Noone is telling anyone they have to pay, where did you read that and why do you think this would be the case? What we're saying, is that players are too far ahead on some aspects of the game, compared to where they are in their tech tree (and will now indeed face a kind of limit because we rebalanced the battles, which makes it harder to scout that far ahead) and we confirmed that paying players have access to some extra city expansions, compared to non-paying players (which is the same in e.g. Forge of Empires or other City Building games). Please don't twist my words into something like "you have to pay now or you can't progress" because that is simply not true. I'm trying to communicate openly with you here, but if you're twisting my words, it's a waste of time.
Here lies the problem, in FoE, premium expansions are limited to 2 each era, just like it used to work here, that we could only get 2 per MH level. Also, in FoE, you can buy expansions with the currency "medals", which allow players to have something to look forward to, even it they know it will take them months or even years to earn enough medals to get all available expansions. This option allows the players not to feel blocked, as they can keep working towards something.
Opening all the premium expansions here just created a huge imbalance between the players that can pay, and the ones that can't. And saying that the reason why you are blocking the more advanced players from progressing on the world map is to balance the game, only makes me laugh, in the view of this.
There is no possible balance when some players get 33 more expansions, and the others are told " so sorry, but we never intend for you to be able to have the whole city grid available to play, no matter how long you play".
Now, i don't mind that premium players have some advantages, that is more than fair. But it should be possible for everyone else to get very close to the same space, even if 2 years later than the premium players. With the way the game is going, that will never be possible, and that is just very discouraging. Why play if you know you will never reach the ultimate goal in any city buildings game? (have all the grid available)
Also, although I really appreciate the change in stance from "its your fault as you scouted too much", to "its our fault, as we didn't balance the game properly", it seems to me, you are failing to take into account the changes in the game, and this issue we are facing now, will only get worse down the line.
When most of the top players started to play the game, there were no wonders. As such, all Kps were spent on tech, and we flew through it. so we kept up with the scouted distance as best as we could, taking into account we had to wait months for new chapters to be released.
Now, most players starting the game don't fly through tech, they have loads of shiny wonders to spend their kps in, which means they progress a lot slower in the tech tree. But they keep scouting, whenever they have a free scout. And why shouldn't they? there is nothing in the game that tells you to scout only once a week! On the contrary, every event has quests to scout a province, which reinforces the notion that you should keep your scout as busy as possible. This then leads to situations like they are happening already, in which players are hitting the negotiation brickwall, because they need orcs to negotiate when they are still way back in dwarves chapter, and they cannot win any fight.
This will only get worse, as you have so many wonders to level, that if you dedicate yourself to that, you could be scouting for months without reaching the end of the tech tree, bringing you further and further away from the balance that you claim to want to implement.
In the meanwhile, players like me, that are already done with the orcs chapter, are bored out of their mind, because I cannot fight on the map anymore, and the tournaments have been made so much harder that soon i won't even bother with that anymore. For the second week in a row, I did the first 3 or 4 provinces up to level 3, and then stopped, because at level 4 i couldn't win anymore. I might have been able to do level 4 if i fought manually, but like many others, i only use auto fight in the tournaments, because I play in 3 worlds, and i simply don't have the time or the patience to spend countless hours fighting manually in the tournaments, for what are, at best, paltry rewards.
That is another huge issue for me, you not only killed the fights in the map, but you made it very hard to have any fun in the tournaments as well. So now, i have nothing to do besides collect, set buildings to produce, rinse and repeat.
Oh, and you killed the Magic academy as well, because no fighting, no relics, no relics, you can't keep the MA working. Yes, that same MA that was so important for the game that we were forced to build it! Now it sits idle because we cannot get enough relics to keep it working.
So yeah, i agree the game desperately needs to be better balanced, the pity is, it seems like Inno is intent on making the balance issues worse, and not better,