When I started my racing city, yes old tree barely,
there's just things I avoided. I can tell you this, as far
as ANY personal/storyline tasks, I ignored them.
Just 1 MH upgrade too soon can cost ya 2-3 W.shops
and a couple baby residences. A couple less optional
SS increases can be the difference between having
some troops/squads and having none, even if it means
you basically are catering "most" everything for a short
while. Less land placed, means catering is cheaper.
With the new tree, its even more critical to think of every
possible workaround and hairbrained way to get to CH5.
Then you can go back and do all the optional researches
if ya want to lower province difficulty. Sure, as soon as
you unlock FSs, you need to join a decent one, and secure
a loan. But, all of these things a newb will Not know.
Once you hit CH5, you'll need a small stash of resources
and troops, so just pause for a bit then and get a strong
foundation of a city, then you can start ripp'n thru CHs again.
The personal/storyline tasks are counterproductive to
effective early chapter progression, so that means they are
basically an anti-tutorial. Its wayyy to easy to be overscouted,
waste needlessly on a MH, or have a SS so big so fast,
that you have almost no squads to fight with. Equally easy
is placing so much land that catering is almost impossible.
Yes the new tree might be as fast/easy as the old tree, but
it also means you ignore Seasons/Events/Personals untill
you reach CH5. Personally I do not think the new tree is
superior to the old tree, on the contrary.... I think it detracts
from the game for the very ppl its changes were suppos'd
to help, yet it is what it is, and newbs are stuck with it.
Now, if/when they kill this forum ( lets hope not ) less ppl
will be inclined to use Discord, therefore the chances newbs
stick around in the "clustercluck" that is the new tree, along
with Mgmt ( not the devs ) working for Hasbro, it seems.
My main city and my racing city are both CH6 now, yet my
racing city has 6 less land tiles, and a crapload less of everything.
The MH is 1 level less, and up to 2 weeks ago it survived in
the form of a FA city, and I have tweaked it for the Halloween
event. Early CH players, no AWs, no 5days, no xtras.... can do
quite well only using Dogs(Cerebusses) and Treants/Palidans.
Because you can train both simultaniously now, not like when
I started, you can stay ahead of the squad curve if ya don't go
all ballistic on SS increases early on. Everything in Elvenar is a
tradeoff, but newbs won't know the nuances. Its designed to
snare ppl into trouble in order to induce revenue. While I
understand this methodology, it think its bass-akwards.