to talk about what he did last week. With a tourney average of over 18K points in his main city and a score of 20K+ in last week's elixir tourney, it's easy to see where he would have gotten the kp to level those wonders without using push accounts.
From what I've understood from his posts over time, he has made his own game out of competing with pushers by maximizing his city by following the rules (and done a really good job of it from what I can tell, as well ) Also, he has been outspoken about the various game mechanics that, if or when implemented, actually increase pushing and that's what I think he's saying here as well.
If I'm wrong, he will no doubt be along to correct me.

It was someone I personally know as a high level tournament player.
I do not think he posted that on the forums but I might be wrong.

Pushing is a violation of the TOS, rules that INNO made, and has the option to change. They chose not to change the rules nor enforce them. The statement is a contradiction. The writer claims they level 8 wonder levels without pushing and previously states "start pushing AGAIN" which is an admission they were pushing at some point. My time is capped out playing 3 cities. I can't imagine playing 25 separate accounts for KP. The game isn't worth it.

If there is a will there is a way, wondersearching is another option that can award some good rewards for the price of time.
I have been doing this now for well over 2 years,

Pushing is not nessesary, but it's a lot easier and quicker than searching.

No need to push with these numbers 2 days ago I was a lot higher, (~23K KP)

Currently my main issue is seeds, orks and mana to upgrade my wonders, not KP

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

And lastly:
5. Add a way to access "training fight" encounters from the barracks where players can practice fighting with various troops without any troop losses. This would allow new players to learn without being demoralized by crushing losses and allow even experienced fighters to learn nuances of specialized troops and how to tackle the more difficult encounters (such as multi-wave fights).

I would love to see this happen.

 

[DeletedUser13974]

Although I like the idea of less encounters for less clicks, it is a big change to almost effectively fighting or catering all 4 encounters at once. What if we could retain some of the partial catering, like bribing some of the clans from the opposing army, where you could basically buy down the enemy size by some %? Could be scaled for some spice, like 10 -> 20 -> 30 -> 40%. You could choose to cater 4 times to clear, or try to blast the hold-outs. Although not as many clicks reduced, it isn't as mindless as it currently is, especially if you're trying to minmax it, and it probably isn't as costly or catastrophic as the all-or-none.

 

[mikeledo]

Wondersearchers are generally looked down upon. No FS likes them to come in and rob them of KP

 

[AtaguS]

If they did the following, it would be much better:
1. Reduce tournament encounters from 4 to 1 as proposed.
2. Make tournament difficulty scale based on *mandatory* squad size only, ignoring expansions and AW levels.
3. Make optional squad upgrades *improve* our ratio vs the enemy.
4. Increase the difficulty of later provinces, but at a much slower rate than is currently proposed. Province 20 in round 1 should *not* be more difficult than what we currently face in round 6!

And lastly:
5. Add a way to access "training fight" encounters from the barracks where players can practice fighting with various troops without any troop losses. This would allow new players to learn without being demoralized by crushing losses and allow even experienced fighters to learn nuances of specialized troops and how to tackle the more difficult encounters (such as multi-wave fights).

Big yes to all this. Especially #2 and #5. But, all of them really.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Wondersearchers are generally looked down upon. No FS likes them to come in and rob them of KP

Some do, some don't.

I had plenty of thank you messages, and quite often people I "helped" placed some kp in my wonders as well.
At the moment 24 players have dropped some kp in my "open" wonders as a thank you message. but they arent complaining on the forums
I get a unwanted/hate message about twice a year which far outweights the ty messages and ty kp drops.

but 2 weeks ago I got an interesting mail that you wonder how you should classify that one

Reciever: Haha, Thanks, I wasn't aware people were this stupid, feel free to do it again
Me: Thanks to you, I just had a net profit of 24 knowledge points for my own wonders
Reciever: Haha, what a lie, keep spending money, a nice one I can place on the forums, buy an abbacus.

That was the whackiest mail I have seen related to wondersearching in the past several years.

It's legal since it doesn't break the ToS, and most recievers seem to be ok/happy with it.

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

I didn't realize that donating to wonders outside your fellowship was called wondersearching. I routinely donate to my active neighbors AW's because they have wonders that I need runes for and it's just the neighborly thing to do, like visiting and trading.

Too bad Crazy isn't in any neck of the worlds where I am.... I would love more contributions...lol

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I didn't realize that donating to wonders outside your fellowship was called wondersearching. I routinely donate to my active neighbors AW's because they have wonders that I need runes for and it's just the neighborly thing to do, like visiting and trading.

Too bad Crazy isn't in any neck of the worlds where I am.... I would love more contributions...lol

No, they are talking about exploring around the world map outside of what you have discovered. I have done this before and never got any angry messages, but I also tried to put in a decent amount and not just the stupid two or three points that some random players do. I also don't know what priorities others use, but I when I do this, I try to find players with little help already in an AW that is fairly close to full. Those are players who are not getting help from their fellowship or they are solo players.