Yeah, I kinda wrote a short post and then started thinking about it and added more and more and more. Then I split it into paragraphs.
It's not so much a problem with EVERYONE needing resources for tournaments. It's a problem that anyone who has as many provinces over the maximum Inno belatedly added to the game as my main city does will be experiencing. I have another alt city that I am using to test what happens in tournaments if you stay in the Goldilocks zone, and its per province level of a tournament costs of the related goods is something like a couple hundred. Maybe a thousand in the very highest levels of provinces. My main city goes through TEN THOUSAND of a good. I've been "good" and not scouted any more provinces on my main city except when Inno released an event that made me take provinces and scout more since they added the limitations. It's still ten times as many goods for me to do tournaments... which Inno supposedly WANTS me to do as an alternative to conquering provinces on the map... as my cities that are in the Goldilocks zone.
At least in theory your neighbors have access to different trading networks than you. But your fellowship members ARE your trading network. Fellowship based tournaments means that even people who don't need a good for boosts are still going to be trying to participate to help the people who do have boosts. If you don't have good neighbors (and I don't, the only people near me who want to trade t1 goods are outside my trading range and posting one star trades even if I was close which means they're 0 star trades with the trader fee) there's a finite amount of goods you can access through your fellowship's trading when your boosted good comes around, and if you're also stuck in Inno Hates You land, you're... well, the word I want to use isn't appropriate on the forums, but I guess "out of luck" sort of gets the point across.
The old wholesaler at least allowed players who were in Inno Hates You land to progress by buying goods through the wholesaler to make up for the fact that their tournament costs are ridiculously draining on their fellowship. Now.... it's a lot harder to do that without damaging your fellowship in the process, and wasn't the point of tournaments supposed to be "do this for rune shards instead of getting provinces on the world map"?
What, are all the people in Inno Hates You land going to eventually be kicked out of their fellowships because, through no fault of their own, they are unable to help their fellowship in fellowship tournaments as much as required? That is the healthy thing for the fellowship to do. Not so much healthy for the players, but healthy for the fellowship. This is actually the first change Inno has made that I actively feel is unethical. I can understand that they think there's a logic behind punishing people for progressing too far on the world map. I can understand that the arbitrary definition of "too far" in their heads makes sense to them. I can understand, and appreciate, the fact that they apologized to the people who have progressed too far, and I can understand the fact that they sincerely believe that this makes the game better for all the other players.
I can't understand making a change which will force players out of their fellowships, players who have spent money on the game, simply because they progressed too far in the game. That's not ethical. It's a game that is based on being in a fellowship for trade because your world map is mostly dead, and now paying customers will likely be jettisoned from their fellowships if no further change is made.
Possible changes that would fix this:
Increase the amount of goods the wholesaler offers so that the BASE amount is 500 of a good and goes up from there. This has the downside of penalizing the people who only want 250 of a good to get past that one research that's so hard to get the 250 of each t2 good for (which one was it again?)
Decrease the scaling costs of the wholesaler to price increasing by 1/10 or even lower each purchase, because I'm pretty sure the big sticking point with regards to buying goods from wholesaler for research is the research that requires 250 of every t2 good immediately after unlocking t2 goods when your boost isn't very high, and at that level you'd get what, 50 of a good per purchase? That's a lot of individual purchases of goods to get up to 250 of each non boosted tier good if your trade network is dead. Also because the other people who are hurt by this, the people whose tournament costs don't mesh well with being in a fellowship of people trying to get a high score, need very high quantities to make up for the fact that they need a lot more of each good than the other people in the fellowship.
Honestly, the method I like best though, is separate the tournament negotiation costs from the number of provinces a player has conquered. If the tournaments are really supposed to be an alternative to getting rune shards from provinces, that means players who are stuck in provinces should be able to participate in the tournaments. It's now a fellowship wide effort to all work on tournaments together. People who have been stuck on the world map since the combat changes went through are therefore detrimental to the fellowship's progression, and that's... really not fair to anyone involved. As far as I can tell the cost in goods increases slightly per research act and severely per distance away from the Goldilocks zone. Keep the slightly per research act factor, and eliminate the distance from Goldilocks zone factor. This would still penalize people who are far out on the world map, because frankly, what the people who are far out on the world map wanted were province expansions and tournaments don't give province expansions, but it would allow these people to coexist in a fellowship with other people who aren't so far out on the world map. I wouldn't care nearly so much about the prohibitive wholesaler changes if I could be certain that I didn't need the wholesaler to make up for the ridiculous tournament costs.
