I thought I would stay out of this discussion too, but it feels strange to just read some speculations about myself, so let us put end to this
I did not, they do not matter at all. I did not even count them.
I had a different reason to push as hard as I could. I consider myself a tournament junkie, but since I only have been playing for 18-19 months, I often had not enough provinces (405 before the event) to be competitive, which was pretty frustrating from time to time. Working on the city efficiency means nothing if you can not use the whole potential of your military or economy. Let us put the question aside if competition in tournaments makes sense at all (of course it does not)
The mairmaids event was a perfect opportunity for me to compensate this disadvantage. It pushed me 18 months forward as far as the world map progress is concerned. Over 400 main- and daily prizes were a nice bonus and a side effect only, not a main goal. I do not think that conquering at about 140 provinces has ruined my future events - I had an eye on the amount of time boosters left, which I plan to use in future events to compensate the longer scouting times. We are talking about thousands of hours in time boosters here. The second "bonus" were 5-6 last map expansions. Without the event it would take me half a year (at least) to conquer enough provinces to have 457 of them. Since I just entered the Elementals and I am far away from the end of the tech tree, every single expansion counts even more.
From the very beginning I often use tactics that many consider pretty extreme, but it works very well, at least for me. I saw the opportunity and used it in order to achieve my goals. There is no need to doubt semebodys knowledge or his common sense only because one does not understand what was going on
And no, there was no real money involved. There was no need to: the thoughtful usage of the cycle and "shell" system made it possible to earn enough time boosters to be able to continue cycling nearly endlessly. As far as mairmaids (main prizes) are concerned, I just did the math. In my case they are much more efficient and profitable than manufactories, but I will not hestitate to remove them when they stop to fullfil their purpose. IMO they do not belong to the "must have" category of buildings.
Back to the main topic: I hope the endless cycle of quests was just an experiment and that we will return to the standard quest system in the upcoming events. Nearly everyone will be able to finish the quest line and there will be no need for complains regarding shortage of relics, scouting time or even the size of the lvl.1 steel manufactories.