This would be a temporary solution but not a permanent one, it would be an delay of execution.
In a few chapters this gap will just grow larger and larger again untill again it's no longer "acceptable" but at that time we are stuck with it for years.
I wouldnt care much about what will happen in the future, they should make competitive playing field for all players across the board right now. This is already 3rd rebalance in 4 years, most likely there will be another in 2 years for many reasons, game will evolve somehow in good or bad way and they will need to react to that (exactly same way how they are doing it right now), we are on the end of cycle for combat related additions, once they start to add something new they can unbalance whole system again, if they dont add up anything new and the game will stagnate like it is now (events barely gives any "power" to users now and in 2 years grand prize might be 1 KP or 1 sword dancer, last chapters are boring and not intuitive giving barely any power to players) then how long will player tolarate that? It will be boring or not fun at all, they will need to come up with something new and fresh and powerful again.
And there are many ways how to control borders to keep the challenge on comparable levels and also to keep the progress of the city, if players dont want to continue playing the next chapter then implement tech on the end of each chapter (start with 17) which will reduce SS by set % (tech factor) for tournament/spire to the point it was on the end of previous chapter (it can even be optional tech so players who ignore those features dont need to research it), something similar to advanced scouts, introduce AW which will reduce aw factor by x% which will have more benefit for players with many AW levels, introduce pet evolving building which will reduce factors when fed by -3 normal expansion, -2 paid expansions, -70 aw levels, -30 techs (basicly -1 chapter), introduce cap for factors, for example 300 levels for AWs so after that point its no longer a problem and you can continue leveling them, or cap for expansions so you promote buying more of them after cap, and those caps are the borders i mentioned earlier, there can be AW or evolving building which gives % of spent resources back and many other ways.
Not only advanced players are a problem now, it is perfectly possible to reach chapter 7-8 with 0 expansions, boost and aws, and those accounts can do 25 provinces where squad size for all 25 rounds are 10, where negotiation cost for chapter 8 is 6k coins or 600 supplies, those accounts alone can reach all 19 chests without much problems, negotiations for spire is non-existent for them, they dont need armory because of unit instants, they can research all optional SSU and have enough units for years, all they need is 1 snail, 1 magic residence and 1 magic workshops (all comes from spire for free) and a trader (and rest is whatever you want). They need to use both formulas and use squad sizes which are higher to prevent this.
I think the main goal for devs now is to deplete all players resources and keep them low to give them challenge at any given time, which is a problem if players ignore tournaments and spire, because those players will have billions of resources compared to others and they are unaffected by this change, they can get KPs from other sources if they want and i predict that TOP players on servers will be exaclty like this, just do minimum in tournaments to get blueprints and keep pumping their AWs without any hesitation if all those changes hit the live servers, because lets be real here, ranking players care about ranking points and not about increased challenge.
What provincince and round was this? around 20? or beyond that?
it was around 20, but with your advanced city on live it will be 10
It has also materially devalued game investment.
I actually think for diamond spenders it devalue their money aswell, the more they buy the more they will have to pay in tournament as a result with diamonds, for example reviving units, same difficulty then players who dont buy diamonds but because SS will be higher they will pay more diamonds for the same act.
I have recorded yesterday first round if anyone is interested to see the new setups and maps, it definitely felt that i am fighting 4 classes more often then advertised change when comparing to last week.