Tournament & spier difficulty factors

[Raccon]

I was wondering what are the new variable changes in the game that increase the difficulty level of tournaments and spiere encounters.
As far as I know the AWs, city expansions, squad size, #of cleared provinces and the number of researches add to difficulty levels in spier and tournaments. Are there any new factors such as number of scouted provinces etc..?

 

[crackie]

Squad size was eliminated from the formula awhile ago so you don't get penalized for unlocking optional techs. The variables are:

1. boost percentage (which is maxed at 700 for most),
2. unlocked mandatory techs
3. number of AW levels
4. number of premium plots
5. number of regular plots (premo plots "hurt" less).

These factors don't add to difficulty per se, except maybe in your ability to replenish dead troops in time. At the same encounter between weeks, those variables would increase size of troops used, but the ratio of your troops to enemy does not change if any of those variables change. So your stack increases some if you change those variables and the enemy stack increases proportionally. It's still the same ratio as before you changed anything. Adding to difficulty would be things like 1-star vs 3-star enemies, combo of enemy types, and how far up the Spire or Tourney you decide to go as the ratio of your troop to enemy troops widens. Also, they never officially released these variables as impacting Spire and tourney. They were crowdsourced, but the accuracy is pretty close.

 

[Raccon]

So there is no penalty scouting provinces?
I stop scouting once I reach the required provinces at the end of each chapter because once I over scouted by 5 or 6 provinces and had to face an overly vicious opposition in tournaments and spire until I passed over to the next chapter!

 

[crackie]

The provinces on map is different calculations. The main factor is based on how many rings away the province is from your city. The further you go out, the harder they are. What could happen is you are getting free plots from clearing these encounters and therefore would be increasing plot number variable.

I will leave details of province clearing to someone else as I rarely touch my map these days. The events require you to clear so many provinces so I never bother to do them anymore unless the event quest tells me to. For example, there is the mandatory clear 10 encounter quest that came up which can only be done on the map. Thankfully it didn’t say fight 10 encounters or a lot of people would be in trouble if they only have very hard encounters available. I do recall the difficulty is set at time of scouting though.

 

[Huor]

So would having expansions in inventory count the same as actually placing the expansions?

 

[crackie]

So would having expansions in inventory count the same as actually placing the expansions?

They don’t count until they are placed.

What’s interesting is I have two fellows experimenting with tiny cities. Both are chapter 3. Both have zero wonders. One intentionally kept his relics low by doing minimal tourney and crafting his relics away in MA. The other maxed out her relics doing tourney. Using mimax’s spreadsheet, it was shown that relics actually increased second player’s costs significantly. Most of us don’t even account for boost percentage since we are maxed out at 700 so it rarely gets mentioned. However, player 2 kept earned tech and province plots in her inventory, but bought two premium plots instead. Player 1 bought 0 premium plots and has less total plots. Accounting for plot variables, even though player 2 has MORE total plots out, player 1’s plot variable increased his numbers more because he used regular plots.

 

[Huor]

Very interesting. Thank you!

 

[Raccon]

Lately I only clear necessary provinces when I am at the end of a chapter so I could move on to the next chapter, until then l leave all my scouted i.e incomplete provinces intact to avoid the killer Mist walker on steroids