Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

[CrazyWizard]

Ok, just had some time to think about it, so the cosmetic changes are starting but the fundamental problem ain't adressed.
Looks like they will try to make it "work" for the time being, to get it withing tolerances for now, but the underlying problem will not be adressed.
A delay of excecution, but not a solution.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Training in all three buildings versus one building at a time is another thing that separates the average player from the elitist player. I have seen many complaints about this from the newer players on Facebook and plenty of requests for this change. Personally, I do not care either way. I have a brown bear in my Live city and I use it maybe one day a week.

 

[Pauly7]

Ok, just had some time to think about it, so the cosmetic changes are starting but the fundamental problem ain't adressed.
Looks like they will try to make it "work" for the time being, to get it withing tolerances for now, but the underlying problem will not be adressed.
A delay of excecution, but not a solution.

It's true that it doesn't get to the fundamental issues, but at the same time it could be a step. It remains to be seen what the difference in impact is that they are making. It also remains to be seen whether they will make similar adjustments to Ancient Wonder levels. I can see these taking longer to figure out.

I'm essentially fine with having my wings clipped and tournaments getting harder with less reward, but I would (as many people I speak to would) like the assurance that all Ancient Wonders can be levelled and expansions taken without it giving a net negative impact.

I have a brown bear in my Live city and I use it maybe one day a week.

I'm similar, though with 2 Brown Bears. I feed them once a week, at which time I empty my 5 hour boosters from the Spire into my Barracks, beginning with the initial 8 hours worth of troops that built up overnight, so I'm not affected by losing the build up of several days' worth of troops in different production buildings.

 

[Karvest]

I don't care about how it affects brown bears usage,
But I care how that change is
1. forcing me to either build almost useless units or have less overall unit production than expected by game design
2. making me weaker compared to human cities (like elves are so good at fighting to nerf them even more )

 

[DeletedUser1657]

I actually think this is a horrible idea and should be postponed after all tournament changes are done, because it will create more balancing issues then it actually solves. Combat is quite different then the city building where you can build nice looking buildings with no power at all just for visual, however in combat you cant just choose nice looking unit with zero power (read: worse then best possible), it doesnt work like that, yes for people doing just first 10 provinces can help negate their autocombat loses but thats all, when you face 2x, 2,5x,3x more units, you need to place your best possible units. With this change humans will train 2x more mage units then elf or 2x more heavy melee units (read: usefull units). Yes elf can train in barracks (just for the sake of it because they can) but if units will never be used its just waste of supplies, and same goes for training grounds, unless you remove orcs requirement from those 2 semi good units. So unless your intention is rebalancing all human and elf units it wont work balancing wise, quite the opposite and i really hope you dont want to make even more competitive balancing issues then we already have, before you fix them first. And i really hope that this change wont come with 3x less units trained per barracks/MC/TG, that would be just retarded at this point. We should know all the details before this potential thing get into the game. I would rather if developers take all the time they need to make current tournament model as good as possible and not wasting time on this complex topic as balancing units, which can be done afterwards with another long discussion. Thank you.

I am expecting this along with the random troops in tourny will make it far more obvious the favoured troops. I have already been planning what troops I expect my live town to be training to tackle the random situation. The extra training queues will likely have minimal impact on those plans as they currently are. I do know some troops will never see the light of day.

 

[edeba]

Thanks for the update @Marindor. This sounds like positive steps.

Allowing the unit production buildings to train simultaneously is huge and creates lots to think about. We will be able to have a lot more troops, but it will cost a lot more supplies to produce them, so perhaps more workshops will be needed. It doesn't necessarily solve a problem as the limiting factor may become whether fights are possible to win, rather than if we have the troops to start the battles in the first place. In my case it will mean building a Training Grounds from scratch as I do not have that building at all. Would you say that it's safe to start work on that, even though I appreciate it will take a while for the change to take effect?

Horrible idea... Already all of the AWs make the weakest units, and I don't see at all that Inno just all of a sudden allows 3x as many units to be trained at once, so, training speed gets knocked back and you ultimately end up with way less of the units that you play the most and that are the strongest warriors for a bunch of crappy units.

If they don't touch training speed I would suspect you end up with massive numbers of the weaker units, but you could use some of them in the easier battles.

The non-shared queue also weakenes time instants used when brown bear effect is in place (use only on one queue), but increases bonus from Simia (bonus on all 3 queues).
So this doesn't mean we will train 3 times as much units (that only applies to those who don't use brown bear with time instants).

That of course is valid only if the training amount & speed isn't affected and enemy counts will not increase.

This would be really awful if the training speed is reduced to "balance." It would be a major nerf to the power of the time instants.

I actually think this is a horrible idea and should be postponed after all tournament changes are done, because it will create more balancing issues then it actually solves. Combat is quite different then the city building where you can build nice looking buildings with no power at all just for visual, however in combat you cant just choose nice looking unit with zero power (read: worse then best possible), it doesnt work like that, yes for people doing just first 10 provinces can help negate their autocombat loses but thats all, when you face 2x, 2,5x,3x more units, you need to place your best possible units. With this change humans will train 2x more mage units then elf or 2x more heavy melee units (read: usefull units). Yes elf can train in barracks (just for the sake of it because they can) but if units will never be used its just waste of supplies, and same goes for training grounds, unless you remove orcs requirement from those 2 semi good units. So unless your intention is rebalancing all human and elf units it wont work balancing wise, quite the opposite and i really hope you dont want to make even more competitive balancing issues then we already have, before you fix them first. And i really hope that this change wont come with 3x less units trained per barracks/MC/TG, that would be just retarded at this point. We should know all the details before this potential thing get into the game. I would rather if developers take all the time they need to make current tournament model as good as possible and not wasting time on this complex topic as balancing units, which can be done afterwards with another long discussion. Thank you.

Well said, it is a horrible idea that just opens up for another massive nerf.

I hadn't even considered that as a possibility, but now you've made me worry because that would be awful. Surely not, though, as I don't see how it could help anyone.

Reducing training speed was the first thing that crossed my mind. I just can't imagine allowing 3x as many units to be trained at the same time happening without some other cost and there isn't a good choice for how that cost comes.

Initial feedback on impact of having the shared training queues (on bears and overall)

It's relative reduction of power. Let's simplify, and assume that each building can run the queue for 1 day, and produce 10K units. Right now, you'd run all 3 in 3 days to produce 30K of units. With 2x bears for 100% increase you would get 60K of units on a single feed in the same 3 days.

With simultaneous queues you'd produce 90K of units in 3 days without bears (assuming you can sustain supplies). Using same single feed 2x bears would only increase it to 30K+30K+60K = 120K. So relative improvement with the bears over 3 days went from +100% to only +33%.

It is similar if you're using timeboosters - today your timeboosters work 1:1 to realtime as there is only one queue. With those changes, it would only work to 1:3 realtime (e.g. 3 hours of timeboosts needed for boosting 1 hour of total production).

You may think that who cares about relative differences, bears still improve things and its an overall improvement for everyone. Well, thinking that base troop production increased by up to 3 times (!) for everyone in one fell swoop won't trigger some other adjustments - e.g. lower production in each building, higher requirements for troops etc - is a bit naive. Well, new tournaments already have higher troop requirements, so there is that. Not to mention 3x times supply requirements. And not to mention that now you basically are expected to utilize all 3 building units in 1:1:1 ratio. I don't know about other people, but as an elf there is only one unit that I produce in the Barracks (golems), and you only need so many of those. And not to mention that extra troop production won't help you to win unwinnable fights due to ramp up in enemy size. At all.

So as usual, something that looks appealing on the surface (moar troops!), but not exactly an amazing change so far. Not sure what this was supposed to solve. I mean, with no other adjustments (questionable) it will probably help the same early/mid players that do just a bit of tournament to recoup their losses. If and only if they can afford the supplies, which is questionable. It doesn't move the unwinnable wall at all.

Looks like what you are describing is queue up all three building and let them finish before using bears, and with 2 you double your production.

With simultaneous queues that run 1 day you probably wouldn't have enough pet food to polish everyday, so you are still at every 3rd day for polishing. So the advantage of those two bears is 1/3rd because of pet food limitation.

Agreed that it is naive to think 3x the production would come without some serious other cost.

7-8 hours are not enough even for utilizing 8h instants, not talking about 14h ones...

Back to topic - I really dislike x3 training queue. I haven't used a single unit other than from MC in last tourneys, and see no use for them later... If I was playing humans - I'd like to train mages/cannoneers from barracks as well, but for chapter 15+ elves both barracks and training grounds can't produce anything really useful.
So that change is another nerf for already underpowered elves...

I only build from the MC on live as well.

I don't care about how it affects brown bears usage,
But I care how that change is
1. forcing me to either build almost useless units or have less overall unit production than expected by game design
2. making me weaker compared to human cities (like elves are so good at fighting to nerf them even more )

Agreed.

 

[Pauly7]

@Marindor perhaps you could clarify whether the intention is to allow the three training queues to continue training at their existing speeds.

 

[Lovec Krys]

@Marindor perhaps you could clarify whether the intention is to allow the three training queues to continue training at their existing speeds.

Second that. (or any other nerf).
Because if the splitting queues comes with another nerf (hopefuly not) the impact will be even worse than with the intact current tourneys going to live (meaning even more (especialy end game) players quits if there is another hidden nerf as a price for 3 queues)




ps: Partial agree with Karvest, in Barracks & Training grounds, there are less usefull units for my end ch16 main city.

(crossed - never train them
bold - favourite units trained a lot
crossed bold - would like to train them, but can't due to horrible end game imbalance between orc requirements and production
others trained in some situations but not much as bold units)

Barracks:
Sword Acrobat - never train them - too weak, if I realy need light melee I train cerberoses. (still have around 60 squads left after Dwarven Bulwark deletion)
Elite Archer - Train them in certains tournaments for certain enemy unit combination
Bud Sorceress - Never train them - too weak (sometimes I use them only because I have wonder producing them, but they are not much usefull)
Elder Treant - Train them in one tournament for certain enemies (in most tournaments I prefer to train Valorians if I need heavy melee)
Granite Golems - I train them only as a (worse) replacement for Orcs Strategists due to lack of orcs to train Orcs strategists, if orcs requirement from orcs strategists is removed, I will not train them.

Training Grounds:
Cerberoses - train them for certains tournaments, but in many situations I prefer to use light ranged over light melee if both are suitable (so only limited usefulness)
Dryads - Train them for certains enemies combinations
Banshees - Recently I haven't train them, I prefer using Blossom princesses or Valorians when they could be used
Orc Warrior - I don't train them, I prefer Treants instead and besides not enough orcs to train them anyway.
Orc strategists - I don't train them due to low orc production design fault (orc requirements in the latest chapters has been rising much faster than their production, therefore even 9 armories are not enough!). If orc requirements is removed, I start training them again

Mercenary Camp:
Drones - most useless unit of all, other units are doing much better in situations they could be used
Forest Warden - Train them
Blossom Princess - Train them
Valorians - Train them
Frog Prince - Train them (love them in old Elixir tourneys)

Of course this describes my training with the old tournaments since I don't have Training Grounds & Mercenary Camp in my Beta city (and even with separate queues I don't plan them to build here - I can do 1600 points even with Barracks and my beta city's goals don't include making high tournament scores).
So training in new system can be different due to different enemy combinations (don't know all the possible combinations, so training might be different)

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Surmises... surmises...
Let’s provide feedback on known facts and not start with an “if” please.
As Marindor pointed out, I’m already feeling UN-constructive with what’s already there.

 

[maxiqbert]

none of the issues I mentioned seems to be on the table

 

[DeepTerminal]

Back to topic - I really dislike x3 training queue. I haven't used a single unit other than from MC in last tourneys, and see no use for them later... If I was playing humans - I'd like to train mages/cannoneers from barracks as well, but for chapter 15+ elves both barracks and training grounds can't produce anything really useful.
So that change is another nerf for already underpowered elves...

Can you explain why this is a nerf? You said that you only use units from MC, so how does this change affect you?

1. forcing me to either build almost useless units or have less overall unit production than expected by game design

What do you mean by "build useless units"? Also how does this change make you have less overall unit production? Isn't the whole point of the change to allow players to train more troops in a given period of time?

 

[maxiqbert]

Really good diversion this thing with the 3 queues... Knowing that those kind of things take years for inno, I don't think it's wise to focus on that.

 

[Richord]

Hi guys,

Let's keep it constructive, please. As you already know: we are working on several things. When we have new information to share, we will. As long as you don't hear any updates, there's just no new information to share yet. Getting sarcastic or deciding to quit over a feature that isn't even ready yet for Live implementation doesn't really help anybody. So please for now just keep the discussion productive and when we have new things to share, we will do so. Thank you.

messages like this sound like 'blabla' to us.
our massive concerns are real and are the core of our complaints.
inno is known to NOT listen, so we will keep making it very clear that we hate this new setup.

 

[spennyit]

It seems that unwinnable encounters is the main objective for INNO and they are pursuing it. Everything else doesn't matter if you cannot win.

In this case I would leave the tournaments as they are and:
- or cap the provinces you can open
- or take away the rewards after the "last province".

I try to explain it better: if INNO doesn't want us to benefit opening more than (let's say) "30 provinces", they can simply take away the rewards from province 31 on. They who want the rewards will stop; they who want to compete for the prestige will continue.

Why try to find very complex algorithm to get the same result (i.e. stopping you at "province 30" because encounters are unwinnable)? BTW, having millions of troops if you cannot win the encounter is not very useful ;-)

 

[galrond]

Initial feedback on impact of having the shared training queues (on bears and overall)


It's relative reduction of power. Let's simplify, and assume that each building can run the queue for 1 day, and produce 10K units. Right now, you'd run all 3 in 3 days to produce 30K of units. With 2x bears for 100% increase you would get 60K of units on a single feed in the same 3 days.

With simultaneous queues you'd produce 90K of units in 3 days without bears (assuming you can sustain supplies). Using same single feed 2x bears would only increase it to 30K+30K+60K = 120K. So relative improvement with the bears over 3 days went from +100% to only +33%.

It is similar if you're using timeboosters - today your timeboosters work 1:1 to realtime as there is only one queue. With those changes, it would only work to 1:3 realtime (e.g. 3 hours of timeboosts needed for boosting 1 hour of total production).

You may think that who cares about relative differences, bears still improve things and its an overall improvement for everyone. Well, thinking that base troop production increased by up to 3 times (!) for everyone in one fell swoop won't trigger some other adjustments - e.g. lower production in each building, higher requirements for troops etc - is a bit naive. Well, new tournaments already have higher troop requirements, so there is that. Not to mention 3x times supply requirements. And not to mention that now you basically are expected to utilize all 3 building units in 1:1:1 ratio. I don't know about other people, but as an elf there is only one unit that I produce in the Barracks (golems), and you only need so many of those. And not to mention that extra troop production won't help you to win unwinnable fights due to ramp up in enemy size. At all.

So as usual, something that looks appealing on the surface (moar troops!), but not exactly an amazing change so far. Not sure what this was supposed to solve. I mean, with no other adjustments (questionable) it will probably help the same early/mid players that do just a bit of tournament to recoup their losses. If and only if they can afford the supplies, which is questionable. It doesn't move the unwinnable wall at all.

Well I don´t have any bears myself, when I didn´t play at the time of the event. But to my understanding it functions like this: you feed them, and then for a period they give bonus troops when you collect troops.
In your example without timeboosters:
Day 1: 10k produced, feed, get 20k
Day 2: 10k produced, get 10k
Day 3: 10k produced, get 10k
40k in 3 days single feed
With simultaneous queues:
Day 1: 30k produced, feed, get 60k
Day 2: 30k produced, get 30k
Day 3: 30k produced, get 30k
120k in 3 days, single feed
You´ll ofc also collect right before the feeding effect runs out, so in both scenarious "day 2" gives some more.
So same proportions, a feed just gives 3 times more troops
Or am I missing something?

Concerning time-boosters you hit it spot-on. To keep the the same proportions, you´ll need 3 times more boosters

You´re right: This solves nothing, if the choke-point is unwinnable fights, but might help if the problem is lack of troops.
Being able to affort to build the troops, well same dilemma as "should I upgrade to increase training speed"

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Well I don´t have any bears myself, when I didn´t play at the time of the event. But to my understanding it functions like this: you feed them, and then for a period they give bonus troops when you collect troops.
In your example without timeboosters:
Day 1: 10k produced, feed, get 20k
Day 2: 10k produced, get 10k
Day 3: 10k produced, get 10k
40k in 3 days single feed
With simultaneous queues:
Day 1: 30k produced, feed, get 60k
Day 2: 30k produced, get 30k
Day 3: 30k produced, get 30k
120k in 3 days, single feed
You´ll ofc also collect right before the feeding effect runs out, so in both scenarious "day 2" gives some more.
So same proportions, a feed just gives 3 times more troops
Or am I missing something?

Concerning time-boosters you hit it spot-on. To keep the the same proportions, you´ll need 3 times more boosters

You´re right: This solves nothing, if the choke-point is unwinnable fights, but might help if the problem is lack of troops.
Being able to affort to build the troops, well same dilemma as "should I upgrade to increase training speed"

A brown bear feeding only lasts 12 hours and at max level it gives 50% extra troops.

 

[Karvest]

Can you explain why this is a nerf? You said that you only use units from MC, so how does this change affect you?
What do you mean by "build useless units"? Also how does this change make you have less overall unit production? Isn't the whole point of the change to allow players to train more troops in a given period of time?

I don't know what's the point of that change from Inno's perspective. But for me - I (elf) would be able to train x2 less useful units than my neighbor human city at the same stage of the game.
And the game is either already balanced for x3 units production (due to tournament rebalancing), or it would be a bit later (even worse).

 

[CrazyWizard]

I don't know what's the point of that change from Inno's perspective. But for me - I (elf) would be able to train x2 less useful units than my neighbor human city at the same stage of the game.
And the game is either already balanced for x3 units production (due to tournament rebalancing), or it would be a bit later (even worse).

*playing devils advocate*
Elfs have this advantage right now untill they reach the elevenar chapter, untill that point any battle that requires heavy ranged they are screwed as they can't make orc strategist effectively and mortar / 1/2 star frogs just suck. only the 3*frog prince is superb and makes them up to par.
Elves get blossom mages much earlier and are earlier "good".
Only once the unlock the frog prince do they get a small advantage / drawback (depending on strategy) by having a better spread of units but do require all boost wonders, while the elves could technically get away with 1-2 wonders instead.
*devils advocate out*

Maybe the devs are also victems of the elvengems virus, the worst tournament / combat adviser on this planet. seriously they give the wrong advise on almost every single tournament, they copied the table I once made that only looks at raw power and based there advice purely on that table and ignore the obvious strategic advantages of special powers and range. this makes them favor units that are completely useless in a practical sense.

• The amazingly useless Banshee, a glorified sorceress that each elf player know sucks balls there is a reason we start using 1* blossom mages and completly switch over to blossom when they read 2*, the only sorceress we use are the free ones from the wonder. but elvengems thinks banshee is better then the blossom mage *facepalms*
• The superb dryad who elvengems thinks is better than the elven archer. *facepalms* the dryad is the worst of the 3 archer options, wrong power, wrong favorite enemy.
• The good unit orc strategist, only 1 small problem the only way you can get it is by crafting as many training grounds of the orc strategist as you can get and keep / upgrade them with RSS, I have seen human city's with literally dozens of them. because training is not an option.

You would almost think the training grounds is the most awesome and powerfull barracks there is. while in fact it's the most useless one of them all.

There are also minor things like a 2* valorian guard gives the same results in battle as a 3* treant as the 3* power of the treant ain't amazing and the 1 range of the valorian guard makes all the difference in countering anti units, creating more stable results.
There is a really big disparity in power between melee and (semi)range units, range has such an amazing strategical advantage

Looking at the current changes
The tower already shows that the only units you ever need are light range, heavy range and mage units
In the spire a treant or a sworddancer would be useless and nothing more than cannon fodder at best. this became expacially prominent since the fire phoenix / booster buildings as increased firepower favors ranged units massively because of the strategic value of range.

 

[Deleted User - 84934]

I've followed this thread since the begining and I'm amazed at one thing. For like 20 pages, lots of people kept saying the new change would be good if we had 3 queues. Now Marindor says we'll have that, and EVERYBODY is bitching about it. This doesn't make any sense at all. I don't have the time to go back all those pages to take quotes, but I think it would be easy for anybody to see it.
Also, Marindor said theya re still working on the balance of the tourney and that it will take a lot more time to get something they are happy about it. So let's give them some time. I don't play beta itself, so I can understand why it would be frustrating for people to have to wait a few weeks to have changes, but that the pb of beta being a "normal" playing server instead of a "copy your live city to test stuff". You agreed to that, so let's wait a bit before butchering cities.

Ranting off.

Now to the changes announced.
I understand that I'm by no means an expert on combat, I'm on my chapter 9, started in december and do at max 4K points on old tourney on my live city.
Taht being said, from what I see in my fellowhip, which is by any regards average, I m way better informed than most players. And way more "hardcore" on my playing. I don't have anything else than the barracks built right now coz i prefer barracks unit to the other in terms of time to train and effectiveness. I plan to start constructing the others at one point, not sure exactly when. If I could produce in all of them, I definitely would build it. and use those units to advance further than i am now in spire by using the less good units at first and the good ones when i'm arriving at hard fights.

So for me that a positive change.

I read your comments about it and I agree that the orc requirement for training some units, while making sense at the time, should be removed.
I also agree that if the imbalance of units is so high at ch16, some over all performance review of units should take place (the difference between human and elves isn't good). Maybe Inno's futur changes and developement wil offset that, but more on this later. As a whole, this power of units isn't specificly related to the tourney change and should have it's own discussion on a different thread. With all the smart people here we probably could come up with interesting ways to deal with that.

For the reduced impact of extensions, that's not enough in my opinion. The impact of extensions and AW should be entirely removed. If you want to have a way to increase difficulty following improvement of the city (and outside of researchs done I don't see why it's needed but I can accept that Inno wants it), then make it tie to the level of the buildings built, and their number. MAke it in a way that increasing building level (and so, having less over all buildings as higher level buildings are bigger) is still an improvement and doesn't cost you too much in spire/tourney. I think everybody's have been agreeing that the formula as it is is screwed and should be rethought on a fondamental level, more than just a number tweaks so we don't have too big issues with exponential growth. Oh and don't count in those building levels count I was talking about the AWs and the premium residence and workshop. This way having high level AW will always be a benefit and having premium buildings (either through buying or spire) makes it even better, ergo increasing potential revenues. But at the same time, between a ch16 with all city with max AWs, all premium building and a completly free city, the difference in difficulty shouldn't be too much (not sure what the number could be considered acceptable but 10,20% should be fine, makes it good to pay, but skill and tactics of the city building should play a bigger role).

For the need of orcs and mana in catering, I have no opinion as I just started to get orcs in the spire and don't really understand the bottleneck there yet but from what I saw, numbers should be drasticly decreased or there should be a rebalance in the needs for orcs (and probably mana) in chapter researchs. when people say they have issues with orcs with 9 armory running on a 12 hour basics, that's insane.

Overall, as many said, I think the change for the tourney is great for casual players, who are by far the most players in elvenar (and those who don't write on forums)
But the late game more hardcore players should be thought about a bit more, they kinda seem a bit forgot in the recent months.

As a final point, I think one of the big issue is that Inno is oding stuff right now, with futur development and roadmap in mind. They know what they wanna do with the game in the next year or more, and are making change with thos futur evolution in mind.
We don't know so we have to take all changes at face values. If Inno was communicating more on their long term plans (and of course those could change, be scraped or priority moved) maybe lots of things would make more senses and would encourage people to endure the "transition" period. Lots of game company give at least some information on their long term plans, on the features they want to have and so on, and players are reacting extremely positively on this. It's not hard to do, just have to decide to give some information instead of absolutly 0 on futur plans (only datamining gives us some infos on what's next and that's really sad).
Except if Inno has no long term plans and do it by the ear but I'd be very surprised (and frightened) if that was the case.

Long post giving my 2 cents on reading all this, it's been done in one shot so I'm sorry that it's not wirtten in a so clear way. Might try to update it for editing purpose later (or not, I'm klinda lazy those days)

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

n your example without timeboosters:
Day 1: 10k produced, feed, get 20k
Day 2: 10k produced, get 10k
Day 3: 10k produced, get 10k
40k in 3 days single feed

No, that's not how you do it. You feed the bears after day 3, and pick up boosted production from all 3 previous days.