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Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

DeletedUser3314

Guest
... If the curve is set such that the devs bake in an expectation that players put down some portion of the available wonders as they move along and gain X amount of AK from events, tourney chests, etc the tournaments could become too difficult for players who don't get as much out of events or are in fellowships where there isn't much participation. ...
That wouldn't really be a problem if rewards would be harder to get (like with a logarithmic curve). It is the casual players choice to take it slowly and do less provinces thus getting less rewards but even then with enough time those casual players would get enough out of events, tourney chests, etc to follow the curve because the hard core player will have a harder and harder time getting more rewards.

They've explained that they don't want this because they don't want to give an advantage to someone who chooses not to progress through the research tree and instead work on AWs. ...
Same reason as above. If someone wants to work on AWs to have it easier in tournament it would only result in harder and harder to get rewards the more provinces he tries to do. What's the fun in that ? He could as well progress through the tree at the same time.
 
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Karvest

Well-Known Member
Current formula does the opposite - it favors stop progressing through tech tree, not placing expansions, and upgrading only a small bunch of AWs that fits your playstyle. The further you go in tech tree - the bigger impact of other parts of the formula you have. And once you hit some point, anything you can do with your city would make your tourney worse. Not sure, where this point is now, but definitely much earlier than in last chapter with all non-premium expansions placed and mixed bunch of AWs.
 

Maillie

Well-Known Member
My personal concern is still for those fellowships that have members who play for fun and attempt a 10-chest push at most once a month. That type of group doesn't have a large percentage of big players. Maybe a few who can, on occasion, push for 6-8K points to help their group make the goal. I know that this type of fellowship exists, I am Archmage for 3 of them.
I am Archmage for one of those fellowships as well, and after the results of the previous tournament it looks like there will be a complete turnaround. We will be the ones looking for the smaller players to save the tournament. I was unable to get past province 26 in the first round, yet the smaller players had their highest scores ever. This was painful since I'm near the end of the last chapter, which takes a tremendous amount of kp to get through.

There are only so many days that I care to spend on a single research. I'm starting to feel like this is a mountain too high to climb, and it has never been fun to be stuck in the tech tree for any reason.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
In the help i have the gain of the wonder but i need something to know the penalty
You can use my calculator in the other thread to figure out just that. But it is unlikely you will be able to make any definitive conclusions. The cost increments will depend on how deep you go into tournaments, what your other parameters are etc. Not to mention that comparing increase in goods production + pop is hard to compare with fighting. You can make some assumptions here, but it's not something the can be easily or precisely optimized - at least not for the most AWs.
 

PaNonymeB

Well-Known Member
About how the formula should be reworked :
We can approximate the total production of a city by B×Q×E where B = 1+production boost, E = number of expansions, and Q = base production per square. Q is depending on chapter progress (unlocking upgrades) and AW levels (allowing cheaper upgrades, better production,...). And the AW power acts mostly as a multiplicator (as most of AW powers are calculated as a % of something which increases as you advance.) So the multiplication of factors is not what's wrong with this formula.
The first issue is that Q doesn't grow exponentially with chapter. Actually it looks closer to linear. (Else the B×Q×E would have grown much faster than the former squad size roughly proprtional to Chapter^2.)
Thus a (1+Boost)×f(Techs)×(1+x×AW levels)×Expansions sounds right to estimate production of a city if AW are well balanced (although the f(Techs) shouldn't be exponential, or productions should be rebalanced). And if AW are not well balanced, the problem doesn't come from the formula. And about "end-chain" AWs that give e.g. KP or ranking points and doesn't help tournaments, they give the rewards you'd lose due to tournament costs increased, so it sounds right to put them into the tournament cost formula considering INNO's goals. (Although the ×Expansions doesn't work well with fighting, as you can't use a lot of your city space to produce troops.)
But, the formula fails to make so that "if you increase your production by 10%, your costs will only increase by e.g. 5%". To achieve this, you'd have to put a square root (or another power x<1) above the whole formula. That's the mathematical function that translates an 1% increase in production to a ~x% increase in cost.
 
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Deleted User - 81190

Guest
A lot of people in this thread are focusing on the exponential growth w.r.t. research. I said it before and I'll repeat it - by itself, it is not a problem. For the existing chapters the framework works (you can debate how well), but many are making assumptions about how things will go in the future chapters. But all devs have to do is to scale productions (troops, goods) correspondingly in the future chapters in order to keep up. That's quite common approach and would certainly work. The reason it wasn't the case in previous chapters is because the difficulty growth was also different.

The problem is that many players would be unable to properly adjust to the new setup with the choices they've made under previous regime. Here is a thought experiment with some extreme example to illustrate the point. Let's say instead of penalizing extra expansions, AW levels etc gradually they implement a hard cutoff. Let's say expansions - so everything works as it worked before (on live), except everyone with 140 expansions or more is completely barred from tournaments. Well, it is quite clear that the optimal development strategy in this setup is to place 139 expansions and stop there, as every additional expansion is penalized to the extreme (i.e. you lose all rewards from tournaments). Cool, this is fairly obvious and everyone adjusts - except players who already got 140 expansions or more (hi @CrazyWizard ;) ). There is literally nothing these players can do to cope, except starting a new city. And this is not something they could have done better previously as they've made optimal choices for the old setup. You can make the same example with AW levels, except technically once can destroy AWs to bring these down - yet without any solid compensation for that this is equally non-starter option.

This is obviously an extreme example, but the real case is actually similar. If your previously optimal setup is no longer optimal due to the external change (e.g. tournament costs), you do not always can get to the new optimal setup if you're an established player. This is not an issue for new players as they can develop according to the new regime. But many advanced players may get stuck in suboptimal territory - forever. That's why I proposed some kind of reconstruction mode for those circumstances, as currently there are some choices you cannot revert.
 

ErestorX

Well-Known Member
They've explained that they don't want this because they don't want to give an advantage to someone who chooses not to progress through the research tree and instead work on AWs.

Yes, that's what @Marindor said. On the other hand the old way of calculating troop size as a function growing roughly with the square of the chapter was replaced with an exponential function. Therefore the new function tells us, that Inno does want to discourage people from moving on in the research tree even more than in the past. I like the words but at the end of the day it's the function that counts!
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
If this formula works the same as the Spire formula, it adds a flat amount to your starting squad size, no matter what chapter you are in or what the squad size is currently.

An expansion adds a flat 20-28, depending on type. A level in an AW adds 6-6.5. The amount for completed research was more flexible from person to person, but the each player, the amount added was flat for the same chapter.

If you are in chapter 4 and have a starting squad size of 100, a new AW level will add about 6 to that. If you are in chapter 16 and have a starting squad size of 3000, a new AW level adds about 6 to that. And the same for all the other things that increase size.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
If you are in chapter 4 and have a starting squad size of 100, a new AW level will add about 6 to that. If you are in chapter 16 and have a starting squad size of 3000, a new AW level adds about 6 to that. And the same for all the other things that increase size.
That's not how it works, it's multiplication. +1 AW level in chapter 4 will add almost zero, while end-game max expansion city will add significantly more than 6.
 

DeletedUser2521

Guest
Hello.
Shouldn't there be an option at least for those who looked ahead and already have produced the resources needed for the optional SSUs?
I think its pretty unfair since it was costly both in resources and especially time.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
If this formula works the same as the Spire formula, it adds a flat amount to your starting squad size, no matter what chapter you are in or what the squad size is currently.

An expansion adds a flat 20-28, depending on type. A level in an AW adds 6-6.5. The amount for completed research was more flexible from person to person, but the each player, the amount added was flat for the same chapter.

If you are in chapter 4 and have a starting squad size of 100, a new AW level will add about 6 to that. If you are in chapter 16 and have a starting squad size of 3000, a new AW level adds about 6 to that. And the same for all the other things that increase size.

That's not how it works, it's multiplication. +1 AW level in chapter 4 will add almost zero, while end-game max expansion city will add significantly more than 6.

How much it adds in chapter X depends on how many expansions you have. it's not a flat rate.

A lot of people in this thread are focusing on the exponential growth w.r.t. research. I said it before and I'll repeat it - by itself, it is not a problem. For the existing chapters the framework works (you can debate how well), but many are making assumptions about how things will go in the future chapters. But all devs have to do is to scale productions (troops, goods) correspondingly in the future chapters in order to keep up. That's quite common approach and would certainly work. The reason it wasn't the case in previous chapters is because the difficulty growth was also different.

The problem is that many players would be unable to properly adjust to the new setup with the choices they've made under previous regime. Here is a thought experiment with some extreme example to illustrate the point. Let's say instead of penalizing extra expansions, AW levels etc gradually they implement a hard cutoff. Let's say expansions - so everything works as it worked before (on live), except everyone with 140 expansions or more is completely barred from tournaments. Well, it is quite clear that the optimal development strategy in this setup is to place 139 expansions and stop there, as every additional expansion is penalized to the extreme (i.e. you lose all rewards from tournaments). Cool, this is fairly obvious and everyone adjusts - except players who already got 140 expansions or more (hi @CrazyWizard ;) ). There is literally nothing these players can do to cope, except starting a new city. And this is not something they could have done better previously as they've made optimal choices for the old setup. You can make the same example with AW levels, except technically once can destroy AWs to bring these down - yet without any solid compensation for that this is equally non-starter option.

This is obviously an extreme example, but the real case is actually similar. If your previously optimal setup is no longer optimal due to the external change (e.g. tournament costs), you do not always can get to the new optimal setup if you're an established player. This is not an issue for new players as they can develop according to the new regime. But many advanced players may get stuck in suboptimal territory - forever. That's why I proposed some kind of reconstruction mode for those circumstances, as currently there are some choices you cannot revert.

You could if there was only 1 variable, (wonderlevels or expansions, but beause it has multiple varables that arent the same, you can never predict how much you need to compensate, and I somehow have a hard time thinking they will start increasing productions with such extremes just to fit a formula.

As for the reconstruction, please no, it still tells you to stop developing your town, we are here to play and develop not to stand still forever.
The fact we are talking about where we should stop developing for ideal performance on itself is wrong. unless there intention is to kill the game, in that case standstill is perfect.

But fix the issue at the root, don't try to apply patches.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
That's not how it works, it's multiplication. +1 AW level in chapter 4 will add almost zero, while end-game max expansion city will add significantly more than 6.

Then obviously the formulas are not the same because the entire time I was helping with the Spire formula, one AW level always added about 6 to the starting squad size, even when I was in different chapters and even with other things in the formula increasing. And every new expansion I placed was always either 20 or 28 added to squad size, depending on normal or premium, again regardless of chapter or other changes to my city.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
As for the reconstruction, please no, it still tells you to stop developing your town, we are here to play and develop not to stand still forever.
No, that's not what it does - it allows a city to develop differently, without starting from scratch. Between trying to come up with a single formula that works for everyone's gameplay vs allowing players to adjust to new metagame changes in a flexible fashion... I know which one is more realistic.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
Then obviously the formulas are not the same because the entire time I was helping with the Spire formula, one AW level always added about 6 to the starting squad size, even when I was in different chapters and even with other things in the formula increasing. And every new expansion I placed was always either 20 or 28 added to squad size, depending on normal or premium, again regardless of chapter or other changes to my city.
You have always reported from the same city, with minimal changes to tech (432-440) or expansions (124-127). With this low variability your incremental changes due to AW were fairly constant. For someone in chapter 4 (69 tech, 37 expansions) +1 AW level will net less than 1 to SSS.
 

Karvest

Well-Known Member
Between trying to come up with a single formula that works for everyone's gameplay vs allowing players to adjust to new metagame changes in a flexible fashion... I know which one is more realistic.
Allow to unlearn techs and unplace expansions? totally unrealistic.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
FYI, I already own an account "for easy play of spire"

It's chapter 4, it does not unlock expansions as it makes the spire harder, it has an overflowing kp bar since I do not want a wonder as golden abyss, endless excavation ect those coins/supplies migt not benefit the cost for everyting else in the spire. as a scrolls producer it was much more beneficial to fix myself on the spire set for it, I do not want to advance in the game, I don't want to mess with T3, Orcs, mana and seeds, sentient that require me to login more often, especially decaying goods suck.

Welcome to the future of elvenar :(

as for the tournaments it seems the drama starts past the orc chapter so that migh be that sweetspot.

No, that's not what it does - it allows a city to develop differently, without starting from scratch. Between trying to come up with a single formula that works for everyone's gameplay vs allowing players to adjust to new metagame changes in a flexible fashion... I know which one is more realistic.

With the current formula?
Sure you can reboot to only certain wonders max those out and then? you do not want to place more than nessesary

Flying academy, needles, dragon abby, shrooms, toads, martial monestary, whack the rest and replace everything with armories.
How boring would that be?

They should just whack expansions and wonders from there formula, they can calculate "expected" wonders in chapter Y and compensate for that in there "balance" formula.
Every improvement should be a guaranteed improvement. and no hardcore or casual should need to be wondering which building they should or should not place in there city for tournament play, If you like enars embassey (most worthless wonder in game) you should be able to place it in your city without consequenses.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
Allow to unlearn techs and unplace expansions? totally unrealistic.
I remember hearing the same about building teleportation, and look where we are. Unlearning techs might not be needed (this also might be difficult to implement for variety of reasons), but teleporting expansions back into storage? I don't see why not.
 

Karvest

Well-Known Member
at least because there are different types of expansions, and you can't determine which one you are going to teleport.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
Flying academy, needles, dragon abby, shrooms, toads, martial monestary, whack the rest and replace everything with armories.
How boring would that be?
No more or less boring than the current setup. Elvenar is a boring slow-moving game. Once you figure out a strategy (this usually doesn't take long), you can ride it for months or years without significant changes. Are you saying that existing tournaments are exciting for an advanced player? Profitable, yes. Exciting?.. ;)

Every improvement should be a guaranteed improvement.
Now that's just not realistic. And for Enar's? Placing it is NOT without consequences. You use some space, you use your KPs, you use your runes/shards. Even today player placing it is making a choice as to whether or not it is worth the benefit (even if benefit is purely aesthetic). Obviously, most don't do explicit cost/benefit analysis, but it is there nonetheless. Now, all that is added to the costs above is a penalty to the tournament (and penalty to the Spire is already there, so there is that). Not that much different from before.

EDIT: BTW, I am not arguing for (or against) the proposed formula. Whatever the changes are going to be implemented, there will be winners and losers - at least on a relative basis. I'd rather have an option to reconsider some of my choices given new circumstances.
 
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Deleted User - 81190

Guest
at least because there are different types of expansions, and you can't determine which one you are going to teleport.
That's not a real roadblock. We know how many placed expansions of each type there are, so there are different options to handle that. E.g. ask for it, use forced priority etc.
 
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