Tournaments

[DeletedUser1122]

From the international forum:
Dear Elves and Humans,


In the last InnoGames TV Episode Timon and Oliver granted you a sneak peek into our next big feature: Tournaments.


Today we would like to inform you that we have already started the open beta phase for that feature on our Beta world. After the test phase of 2 weeks we will start the first tournament on a single market first to test the performance of the feature when a higher amount of players are playing it. We plan to start the first tournament for all markets worldwide in 3 weeks.


There is a very good reason for these 3 weeks of testing. If we find any critical bugs or other issues with the tournaments, the first tournament worldwide might be postponed. That's why this announcement is conditional.


As soon as we are ready to start tournaments for all players, we will let you know via the forums.
****************************************************************************************
I believe it was released in Beta on April 13; so set your clocks.

 

[DeletedUser1122]

from the thread: Mods, please tell devs to fix the quests!!!
"They've made a fundamental game shift which isn't being discussed: how is it that fighting is the only real "active play" now offered in a City Builder game?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-Tournament. But really, there's no different between sitting around endlessly clicking on fight moves and endlessly clicking quest moves."

I couldn't leave your post buried in a different thread. It is so right.
and the beat goes on... Major changes to the game.
Fighting will become a higher priority if not #1.
It impacts fellowship importance, relics, research tree and KP's.

Here is a link to the announcement in the other Beta
https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/let-the-tournaments-begin.4760/[/QUOTE]

 

[DeletedUser627]

I'd recommend that everyone check into Beta and start commenting.

My understanding of the system is that every week, the top 100 players in the Tournament get permanent score points, 1-100. This may not sound like a lot, but it can add up if you place often. And these points are different than any other points so far: only a few players will ever be able to get them. So far in the game, at every level of Elvenar, the same points are available to every player. It may take forever if you don't pay, but you can still get to the points eventually.

Tournament points are different: the rank points are only available to top players. Players who spend $ to compete more in the tournaments, and players with large cities full of resources - these will always win the available tournament points. It's a "rich get richer" scenario.

Let's say I place in the tournament even once a month (pretty easy to do, since I have a huge city). 800 or so permanent points - simply because I'm a bigger city with more resources to devote. If I make this a priority, I could double or triple that result.

Devoting energy to tournaments for KP and Relics is fine by me...but I don't like inequitable achievement rewards. In Elvenar, we haven't had rewards for "the first person to do such and such"...or "the first 100 people to reach Fairy get 100 score points"...we haven't faced scenarios of limited resources made available to only certain players.

Competing for limited resources is a PvP element. I know that the narrow definition of PvP involves direct attack; however, the broad definition includes any form of competition between players. Inno must be using the narrow definition only. That, combined with the fact that they've opted for fighting as the only active play scenario, is a bad sign for those of us who like the cooperative nature of the Elvenar environment.

 

[DeletedUser61]

combined with the fact that they've opted for fighting as the only active play scenario

My numbers are only preliminary, and based on Beta, BUT the Catering Costs for the nearest few tournaments is absurdly low, while the fight is medium easy as compared to your current Squad Size technology.

I'm not sure where the crossover point will be, but Fighting is clearly a BAD strategy for the tournaments that are "near" your city.

 

[DeletedUser43]

The nice thing is that tournament fighting is much easier than regular fighting. Autofight does almost as good a job as any player which is not true at all normally. Fighting is a good strategy for fights near your city as you can win them without losing any troops. But, you can negotiate them too because negotiating costs are extremely low too. I love fighting because you get to fight a lot and learn a lot and do it all very cheaply. Plus, it gives you something to do. It is fun to fight when you can easily win! I think if a lot more people can win they would find it fun too. Or negotiate cheaply. Whichever. Both are easy.

Of course as you progress it gets harder and harder. Tournament 1 is easy as pie, tournament 39 not so easy and not so cheap. Level 2 is harder than level 1, level 3 harder than 2, etc and there are 6 levels.

Let's say I place in the tournament even once a month (pretty easy to do, since I have a huge city). 800 or so permanent points - simply because I'm a bigger city with more resources to devote. If I make this a priority, I could double or triple that result.

How? You only get 100 points for coming in first. 99 for coming in 2nd. 98 for 3rd place. etc. You'd have to come in first every month for 8 months. It will take you hundreds of thousands of goods and many thousands of troops to win even one tournament. Once you do that, it will take you take you a long time to build them all back up. We shall see, but I highly doubt the same players will be the ones to be on top each week. The ones who did well on beta used up an enormous amount of their goods. And if you do use up your goods and/or troops on the tournaments then you won't have any for new provinces to fight normally.

Additionally, the rewards for doing all that fighting are amazing at first, but after that, they aren't as important. You get tons of relics and IF you are doing the tournament for your boost you do get an additional boost but only up to 700%. All the top players got that far in the first tournament. I doubt they will bother to use up all their goods and fighters every single tournament. Even if they wanted to, they simply won't have time to develop that many resources.

The other thing you get is kp. That is great, and maybe people will fight for the kp, but again, there is only so much fighting you can afford to do every week. A top player can probably clear 75% maybe less regularly, but to be a top 100 out of the whole world, it will take more than that.

Or you could spend a small fortune to do well in the tournaments, but if you do that, you might as well fill your city with snails.

We shall see, but I spent all last week on beta fighting my tail off, and spending a fortune and I didn't even get one ranking point. It isn't as easy as it sounds. This week I am totally depleted and won't do a quarter of the fighting I did last week. I don't know if I am representative of other players, but we will see. I can still do enough of the fights to get some decent rewards of kp and maybe runes, but I won't make the mistake of using so many resources since my boosted good isn't until the following week and it would be foolish of me to waste them all this week.

I think this is the best thing to happen to Elvenar in a long time. It is fun fun fun. I think it is enormously different to fight fight fight rather than mind numbingly click on quests. Fighting takes strategy.
1. It gives you lots of kp so people won't be as stuck as they once were and the game will be faster for them.
2. There is a cooperative component to it that takes neighbors to do together, and you'd be surprised how many people have overlapping neighborhoods. That brings neighbors together more. I spoke to a lot of my neighbors last week I haven't spoken to...well...ever.
3. You get kp for ancient wonders so they aren't so impossible to do any more.
4. You even get runes as rewards...though none of us are sure how (the rewards are still being worked out).
5. It gives you relics for the magic academy, so if you want one of those, you won't run out of relics.

Now, if I am totally wrong and I don't get how the tournaments work at all, and it does turn out that the same top people win every single week, it may be that those are the top spenders or not. Either way, this game became pay to win a long time ago, so this is nothing new. It is possible that the top fighters and top goods producers aren't the same as the top snail buyers, so maybe this gives people who don't simply buy their way to the top a way to get some more ranking points. I guess we will see how it plays out. It is kind of cool that you can get points from doing something other than just buying snails. At least it gives us all something fun to do!

Week one in beta, I will list the tournament ranking first and then their overall ranking and I think it shows that people who are not at the top can still do well in tournaments:

1. 86
2. 751
3. 85
4. 80
5. 345
6. 67
7. 3
8. 29
9. 4
10. 60
11. 5
12. 1260
13. 56
14. 210
15. 1032

I am not going to list all 100 places, but I doubt this list will be the same people every week.

 

[DeletedUser43]

Here is how they work:


Dear Humans and Elves,

Today's update includes a brand-new and exciting feature: Tournaments. Let us give you an introduction to them so that the tournaments can finally begin!

After the update, a new technology will appear in the Research Tree, at the end of Chapter II. Upon unlocking it, you will be shown the tournament window!

By clicking the question mark button you can see detailed explanations about the Tournaments' events. You will also notice that the World Map icon now has a tournament icon:

Starting Tournaments
Every week, Tournament Events take place in your solved provinces of one type, which will rotate every week. As an example we will take a closer look at a Marble Tournament.

Tournaments appear in your already solved Provinces on the World Map, so your first tournament will be available in the closest Marble province to your city.

• Each Tournament Province holds 6 levels, with 8 tournament encounters to solve per level.
• Each solved tournament encounter will give you Tournament Points as a reward.
  
• For each completed level you will also receive a certain amount of Tournament Points, Knowledge points and Relics. The higher the level, the better the reward. You can even get Rune Shards at the higher levels!

After finishing the 8 tournament encounters to solve the first level in the tournament, the province starts preparing for a new tournament level. This will take some time, but you will immediately be able to start participating in your second tournament province, so that you can continue your tournament journey without having to wait.

Keeping track of your tournament provinces

On the World Map you will see a new Tournament Icon. By clicking it you will be able to see your active tournament provinces and the tournament overview.

A - The tournament province numbers.
B - Checkpoints status
C - Best player on each of your tournament provinces
D - Your competed levels on each of your tournament province
E - The number of solved tournament encounters in the current tournament level
F - Navigate to the province (if it's not in preparation)
G - Remaining time for the current tournament event
H - Number of unlocked tournament provinces
I - Info icon for more information about the number of available tournament provinces

Province Checkpoints
Collect tournament points for each province, together with your neighbors, for even more rewards!

Each tournament province also has five checkpoints. All Tournament Points gathered in that province, by you and your neighbors, are combined! So the more checkpoints you reach in each province, the more rewards you and your neighbors will get in the end of the tournament event!

But remember: you have to finish at least one tournament level in a province to get any rewards from the checkpoints!

Cater or Fight
You can choose either to Cater a tournament encounter, paying resources like regular encounters, or to fight it!

Battles become harder the further you progress in the tournaments. Also, you will be fighting against some units you may not have fought against before: did you ever wonder how it is to have to beat some Storm Barbarians or Sorceresses? Here's your chance to find out!

The end of the Tournament Event
At the end of the Tournament Event you will receive the checkpoint rewards from all your finished tournament provinces. These are joint accomplishments, so your participating neighbors will receive the same rewards. In addition, the 100 players with the most Tournament Points will be rewarded with extra global ranking points!

New Tournaments each week!
Every week you will be able to play new themed tournaments, with lots of rewards! The new Tournament resets the previous results. So with every new Tournament there is a new chance for additional ranking points and of course a new opportunity for you to be the tournament winner! So ... on your marks, get set ... and let the tournaments begin!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team

 

[DeletedUser627]

First, I'd like to repeat that I'm not opposed to Tournaments per se.

How?

With all the expansions and L19 manufactories, the goods add up like crazy. I just spent 4 mil goods on KP, even while paying for Fairy...and in 2 months we'll have the 700% boost on all our goods....And the snail players will be producing even more goods. With all the KP coming in from tournaments, I won't have any other use for goods except negotiating tournaments.

I simply don't like the score points being awarded to big players. It will be just another way that payers get bigger.

 

[DeletedUser43]

The payers get bigger all the time anyway. Since the dwarves, with scouting times being so long, anyone who could buy any expansion got an insurmountable lead. Until then, if you worked your tail off you could compete. Then it all changed. I think that's why they keep opening new worlds. So everyone has a chance early on. Once you start spending money on here, you soar past anyone who doesn't.

Then with the snails, you have to spend a ton to get into the top spots. So the top big payers will get bigger and bigger.

At least with the tournaments, someone who was in 1200th place could get some ranking points. (See list I included above). This could turn this back into some kind of game where maybe talent has some place instead of just spending more money. Now, it may be that the top spenders get all the points and if so, well, nothing has changed.

But the tournaments bring more complexity to the game and it will be interesting to see where they take us. It will for sure make the game faster which might keep more players around.

 

[DeletedUser61]

The Tournaments are sequenced Ring by Ring, starting at the 11 o'clock position in each Ring.

• Once you complete a Tournament it goes on a 10 hour reset timer, BUT another (more difficult) tournament immediately becomes available.
• ALL of your acquired Relic Sectors, 1/9=11% of your acquired Provincial Expansions, will be available as a Tournament, in sequence, for up to six rounds per Tournament.
• As one would expect, the more distant Tournaments are more expensive, as are the subsequent rounds.

Just a heads up, from Beta. The developers have decided that the Catering Costs were too low.

Spoiler: Beta

https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/release-notes-version-1-4.4761/#post-33293

We shall see, but I highly doubt the same players will be the ones to be on top each week. The ones who did well on beta used up an enormous amount of their goods. And if you do use up your goods and/or troops on the tournaments then you won't have any for new provinces to fight normally.

And that's just PERFECT. Tournaments are an elegant game of Reverse Chicken, very much akin to what we'll have in the Ancient Wonders if the developers ever provide Knowledge Point Award Packets that can be used tactically.

Happy! Happy!! Happy!!!

4. You even get runes as rewards...though none of us are sure how (the rewards are still being worked out). It gives you runes for the magic academy, so if you want one of those, you won't run out of runes.

You mushed two concepts together, although they are both true.

• RELICS and Knowledge points are both granted when you win a TOURNAMENT. It's only 25% the rate of your original acquisition of that sector, but then the Tournaments are only medium easy to medium hard.
  • The Magic Academy uses Relics, which are quite predictable
  • The Ancient Wonders use Relics to unlock levels 2-5 & 7-10 (a half dozen for each level)
• RUNES are popping up as an occasional award, but we have yet to corner the award pattern.
  • The Ancient Wonders use Runes to unlock levels 1 & 6 (a dozen and a half for each level)

But the tournaments bring more complexity to the game

• Global Scores are based on Fixed Costs (Required Workers + Required Culture)
• Tournament Scores are based on Variable Costs (Goods + Troops)
• Ancient Wonder Scores MAY well be an additional category, based on how many Knowledge Points have been contributed to your own Ancient Wonders

I rather like the idea of presenting THREE independent scores, without any pretense that they are one and the same. Now if we can only sneak Cost/Benefit Ratios in there somehow ....

 

[DeletedUser1122]

Ancient Wonder Scores MAY well be an additional category, based on how many Knowledge Points have been contributed to your own Ancient Wonders

May? A reversal on the reversal?
I am so hoping you are wrong on how the points are determined on AW. A leader in our fellowship has donated a ton of KP in helping everyone in our group. If that is the plan go with the double reversal and throw in a head fake. What does the dev's have against the fellowship concept that they want to undermine it?

 

[DeletedUser61]

Reciprocal contributions work just fine. You not only get the same number of points, you get an additional 10% in dividends and a Rune Shard of the proper type. That's PART of why we need a History Tab for each Ancient Wonder.

If your Leaders are pulling the wagon by themselves, and everybody else is just along for the ride, that's a different issue.

 

[DeletedUser43]

I fixed my post above regarding relics and runes. I was tired last night when I wrote it.

 

[DeletedUser627]

Just a heads up, from Beta. The developers have decided that the Catering Costs were too low.

Unfortunately, all the more reason why it will be more likely that large cities will have the resilience to repeatedly place.

 

[DeletedUser43]

Sigh. Instead of deciding that the rewards were too high, they decided to increase the costs and increase the fighting difficulty. They took something that was an absolute blast and have made it very difficult so instead of having something to do on here for hours each day, they just cut down the time you can play.

 

[DeletedUser1122]

They took something that was an absolute blast and have made it very difficult

A fun sucking....

 

[DeletedUser1036]

Q: Who plays a game where you have to wait a full day or more just to do one thing?

A: We do...

 

[DeletedUser43]

I play a game where I wait 3 days per scout and 27 days between expansions!

 

[DeletedUser1036]

You win the patience contest

 

[DeletedUser43]

Patience....idiot. Whichever.

 

[DeletedUser1122]

We know from all the moderator posts that INNO is determined to eliminate the repeatable side quests. We have been semi officially warned. It appears that the vehicle for the elimination of the popular feature will be Tournaments.
I'm curiosity why INNO would provide a "feature" that competes with the discovering of provinces that provide expansions, KP and shards.
They have mandated a minimum number of provinces to proceed on the research tree and now ask you to split your squads to fight on 2 fronts. This looks so bad that I guessing they will make it mandatory.
As space is the greatest challenge in this "City Builder's" game why would anyone, expect the most advanced players, want to partake in Tournaments. It would destroy your advancement through the research tree and your ability to grow your city.

In Beta how long does a tournament take? Could someone that works be able to play the game and do tournaments?