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    Your Elvenar Team

The progression of Tournament difficulty

Gkyr

Chef
One of my activities is to type out what 'everybody knows' but has remained unstated. Why? I don't know. Just me, I guess.
Warning: TLDR

With that preamble, I have noticed that there is not a smooth progression of difficulty in battles as one progresses through the Tourney provinces.
Sure, the ratios tilt steadily in favor of the opposition but that does not always translate into battle difficulty. To really discuss battle difficulty, I feel that is necessary to experience each battle, that is, by manual fighting. So this post relies on the details apparent during MF.
And, sure, the potential costs of encounters can be seen to reliably increase and that is best seen in negotiation quantities more than in battles because battles have so many variables (player experience, buffs, elf or human, topography). But negotiations affect players differently depending upon one's resource production and stockpile.

With that as a preamble, I get to my points: (minor point) in my experience (elf, manual fighting) the first 7 province encounters are trivial and I have turned to auto-fighting to save time, for the most part. From there, the fights get more involved. (major point) For me, Tourney difficulty peaks at province 24 (range: 21-31). Once I am past that point, the nature of the battle changes and they usually become less challenging. For instance, if I have not needed much Mage action up through that point I find that Blossoms (for instance) become supremely necessary. It is almost as if one developer is assigned to scripting the first 20 battles and another dev is assigned to script the next 20.

After province 40, things can be counted upon to become progressively tougher. And, of course, there comes a point where the cost of squads lost makes the point and reward gains unpalatable. Or one runs out of provinces.

Also, when there is a supremely difficult province that is either unwinnable or extremely challenging, either in the first 20 or the next 20 provinces, it is invariably followed by a less challenging province battle. In such a case, if I lose during a later round and earlier round provinces are open beyond it, I will skip it and go on the the next provinces and this has invariably carried me further. If the lost province is the only loss in a series of gains I will cater it to keep the continuity for the next round. If I only gain no more provinces (reconnoiter and not engage) or only 1 province beyond the lost one, I will not cater (unless greedy for something) and start the next round from province 1.

Finally, and this part specifically and only applies to accounts with upgraded Timewarp and Twilight Phoenixidae, there is some discussion about when to use the TP, which is limited to 12 hours per feeding. Some feel that it is most useful when losses are higher, ie, in later rounds. I disagree but supporting this opinion would take some math, which I am not good at. Still, there is a pattern that some would find more useful for the TP and I refer to that pattern as the Wedge.

The Wedge occurs when I fight in Tourney round one as far as my buffs and skills will take me. In manual fighting, this takes some time. The upgraded Timewarp then allows me to immediately promenade down the line in round 2 but, as you might expect, I am invariably interrupted by RL. By the time I return to keyboard it is time to start round three from scratch. I may make it to continue round 2 or I may not. Suffice it to say, I often find myself with , for example, 40 completions of round 1, 30 of round 2, 25 of round 3, 15 of round 4, and 7 of round 5. One might imagine that, with the increase of battle difficulty for each successive round, there has been created a Wedge-shaped run of "iso-difficulty" in moving from a latter run initial province to and earlier run later province. I do not know; I really do not care: this is a thought-experiment. BUT...if one is limiting the use of the TP in order to conserve pet food, this makes an attractive occasion to use the TP across a series of runs.

And this discussion holds for all nine varieties of Tourney, in one form or another.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Yes, it's a stepped progression and not linear. There are certain jump points and then the rate of progression changes. I just shot a notice to my group about this. The first 5 provinces are always easy. You always have the numbers in your favors no matter what you plop down in your city, what chapter you're in (mandatory techs unlocked), how many wonders you've upgraded(oxford comma) and how many glorious expansions you've placed. This is because the ratio of your troops to enemy is preset at each encounter and for the first 5 provinces, you always outnumber the enemy. This also means you can be as sloppy as you want picking your troop lineup and will probably win autofighting even while selecting your troops blindfolded. It's far easier on your troops to do first 5 provinces to 5* than like 10 provinces to 2 stars to get the same 1000pts or whatever.
TournamentDifficultyNew.png
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Gkyr

Chef
Ok, but what's new?^^
One of my activities is to type out what 'everybody knows' but has remained unstated. Why? I don't know. Just me, I guess. :)
There has been a consistent difference in battle difficulty levels between the 'lower' provinces and the 'upper' provinces, separated by a middle inflection point that I have noticed consistently in manual fighting in all Tournies over the past two years.
I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. Actually, I do not expect anyone to second this because consistent manual fighters are few.
 
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Gkyr

Chef
@crackie where the heat grid come from? It is a summary overview and good for initial battle stats but does not hint at the "biphasic" nature of battle difficulty that I have noticed.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
@crackie where the heat grid come from?
Inno. Oct ‘21 Tourney changes announcement. It’s also on MinMax’s page but he shows it in a line graph form so you can see the steps and the rate changes.

Besides the ratio of the armies determined at each province, you also have combo of enemies and promotion level of enemies that influence difficulty. Mage/Heavy Melee combos are a walk in the park. Heck, you can fight 5 waves of them and come out pretty unscathed. Other tourneys like Scroll and Dust might throw one of each class type at you. Even if you manual fight, you can’t hedge against the whole field and will take heavy casualties. Lastly, not all players get the joy of facing multi-promotion Mist Walkers for example. Unless there is an obstacle in her way, it’s guaranteed troop loss since she gets first pickings. If there’s a Mist Walker in every encounter, it’s costly, esp in higher provinces when they outnumber your stack.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
There have been no changes to the 'difficulty' progression of tourney provinces since they changed it from 4 encounters per round to one encounter per round. This stayed in beta for months, with the devs actually adjusting the mechanics before it went live.
We'd asked for fewer encounters/round for years; we got it. We'd asked for straight 5/5 matches of our troops vs enemy troops; we got it. The side effect was changing from having 'known' enemies you'd fight to having the possibility of seeing any enemy unit in every encounter, thus creating the situation @crackie described. Of course, everyone screamed bloody murder, because the viability of usefulness of the temp bldgs was skewed compared to the prior situation (where you'd know if you'd be using mostly mages, mostly light range, etc depending on the enemy types that could show up in that specific tourney type). So, they made some changes to the probabilities of units showing up in specific tourneys. The units selected for higher probabilities were roughly the ones that had been the 'main' enemy unit in the old tourneys (for Tier 1 tourneys), adding in the secondary unit for Tier 2 tourneys and then adding in the counter unit for the Tier 3 tourneys. They retained the ability to face any unit of any type in any battle.
You can still see how those old tourneys worked by looking at the tourney pages on ElvenGems (they haven't been updated since the new tourney structure launched). Those tourney pages on ElvenGems are still applicable to the map province fights since both map and tourney were set up the same way back then and there have been no changes to map provinces.
The higher probability enemy units by tourney now are:
Marble: Heavy Melee
Steel: Mage
Planks: Light Range
Crystal: Mage & Heavy Ranged
Scroll: Light Ranged & Heavy Ranged
Silk: Light Melee & Heavy Melee
Elixir: Light Range, Light Melee & Heavy Melee
Magic Dust: Light Melee, Mage & Heavy Ranged
Gems: Light Melee, Heavy Ranged & Heavy Melee
I'm not going hunting for the actual forum threads to back up this stuff, lol! I have an extensive personal library of all things Elvenar. I put the info into documents/spreadsheets as it comes out (it helps me reduce learning curve time for new mechanics). I promise I didn't make any of it up, it really did come through forum posts, either here or on beta* :) .

*Note I do not play on beta, but I read those forums regularly to prepare for upcoming changes.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
I put the info into documents/spreadsheets as it comes out (it helps me reduce learning curve time for new mechanics).
I missed an opportunity to poke fun at the spreadsheet people in my forum Civ game. I am one of them with many auxiliary spreadsheets to help run an organized fellowship! But I can't talk about philology when talking about spreadsheets. Oh wait, I just did @MaidenFair ;)

p.s. We got a pop up bugle horn announcement this week on EN server about the Social Media Coordinator position. I laughed.
 

Gkyr

Chef
@samidodamage : your Tourney notes agree with mine, so no argument here. The sea-change in mid Tourney is playing out for me now even as we type this week in Silk, especially in round 6 as LM and HM (early on) change to a lot of HM (later on). In the 'upper half' I am finding that I use more '5 Blossom Brigades' and 3Gollum:2Buddy linesup than I did earlier.
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
One of my activities is to type out what 'everybody knows' but has remained unstated. Why? I don't know. Just me, I guess. :)
There has been a consistent difference in battle difficulty levels between the 'lower' provinces and the 'upper' provinces, separated by a middle inflection point that I have noticed consistently in manual fighting in all Tournies over the past two years.
I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. Actually, I do not expect anyone to second this because consistent manual fighters are few.

They change in difficulty at certain province levels is obvious even in auto battles. 6,10,20 and 40 are key points there is a higher point too but I don't fight that far but FS members who do mention it on ocasion.

First 6 provinces are gifted, A few of us tried putting in worst combinations possible and while you wont win 6@6 that way the bulk of those you will even with bad options. Basically they wanted to ensure every fellowship could get a blueprint.

First 10 is still super easy but you do need to think in terms of combat

Once your going 20+ your town has to be geared for tourney for consistent results.

@crackie where the heat grid come from? It is a summary overview and good for initial battle stats but does not hint at the "biphasic" nature of battle difficulty that I have noticed.

Tha map is just illustrative showing a mechanic. In honesty the colouration to red starts a lot sooner and gets way darker quickly if you work the bright red at the dev specified "impossible" to win battle scenario of 2:1 enemy to player ratio. Only boost buildings and/or skill are going to get you anywhere or some dumbluck with the RNG troop selection. Gotta love [when you get] an easy no loss win at province 40.

The screaming bloody murder with the changes though predominately sat and still sits around the fact the change became counter intuitive, developing a town makes tournaments harder. People regularly enough talk about parking towns now to avoid the increase in difficulty.
 
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