FA needs a big upgrade , specially the rewards you recieve from it as a group (top 20 prices for fellowships etc)
Yup, the FA will screw over the rest of your game and for what? My FS on live did one to compete to win BEFORE the tournament changes and that was even BEFORE this FA, and it was fun. There was no problem to recover from resources, but that is an impossibility now.
An FA is simply too much work to be fun if you compete more than once or maybe twice a year, but the resources required to win will slaughter the rest of your game for weeks, and even months on some resources. Some resources you probably can't recover.
There are so many things about Elvenar that are are just so poorly thought out now. Some thing mechanical about the game work better now, but the whole concept about how it fits together just doesn't work anymore and so many choices about how to play the game just really need to be looked at because the game is just stupid now.
1) Don't play the FA because it will screw your tournament.
2) Be super selective about leveling AWs because leveling a lot of them just screws your game.
3) Don't place expansions because they just screw your tournament.
Competent game designers don't leave these kinds of stupid decision as a game requirement.