You assume wrong. I complete the whole Spire every week, negotiating at least 2 floors out of that. It's not that much if you treat orcs as a last resort good, right below diamonds (and sometimes above that). I have done a couple of upgrades with orcs during that period, but by and large I was done with orc upgrades before these 2 months, and avoided upgrading AWs that need it during that period.
That's what Grounds of the Orc Strategist are for
And Golem substitutions, at least if you're an elf. I have spent exactly 0 orcs on SOS in the last half a year. I suspect many people blow significant portion of their orcs on exactly that.
If you're playing as an elf, Golems are not bad at all. SOS are definitely better against pure light range. But I find that if there are 1-2 counterunits in the mix (which is often), then Golems do as well if not better than SOS. So I usually use strats against pure light range, or mostly light range and no counterunits. This way strats experience very low losses. For other anti-light needs - Golems.
there is another reason which was made just recently, we are not getting runes per unresearched tech, which in a long run will reduce our runes shard pool, which is a very good thing (if AWs will stay optional), imagive chapter 17 with bad wonders again, and chapter 18 with 1 good wonder you want, not reseaching 5 AWs techs will increase your chance of getting your desired runes
tournaments are directly based on it, so you are affected aswell, if you research wonders you wont build, you will be getting useless runes and reducing chance of getting other runes
thats known for over a year, you should have adjusted your strategy already by now
thats irrelevant to compare, even if we didnt had 3 star units, enemy had 3 star units all the time for later provinces, with last upgrades of units it became much easier to fight
