Enevhar Aldarion
Well-Known Member
Easy? I have to visit 50 neighbors just to make one badge. That is not easy.
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Discussion Fellowship Adventures
- Thread starter Marindor
- Start date
Easy? I have to visit 50 neighbors just to make one badge. That is not easy.
Skillpowers
Well-Known Member
i hope the new way adventures work (every 2 events) will stay in place. much more relaxing then doing one after every single event
Maillie
Well-Known Member
I don't believe I've seen this before in the third map. With 2 days left and no tournament for the next 2 days this seems excessive for a 300 point spot in the Orange row.
Bor de Wolf 1965
Well-Known Member
That will be a problem for a lot of fellowships but it is doable.
25 members X 4 doors X 3 floors = 300 ghost in a bottle badge
25 members X 4 doors X 3 floors = 300 ghost in a bottle badge
And you get a golden spire mark as a bonus as well 
Maillie
Well-Known Member
In my Beta fellowship where I'm a mage I do not remember a single time when everyone made it to High Halls. I actually don't recall a time when all 25 played the Spire, there are always members that don't step into the Spire at all. We have some members that can't even get into the Spire yet, they're not in a high enough chapter. We generally have about 2 or 3 of the 25 that make it to, or past the High Halls. We often get a couple of players that make it to, or close to, the Lab. I've made it to the top a couple of times, as have a few others.
If you're in a Gold Spire fs, you would not have a problem with this. We have never come remotely close to any such thing. It's quite "doable" for the Gold fellowships, but almost anything is. For the vast majority, it's going to be a rough landing.
Heymrdiedier
Well-Known Member
you could just not take the orange path, if you think your fellowship cant handle this?
Bor de Wolf 1965
Well-Known Member
@Maillie , I told you it would be difficult for a lot of fellowships to get to gold level and more in the spire.
But what I showed you is the maximum number of ghost badges you can get from the spire.
And for your information, I am not in a gold spire fellowship, but we hit silver every week.
And that means, we get enough ghosts from it.
So, 25 players getting to the first big door = 100 ghosts.
If 1 member doesn't do the spire, someone else goes to the second big door.
And still you have 16 ghosts extra.
I don't see the problem you are making of it.
But what I showed you is the maximum number of ghost badges you can get from the spire.
And for your information, I am not in a gold spire fellowship, but we hit silver every week.
And that means, we get enough ghosts from it.
So, 25 players getting to the first big door = 100 ghosts.
If 1 member doesn't do the spire, someone else goes to the second big door.
And still you have 16 ghosts extra.
I don't see the problem you are making of it.
Maillie
Well-Known Member
Of the 537 fellowships listed in Beta there are 241 that have started the FA. We're currently ranked 37th at this time. We're the average fellowship and we're sitting on the last spot in the green row. In the Spire we have one, yes one, player that has made it to High Halls, which I believe is what you call the first door. We have 11 players that haven't been in the Spire yet. I repeat, we have never had 25 players get to High Halls. If we have 6 that make it then it might be a record for us. To say that 84 Ghosts for a 300 point spot is not an excessive amount is like a millionaire telling the average person that there's no reason to complain about the roads, just buy a Learjet and fly to your destination.
This is why the end chapters have become so disparaging. When someone voices an honest complaint there's always a Learjet player stating that he or she had no problem flying right over that.
Sharkyvi
Member
This requirement already existed during the last FA. So it's nothing new.
Enevhar Aldarion
Well-Known Member
The max level for the Main Hall in chapter 13 holds 34 million coins. At 3.576 millions coins per badge, that is about 10.51% of main hall capacity.
For me in chapter 16, it is 5.844 millions coins for the badge and a max main hall capacity of 54 million. That is about 10.82%.
I would check the number for my chapter 4 city, but the first five chapters won't fit in because there is not main hall research in every chapter.
Why these are not flat percentages from chapter 6-19 makes no sense. I would make some sort of bug report about this, but the game has been so full of bug and errors and glitches lately that I am just tired of dealing with them and have no interest in trying to make a report on any of it. And if no one else is experiencing or reporting the stuff I see, then it must nor be important to anyone.
Jackluyt
Well-Known Member
I just updated our FA Master File, with particular reference to the 'individual balancing' section, which really works very well - we finished second in Beta using that only, with zero fuss, bother, bickering or drama.
All comments and suggestions to improve the file would be very welcome!!
Second place - without any spreadsheets or countdown threads or bullying or fuss, just mini-status and 'individual balancing' - and zero bickering or drama!!!
Wonderful, effortless team performance that required extremely little Admin work - well done Platinum Leaf! And well done Czechoslovak Kingdoms!!
All comments and suggestions to improve the file would be very welcome!!
Second place - without any spreadsheets or countdown threads or bullying or fuss, just mini-status and 'individual balancing' - and zero bickering or drama!!!
Wonderful, effortless team performance that required extremely little Admin work - well done Platinum Leaf! And well done Czechoslovak Kingdoms!!
Laurelin-Beta
Well-Known Member
@Jackluyt : Congratulations on your group's FA success!
As a long-term player and Forum reader, I don't usually need much in the way of extra FA info. This time, though, I did wonder about::
So I loaded up your FA Master File - only to remember, belatedly, that Google have 'helpfully' disabled text searching within Google Documents for anyone with a Guest-level login, which will, of course, include most viewers of your FA Master File. This being the case, and not having enough time to read through the whole 100-page document, I downloaded a copy of the Master File and word-searched it myself - and found out that 'individual balancing' - as you naturally already know - is a system, and term, which is specific to your Platinum Leaf Facebook Group.
I hope you won't mind me saying that it might be a good idea to point this out in your Forum comment(s), in case others who read your posts (as I'm sure many do), looking for info, may either not know how to do what I did, may not have the right software installed on their PC (or, more probably, phone), and/or may not have space for what is a very large file, at something over 9 Mb in both .PDF or .doc format alike.
Of course, the file size is the inevitable result of the extremely comprehensive [and profusely illustrated!] nature of your FA Master File (and it really is a masterwork - it must have taken you ages?!) - and the fact that many anti-malware programs nowadays will warn users not to even open, let alone edit or word-search, downloaded files from the Internet 'unless you trust the file source (or similar ominous-sounding phrasing)' might not encourage readers to download your document, either.
Just a couple of thoughts from the standpoint of someone who, looking to find one specific piece of information amongst SO MUCH which is in your Master File, wonders whether you might consider, perhaps, also creating a separate 'Master File Update', or series of updates - so that you could, if only for the sake of your less-tech-savvy readers, provide a quick and easy source of reference for those who (a) do already know about FAs in general, but not about the latest changes to them which Inno makes now and then, and who also (b) are either unable or unwilling to download and word-search the Master File itself - or simply lack the time to read the entire document online, beautiful though it is.
And just as a P.S. :
Thank you, too, for no longer keeping your Elvenar-related information documents exclusively uploaded to Facebook - this is a most helpful decision for those of us who loathe and despise that particular enemy of personal privacy and freedom of speech...!
As a long-term player and Forum reader, I don't usually need much in the way of extra FA info. This time, though, I did wonder about::
... because I thought that 'individual balancing' might refer to an update or re-balancing of the FA's structure - by Inno - which could possibly be related to the ongoing discussion in this thread regarding the fact that Coin Badges now appear to require different percentages of Main Hall Capacity at different Chapter levels (or - I wondered, upon reading your post? - maybe even at the individual player level).
So I loaded up your FA Master File - only to remember, belatedly, that Google have 'helpfully' disabled text searching within Google Documents for anyone with a Guest-level login, which will, of course, include most viewers of your FA Master File. This being the case, and not having enough time to read through the whole 100-page document, I downloaded a copy of the Master File and word-searched it myself - and found out that 'individual balancing' - as you naturally already know - is a system, and term, which is specific to your Platinum Leaf Facebook Group.
I hope you won't mind me saying that it might be a good idea to point this out in your Forum comment(s), in case others who read your posts (as I'm sure many do), looking for info, may either not know how to do what I did, may not have the right software installed on their PC (or, more probably, phone), and/or may not have space for what is a very large file, at something over 9 Mb in both .PDF or .doc format alike.
Of course, the file size is the inevitable result of the extremely comprehensive [and profusely illustrated!] nature of your FA Master File (and it really is a masterwork - it must have taken you ages?!) - and the fact that many anti-malware programs nowadays will warn users not to even open, let alone edit or word-search, downloaded files from the Internet 'unless you trust the file source (or similar ominous-sounding phrasing)' might not encourage readers to download your document, either.
Just a couple of thoughts from the standpoint of someone who, looking to find one specific piece of information amongst SO MUCH which is in your Master File, wonders whether you might consider, perhaps, also creating a separate 'Master File Update', or series of updates - so that you could, if only for the sake of your less-tech-savvy readers, provide a quick and easy source of reference for those who (a) do already know about FAs in general, but not about the latest changes to them which Inno makes now and then, and who also (b) are either unable or unwilling to download and word-search the Master File itself - or simply lack the time to read the entire document online, beautiful though it is.
And just as a P.S. :
Thank you, too, for no longer keeping your Elvenar-related information documents exclusively uploaded to Facebook - this is a most helpful decision for those of us who loathe and despise that particular enemy of personal privacy and freedom of speech...!
Last edited:
Jackluyt
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the helpful suggestions!
The document has a full hyper-linked index in the left column with all the relevant topics including 'individual balancing' - though I am told you cannot see that column if you open it on a mobile device. Using that, it should be possible to find what you are looking for quickly - which is a considerable improvement compared to the old Facebook files I used to use, which are no longer available. I cursed when Facebook 'fixed what was not broken' yet again - but being forced to use a simple .doc file has turned out to be a much better option for a dozen reasons - so eventually all is well that ended well.
PrimroseSylvia
Well-Known Member
Search for @Karvest post in this discussion and you'll find them.Hi do anyone have the last number of things for the last Fellowship Adventure ? please
Jackluyt
Well-Known Member
Hi do anyone have the last number of things for the last Fellowship Adventure ? please
All the info is here: https://tinyurl.com/5n84ne54
You are welcome to share the file, which can be opened on an ordinary PC
reinmann
Member
ThanksAll the info is here: https://tinyurl.com/5n84ne54
You are welcome to share the file, which can be opened on an ordinary PC
)
Laurelin-Beta
Well-Known Member
LONG POST - No tl;dr - Please just skip if you prefer. Thanks.
(Firstly - this may appear a pedantic, argumentative, or even irrelevant point, but please bear with me.) Unless the specific nature of the relevant comment/question/discussion is "precisely when was any given in-game feature introduced or changed?", I can never understand the value of the following response when someone else criticises, or otherwise draws attention to, any given FA (or any other) in-game element or feature:
The above response was given in reply to the following earlier comment:
Considering that this thread already contains some discussion about whether Ghost Badges, in the new FA structure, have become a greater - if not practically insurmountable - bottleneck for higher-performing Fellowships, and an onerous burden upon many other Fellowships, too, I doubt that @Maillie was commenting upon the NOVELTY of the Waypoint in question being altered to require 84 Ghost Badges, but rather expressing the opinion that the NUMBER OF Ghost Badges required, at 84, is excessive for a 300-value Waypoint.
As stated, this may appear to be a trivial and even an intentionally argumentative point, but if I may: I think it's quite important to make this point because I have frequently seen this kind of response on this Forum to what are actually entirely unrelated questions or comments, during my 4+ years of reading the Beta Forum in search of advice about the game, as many others also still do (although typically without posting anything), and I find it frankly unhelpful - especially for new players who are seeking information about what can be a complicated game, and which does indeed change its underlying mechanics quite often compared with many mobile games - to see players raising a valid question which is worthy of discussion, only for that question to effectively be dismissed, usually with little or any commentary or debate, on the non-relevant grounds that "this in-game feature already existed before you noticed it"... which hardly addresses the question itself in any way.
In other words : the mere fact that X = true does not also mean that X = desirable, and certainly not that X should therefore remain true.
To go further (I'm hardly intruding upon an ultra-busy thread, after all...) : this Forum already, and it seems increasingly, lacks both participants of ANY kind and, more specifically, much in-depth analysis or debate, which one would think might or even should feature more often on a Beta Forum than any other Forum, so I think it's a good idea to encourage, rather than discourage, engagement in conversation by those who DO post here - whether or not their question has been asked before and/or partially or fully answered, at another time or in another form...?
So, the above said - and more directly on the topic of the 84 Ghost Badge Waypoint and FA Badges requirements as they now stand:
Under the 'older' FA system, Arcane Residue and/or Bracelet Badges were considered by the majority to be the 'bottleneck' and/or most onerous Badges, although there were ways (in some cases involving spending Diamonds/money), whether acceptable or not to most players, of surmounting these Badge requirements, which do not appear (?) to apply to the new hard limit on Ghost Badges, since Tournament and Spire Encounters are ultimately also hard-limited (well, in all but the most extreme of 'pay-to-win' Cities, which I believe could at least theoretically buy their way through infinite numbers of Tourney Provinces, assuming that Scouting, as well as Province completion, in the absence of the required in-game Resources, can be paid for with Diamonds... or am I wrong on that? I've never tried to open a Scout or clear a Province in that way).
And as far as Arcane Residue in particular was concerned - speaking as someone who has organised a competitive FA in a high-performing FS - this Badge's tendency to be in very short supply, making it a 'bottleneck' in many cases, wasn't only a mere fact, but quickly became, in many cases, a tiresome and even notorious aspect of the older-style FAs - with the most wasteful Waypoints in respect of Arcane Residue being, at that time, Orange 3 and Orange 7 on Map 3, with Arcane Residue requirements so irrationally high for such low-value (300 Points) Waypoints that our FS, and indeed many others, advised their players to avoid those Waypoints entirely, and as a matter of course.
It could be argued that the unduly large number of Arcane Residue Badges required by those two Waypoints in particular, and by the entire FA in general, offered some kind of 'challenge' or at least interest value for some Fellowships, although I personally don't recall anyone regarding Arcane Residue in such a light; the general consensus was that the Badge was an overly demanding nuisance, and the two Waypoints mentioned were nothing but 'traps for the unwary' - with further annoyance and/or frustration occurring when it happened, as is so often the case, that a few FS Members added their Arcane Residue Badges to those Waypoints - or others the FS wished to avoid - regardless of all advice to the contrary.
This 'Badges in the wrong Waypoints' problem is a persistent thorn in the side of FAs, since there is far less value in a 'team-building exercise', as we are led to believe the FAs are meant to be, if some [and sometimes most] of the additional conversation and inter-personal interaction generated is motivated not by good cheer and/or a healthy competitive spirit, but rather by frustration because the FA interface and structure itself allows - or even appears to encourage, as in the case of the Arcane-heavy but low-value Waypoints mentioned above - the 'wasting' of hard-to-obtain Badges, especially at a later stage (e.g. Map 3), where the requirements for all Badges are much higher than in earlier Maps.
I have not yet performed, nor read, an analysis of whether Arcane Residue and/or Bracelet Badges are still considered unusually difficult to obtain in comparison with other types, although I doubt that either type of Badge has suddenly become one of the 'easier' Badges, regardless of the specifics. However, I'm obviously aware that Ghost Badges, which are much easier for some Fellowships to earn (albeit not in limitless quantities) than for others, have become 'the new Arcane Residue/Bracelets' in the eyes of many, and I'm disappointed that Inno would, knowing this as they surely must, still go ahead and - as per Maillie's comment and screenshot - create, alongside them, what amounts to new iterations of Orange 3 and 7 on Map 3, and thus Waypoints for most FSs to avoid (often in favour of extra Pit Rounds) - bearing in mind, here, how troublesome it can be, practically and emotionally, to try [where desired] to prevent one's team-mates from adding valuable Badges to such low-value Waypoints.
For many players/FSs (albeit not all), fun tends to evaporate in the face of high pressure, and almost always in the face of frustration, so the avoidance of same would seem, to me, to be something which Inno both could and should foster; such will hardly be achieved (no matter how easy this is in terms of balancing the FA's requirements) where any one or two Badges are simply made overly valuable/rare and therefore overly likely to cause frustration when they are placed where the FS would prefer they are not placed, strategically speaking - and near-enough encouraging such an outcome by requiring disproportionately large numbers of such Badges in low-value Waypoints is such a bad idea that it seems improbable that it would occur by pure chance or mere incompetence (from which I have never thought Inno's devs suffer - in any regard).
In Summary:
If Inno intended to re-work the FAs, why not do a proper job and equalise the value of ALL the Waypoints? Why the need for some to be so very expensive, especially seeing that the new iteration of the FA has finally made a very welcome and frustration-reducing alteration in the form of Badge overflow? It's difficult enough to organise and run a FA with the limited in-game tools which are at our disposal, and continuing to over-complicate FA planning - and to near-enough encourage the frustration caused by Badge mis-placement by creating what amounts to new 'Waypoints to avoid' (albeit with a different Badge causing this effect) is, in my view, either a major oversight or a deliberately provocative choice.
Footnote re Text Formatting:
@InnoGames @Marindor : I have used the cumbersome and space-heavy manual insertion of earlier posts (above) because the Forum software has recently been modified in several respects, including the removal of the automatic 'nested replies' feature - which is rather unhelpful when it comes to re-quotes, as I hope is evident - especially because it is also now more difficult to edit quoted comments without 'breaking' the Forum's text formatting. Could an option (at the user's choice) to show/not show nested replies be restored/added to the Forum UI? Many thanks.
(Firstly - this may appear a pedantic, argumentative, or even irrelevant point, but please bear with me.) Unless the specific nature of the relevant comment/question/discussion is "precisely when was any given in-game feature introduced or changed?", I can never understand the value of the following response when someone else criticises, or otherwise draws attention to, any given FA (or any other) in-game element or feature:
The above response was given in reply to the following earlier comment:
Considering that this thread already contains some discussion about whether Ghost Badges, in the new FA structure, have become a greater - if not practically insurmountable - bottleneck for higher-performing Fellowships, and an onerous burden upon many other Fellowships, too, I doubt that @Maillie was commenting upon the NOVELTY of the Waypoint in question being altered to require 84 Ghost Badges, but rather expressing the opinion that the NUMBER OF Ghost Badges required, at 84, is excessive for a 300-value Waypoint.
As stated, this may appear to be a trivial and even an intentionally argumentative point, but if I may: I think it's quite important to make this point because I have frequently seen this kind of response on this Forum to what are actually entirely unrelated questions or comments, during my 4+ years of reading the Beta Forum in search of advice about the game, as many others also still do (although typically without posting anything), and I find it frankly unhelpful - especially for new players who are seeking information about what can be a complicated game, and which does indeed change its underlying mechanics quite often compared with many mobile games - to see players raising a valid question which is worthy of discussion, only for that question to effectively be dismissed, usually with little or any commentary or debate, on the non-relevant grounds that "this in-game feature already existed before you noticed it"... which hardly addresses the question itself in any way.
In other words : the mere fact that X = true does not also mean that X = desirable, and certainly not that X should therefore remain true.
To go further (I'm hardly intruding upon an ultra-busy thread, after all...) : this Forum already, and it seems increasingly, lacks both participants of ANY kind and, more specifically, much in-depth analysis or debate, which one would think might or even should feature more often on a Beta Forum than any other Forum, so I think it's a good idea to encourage, rather than discourage, engagement in conversation by those who DO post here - whether or not their question has been asked before and/or partially or fully answered, at another time or in another form...?
So, the above said - and more directly on the topic of the 84 Ghost Badge Waypoint and FA Badges requirements as they now stand:
Under the 'older' FA system, Arcane Residue and/or Bracelet Badges were considered by the majority to be the 'bottleneck' and/or most onerous Badges, although there were ways (in some cases involving spending Diamonds/money), whether acceptable or not to most players, of surmounting these Badge requirements, which do not appear (?) to apply to the new hard limit on Ghost Badges, since Tournament and Spire Encounters are ultimately also hard-limited (well, in all but the most extreme of 'pay-to-win' Cities, which I believe could at least theoretically buy their way through infinite numbers of Tourney Provinces, assuming that Scouting, as well as Province completion, in the absence of the required in-game Resources, can be paid for with Diamonds... or am I wrong on that? I've never tried to open a Scout or clear a Province in that way).
And as far as Arcane Residue in particular was concerned - speaking as someone who has organised a competitive FA in a high-performing FS - this Badge's tendency to be in very short supply, making it a 'bottleneck' in many cases, wasn't only a mere fact, but quickly became, in many cases, a tiresome and even notorious aspect of the older-style FAs - with the most wasteful Waypoints in respect of Arcane Residue being, at that time, Orange 3 and Orange 7 on Map 3, with Arcane Residue requirements so irrationally high for such low-value (300 Points) Waypoints that our FS, and indeed many others, advised their players to avoid those Waypoints entirely, and as a matter of course.
It could be argued that the unduly large number of Arcane Residue Badges required by those two Waypoints in particular, and by the entire FA in general, offered some kind of 'challenge' or at least interest value for some Fellowships, although I personally don't recall anyone regarding Arcane Residue in such a light; the general consensus was that the Badge was an overly demanding nuisance, and the two Waypoints mentioned were nothing but 'traps for the unwary' - with further annoyance and/or frustration occurring when it happened, as is so often the case, that a few FS Members added their Arcane Residue Badges to those Waypoints - or others the FS wished to avoid - regardless of all advice to the contrary.
This 'Badges in the wrong Waypoints' problem is a persistent thorn in the side of FAs, since there is far less value in a 'team-building exercise', as we are led to believe the FAs are meant to be, if some [and sometimes most] of the additional conversation and inter-personal interaction generated is motivated not by good cheer and/or a healthy competitive spirit, but rather by frustration because the FA interface and structure itself allows - or even appears to encourage, as in the case of the Arcane-heavy but low-value Waypoints mentioned above - the 'wasting' of hard-to-obtain Badges, especially at a later stage (e.g. Map 3), where the requirements for all Badges are much higher than in earlier Maps.
I have not yet performed, nor read, an analysis of whether Arcane Residue and/or Bracelet Badges are still considered unusually difficult to obtain in comparison with other types, although I doubt that either type of Badge has suddenly become one of the 'easier' Badges, regardless of the specifics. However, I'm obviously aware that Ghost Badges, which are much easier for some Fellowships to earn (albeit not in limitless quantities) than for others, have become 'the new Arcane Residue/Bracelets' in the eyes of many, and I'm disappointed that Inno would, knowing this as they surely must, still go ahead and - as per Maillie's comment and screenshot - create, alongside them, what amounts to new iterations of Orange 3 and 7 on Map 3, and thus Waypoints for most FSs to avoid (often in favour of extra Pit Rounds) - bearing in mind, here, how troublesome it can be, practically and emotionally, to try [where desired] to prevent one's team-mates from adding valuable Badges to such low-value Waypoints.
For many players/FSs (albeit not all), fun tends to evaporate in the face of high pressure, and almost always in the face of frustration, so the avoidance of same would seem, to me, to be something which Inno both could and should foster; such will hardly be achieved (no matter how easy this is in terms of balancing the FA's requirements) where any one or two Badges are simply made overly valuable/rare and therefore overly likely to cause frustration when they are placed where the FS would prefer they are not placed, strategically speaking - and near-enough encouraging such an outcome by requiring disproportionately large numbers of such Badges in low-value Waypoints is such a bad idea that it seems improbable that it would occur by pure chance or mere incompetence (from which I have never thought Inno's devs suffer - in any regard).
In Summary:
If Inno intended to re-work the FAs, why not do a proper job and equalise the value of ALL the Waypoints? Why the need for some to be so very expensive, especially seeing that the new iteration of the FA has finally made a very welcome and frustration-reducing alteration in the form of Badge overflow? It's difficult enough to organise and run a FA with the limited in-game tools which are at our disposal, and continuing to over-complicate FA planning - and to near-enough encourage the frustration caused by Badge mis-placement by creating what amounts to new 'Waypoints to avoid' (albeit with a different Badge causing this effect) is, in my view, either a major oversight or a deliberately provocative choice.
Footnote re Text Formatting:
@InnoGames @Marindor : I have used the cumbersome and space-heavy manual insertion of earlier posts (above) because the Forum software has recently been modified in several respects, including the removal of the automatic 'nested replies' feature - which is rather unhelpful when it comes to re-quotes, as I hope is evident - especially because it is also now more difficult to edit quoted comments without 'breaking' the Forum's text formatting. Could an option (at the user's choice) to show/not show nested replies be restored/added to the Forum UI? Many thanks.
CrazyWizard
Well-Known Member
Way too long text again but I have skimmed it.
An FA is supposed to be played with 25 people. 300 badges with 25 people is peanuts, thats 12 badges a person. 300 badges with 5 is more difficult with 60 badges a person.
In the past I have seen plenty of comment of scaled difficulty but that would lead to poor gaming. if you scale difficulty you get to a point where you are in control. as people play multiple accounts it becomes the easies by playing it all yourself instead of sharing the burden with others. plenty of people have problems with relinquising control.
As for the buying tourney with diamond, no you do not need that, an FA is also where you put your recources.
You could limit some tournament results between FA's and use those saved resources during an FA. more combat buildings and more units give you much higher results. only limited by the amount of scouted provinces.
You could store CC between FA's not harvesting them by putting the academy in a lone corner and only opening them with the shortcut/button and not harvesting the production.
Last but not least you can save spellfragments and CC between FA's and go all out with crafting during an FA. tho this is the only part where dimonds might help. as there is a limit to 5 crafts per 6 hours without. on the other hand again you could save those knowledge drinks as a diamond alternative.
To become first in the FA you need to sacrifice something to gain an edge over the others only 1 could be firtst.
But just to play and success in the FA as a fellowship no as a battle between fellowships those large numbers are a joke if you share them with 24 other players.