That's one problem, it happens but there is no way of knowing what influences it in what way, so one can't adapt ones strategy unless by not doing anything anymore, so it basically is a slotmachine. I did not unlock any new squadsizes, and at the end of the tree for a while no other research has been unlocked either. So it might have something to do with me jumping to the next tier due to upgrading AWs, but in that case the jump is ridiculous.
Just finished the first tower, with about 60% more losses than usual, despite the firephoenix being active and a UUU active, mostly because the bloody squadsize now is so large even in the first part of that tower that any loss is horrendous, let alone in this second one.
So for this week I'm done. Even on manual fighting I can't get through this one, so I burned 5x5 TOWER squads in my 1 auto-battle and 4 manual attempts in this encounter. With a towersquad being just over 4 regular squads that means that this
single encounter already cost me more than
100 squads of troops.
I don't mind a challenge, but this just pisses me off royally, especially since I'm not even getting close to winning.
And no, I'm not some newbe at manual fighting choosing the wrong troops, I fight 95% of my tourneybattles and usually do 20+ provinces for 5 rounds and never burn that many troops in the entire tourney.
And I don't 'convince' out of principle because that is just like playing roulette and I HATE that random bs for huge amounts of (sentient) goods.
@alainemk
Playing the Spire as individual is not worth it period, except for maybe the 1st 2 levels of the first tower. I only started really playing the Spire when the FS awards were introduced since they made up for the huge cost. (except that this week I'm just screwed apparently).