Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

[ErestorX]

But most other wonders are more usefull and therefore I belive that a factor of 0,0003 should be fine for practically any wonder.

Most yes. But at least Tome, Excavation, both Lighthouses, Thrones, Trader Guild, Enar's, Maze, Trade Center, Vortex and Spire Library are in the same league as sunset towers from the perspective of my life city (winyandor, germany, seeds only from trader).

And there are others that are better but not good enough to overcome the current penalty.

 

[Karvest]

Would you care to back that claim up with some numbers? I did not and will not do calculations for every single building in game. But if population and culture do increase exponentially then goods should as well as a they are using the population and culture. But again, calculating these numbers would at least be constructive feedback. So feel free to prove me wrong.

Simplest example: Barracks, upgraded each 2 chapters at later game:

chapter	speed	increase
7	71
9	164	130,99%
11	250	52,44%
13	350	40,00%
15	450	28,57%

This is without taking pop/culture/size into account. With them speed increase would slow down even faster.

 

[little bee]

This is where your first mistake is made, we can argue over the values you represent here, but those are irrelevant.
The main error is they there is no way you can add a value of 0.003 or any other fixed number here.

R = 0.3994 × (1+B) × (1.0045)^T × (1+0.003A) × (E - 0.34P - 4.5)

See this formula muliplies a bunch of values, this means that the influence that A (wonders) has on R (SS) depends on the other values.
This is why your argument is flawed. if any of the other values grow bigger the influence of A is nog longer the same.

And again you are only considering the cost, but not the benefit of the Wonders. For example the Mountain Hall lv. 30 gives 15% of your working population. If you have twice as much space than you can build twice as many manufactories and residences. And therefore the Mountain Hall will give twice as much population. The same happens when your population per square is doubled. The other benefit of the lv. 30 is an 20% production boost to all your boosted goods. This is also an multiplicative bonus. If you have twices as much space for production or you can produce twices as effitiently per square then the Mountain Hall becomes twice as usefull.
If the benefit of the wonder is multiplicative then why shoulden't the cost be?

If you believe that there are wonders that only give an additive boost then please give examples. I do admit that your normal squadsize is only increasing quadratically. However the wonders relying on it all have a second boost (training speed, unit damage or training size) that do work multiplicative.

@Karvest O.k. so troop production is not rising as quickly as population or culture. That sounds like much more usefull feedback then just insulting anyone claiming that there is exponential grows. If you belive that this is a serious problem, then how about suggesting that the grows should be adjusted to align?

Most yes. But at least Tome, Excavation, both Lighthouses, Thrones, Trader Guild, Enar's, Maze, Trade Center, Vortex and Spire Library are in the same league as sunset towers from the perspective of my life city (winyandor, germany, seeds only from trader).

And there are others that are better but not good enough to overcome the current penalty.

So if those wonders are in the same league as the sunset towers then the same factor should be acceptable, right? I do agree that the current penalty is to high for these wonders, but that does not mean that the entire formula is wrong; just one constant.

 

[Karvest]

Catering is not an option at the endgame high score tournaments. Even if you can produce twice as goods you won't go x2 further in tournament.
I posted my stats here after each tournament, catering just one province 40 up to 5* in last tourney costs 35K orcs for me, this is 5 days of production, even if I double my production, it would still be far from sustainable. Catering of all 40 provinces up to 5* costs me 319K orcs, that's 1.5 months of production, more than month of T1 production, not talking about more than 3.5 full MH storages of coins and supplies. And all these numbers for only 275 AW levels and far from all available expansions placed. And 40 provinces are far from high score...
But if instead of doubling production I could just get rid of all factories and expansions they occupy - I'd have same troops production, same strength and would have x2 less SS => can either go way further or fully stop bothering about manual fighting again.

 

[CrazyWizard]

And again you are only considering the cost, but not the benefit of the Wonders. For example the Mountain Hall lv. 30 gives 15% of your working population. If you have twice as much space than you can build twice as many manufactories and residences. And therefore the Mountain Hall will give twice as much population. The same happens when your population per square is doubled. The other benefit of the lv. 30 is an 20% production boost to all your boosted goods. This is also an multiplicative bonus. If you have twices as much space for production or you can produce twices as effitiently per square then the Mountain Hall becomes twice as usefull.
If the benefit of the wonder is multiplicative then why shoulden't the cost be?

If you believe that there are wonders that only give an additive boost then please give examples. I do admit that your normal squadsize is only increasing quadratically. However the wonders relying on it all have a second boost (training speed, unit damage or training size) that do work multiplicative.

@Karvest O.k. so troop production is not rising as quickly as population or culture. That sounds like much more usefull feedback then just insulting anyone claiming that there is exponential grows. If you belive that this is a serious problem, then how about suggesting that the grows should be adjusted to align?


So if those wonders are in the same league as the sunset towers then the same factor should be acceptable, right? I do agree that the current penalty is to high for these wonders, but that does not mean that the entire formula is wrong; just one constant.

We are considering benefits vs rewards.
A 15% pop bonus does NOT give you twice as much space.
I have no clue how you pop up these numbers.

First of all a mountain hall cost about 1 expansion of space (extra difficulty) then it adds extra difficulty per wonder so for 15% you add 30 times a wonder diffculty. since expansions are multiplies with wonderlevels theis is an extra diffuclty x extra difficuly 30 wonderlevels.

but again multiplications, so once you add another wonder, that expansions you needed for the mountain halls becomes more expansive again because of the new wonder.
and once you add an exta expansion for that new wonder the wonderlevels from the mountain halls become more expsensive per level because of the extra expansion.

Yes up to a certain point wonders and expansions make sens, but once you reach a certain tresahold of research expansions and wonderlevels, at that point each aditional research, each aditional expansion and each aditional wonderlevel adds more difficulty to the tournaments thay you gain advantages in the tournaments.

because research x expansions x wonderlevels you create a lever effect,

If you gain 0.03% benefit (your example)
untill you reach a certain point you get +0.03% improvement and 0.01 cost as an example.
But as a certain point number are going to stack up so your wonderlevel still adds 0.03% improvement but at the same time adds 0.06% difficulty and from then onwards each expansion, each research and each wonderlevels adds more difficulty (cost) then improvement,

If the formula for example would be:
research + expansions + wonderlevels then you could day each wonderlevel adds 0.03% benefit + 0.01% difficulty

but it's not an additive ist a multip[lication so if research reaches the stage of value 5, then each wonder adds 0.05% difficulty and if expansions reach the value 7 then each wonderlevel adds 0.35% difficulty because you multiply the difficuly (0.01) with research (0.01*5=0.05) and then with expansions (0.05*7=0.35)
Now every wonderlevel adds 0.03 % advantage and 0.35 difficulty/ so the added difficulty is almost 12 times as high as the advantage.

Because you multiply values there is a semi fixed bonus (there is some fluidity in there on the goods production side, and non one the unit production side) but youthere is a fluid value of added difficulty.

This formula is bad because of that fluid difficulty. if your numbers stack up badly your added difficulty

Again from a cost vs rewards analisys at a certain point evolving your town does no longer make any sense as the costs far outweigh the benefits.
For a while you pay $10 for a $100 dollar item but that cost grows and grows and grows and then at a certain point you pay $500 or even $1000 for that same $100 dollar item
It's all about cost vs benefit. thats what this whole thing is about.

If there was even a small cost vs benefita advantage troughout the whole game even if it was $99 vs $100 you would not see like 200 pages of negativity in 3 threads on 2 forums about this change.

We are not idiots, we can do our math.

 

[Pauly7]

Most yes. But at least Tome, Excavation, both Lighthouses, Thrones, Trader Guild, Enar's, Maze, Trade Center, Vortex and Spire Library are in the same league as sunset towers from the perspective of my life city (winyandor, germany, seeds only from trader).

And there are others that are better but not good enough to overcome the current penalty.

Also, let's not forget levels 31-35 for all other Wonders.

 

[ErestorX]

So if those wonders are in the same league as the sunset towers then the same factor should be acceptable, right?

Yes. And as I argued before, to be in line with Innos claim that wonders always give more benefits than disadvantages there can't be any penalty for sunset towers.

For example the Mountain Hall lv. 30...

A fine example. Mountain halls are useful if there is no penalty, actually they used to be the best non military wonder for my city. They save more space than they need and I used this space to build Sets or buildings that give KP. Yes, the best use of goods is to buy KP in my live city, as we argued often enough catering is not a significant factor for people in high chapters who play all their provinces in tournament. And buildings that give KP directly are much better than buying KP with goods considering the costs I have.

After the changes a new use of the saved space became much more attractive than a few additional KP - place fewer expansions to reduce troop size in tournament and spire. I just created my future live city on elvenarchitect yesterday. The mountain halls lvl 30 are worth 3 expansions plus two KP per day for the additional goods they give in that city. Two KP are not much, lets be generous and say thats worth another 0,25 expansions. I have all 154 expansions placed therefore the value of the mountain halls level 30 is about 1,5% lower troop size if I keep them. If I wreck them on the other hand my troop size will be about 4,5% lower and I will get another 0,5% from the space the hall needed for a total of about 5%. Therefore for my city the factor for mountain halls should be at least 3-4 times lower to allow me to keep them.

But thats only for my city. If I had only the mountain hall but no other wonders, the reduction of the troop size in % for wrecking them would be much higher, the factor should be at least 7-8 times lower in that case.

 

[Steelhail]

A 15% pop bonus does NOT give you twice as much space.
I have no clue how you pop up these numbers.

I don't think that @little bee is saying that the MH pop bonus gives you twice as much space, but rather that once you have placed enough expansions to give you twice the space for residences, that doubles the total population potential for your mountain halls; then as new tech lets you build higher residences (or magic residences) giving more population per square, MH feeds off that simultaneously. One could also add the synergistic effect of other wonders, such as having Golden Abyss or eternal youth to produce more leftover workers to help increase MH's effectiveness, while MH simultaneously makes GA more effective too.

I'm not saying I agree with Little Bee's general conclusions, but I think that's the argument, and it's something to think about even if not ultimately persuaded by.

Since the AW penalty primarily affects tournament troop loss total rather than individual battle success rate, I wish I could do the military equity number-crunching for the synergy of a level 30/35 simia, level 30/35 FA, level 30/35 needles, level 30/35 training grounds and level 30 sanctuary/monastery working together to combat the troop loss: how many "extra" AW levels or expansions would that setup make feasible going into chapter 17?

 

[little bee]

Catering is not an option at the endgame high score tournaments. Even if you can produce twice as goods you won't go x2 further in tournament.
I posted my stats here after each tournament, catering just one province 40 up to 5* in last tourney costs 35K orcs for me, this is 5 days of production, even if I double my production, it would still be far from sustainable. Catering of all 40 provinces up to 5* costs me 319K orcs, that's 1.5 months of production, more than month of T1 production, not talking about more than 3.5 full MH storages of coins and supplies. And all these numbers for only 275 AW levels and far from all available expansions placed. And 40 provinces are far from high score...
But if instead of doubling production I could just get rid of all factories and expansions they occupy - I'd have same troops production, same strength and would have x2 less SS => can either go way further or fully stop bothering about manual fighting again.

So troop produktion is not growing exponentially like goods production is, but fighting is still more sustainable? That is actually interesting. I saw all the stats you postet, but they only included the catering cost and not your weekly production. Thank you for finally putting them in perspective. These are the comments I had been hoping to read all along.

@CrazyWizard I'm not completly sure what you are trying to say. If you are trying to give an example, could you please name an actual wonder that only gives an additive boost? Unless you are trying to say that they are all additive? As I have explained before that would not be correct for the Maintain Hall. It gives an percentage of working population. So if the working population is doubled then so is the effect of the MH. This is a multiplicative bonus, not an additive one.

If you are trying to argue, that wonders are currently counted twice, once with their multiplicative bonus and once additive with the space they use, then I agree with you. I fact I did write it in my very first post. That is why I suggested subtracting 0,8*(#wonders) from the expansions. That way only the non-wonder space in your city would be counted.

Also, let's not forget levels 31-35 for all other Wonders.

Actually I belive that those wonder levels are only supposed to be a KP drain and not actually usefull. The fact that some of you are wining so many KP more than 99% of the other players, is actually a real problem. In chapter 16 they drastically increased the KP requirement of research. I do not think that this is fair to the other 99% of players. They will have real problems to get through this chapter. But if you had absolutly nowhere to put your KP then that would also be wrong. Therefore I do not see a problem with these levels being practically useless. Feel free to disagree with me. But please, do not pretend that the other 99% of players do not exists.

Yes. And as I argued before, to be in line with Innos claim that wonders always give more benefits than disadvantages there can't be any penalty for sunset towers.

And as I have argued before, the same argument could be made for the Needles or the Shrooms. A player who never fights would have absolutly no benefit from them. But for a player who does fight they are easily worth more than their current penalty. What should, in my opinion, be considered is the benefit it gives to the average player actually building it. I think this would be around 1% for the lv. 30 sunset towers. If you disagree, I would be interested to hear your figure. But if it is actually 0% then they were not worth having even before the tournament changes.

 

[ErestorX]

And as I have argued before, the same argument could be made for the Needles or the Shrooms.

Yes, you are right, the value of the benefits of the wonders differs from player to player and even for one player at different points in time.

But there is a difference between sunset towers and needles or shrooms. The only players that benefit from sunset towers are players who don't have enough wonder levels or can't log in often enough to get enough seeds from the trader. They need the sunset tower to compensate these disadvantages they have, not to give them advantages other players don't have. Therefore it seems highly unfair to penalize them even more!

The other difference is that a player who needed sunset towers in the past might overcome this need. In this case penalizing it would create an incentive to delete sunset towers. And that is probably the same for all non military wonders except timewarp. Nobody likes deleting his wonders, Inno should not create situations that make this a rational strategy!

 

[spennyit]

So if the working population is doubled then so is the effect of the MH. This is a multiplicative bonus, not an additive one.

I may be wrong, but the problem is not that a single effect is multiplicative (as you have demonstrated), but the fact that multiple effects are multiplicated among themselves.

Example: if I upgrade 2 residences, their bonus will be res1 bonus + res2 bonus, not res1 bonus * res 2 bonus.

If I add 1 expansion, 1 AW level and 1 research, these 3 bonuses (that can be multiplicative by themselves) are multiplicated among them in the today's formula, while we think that they should be summed, as per the residences example.

I hope I am correctly referring the objection to the formula

 

[Pauly7]

Actually I belive that those wonder levels are only supposed to be a KP drain and not actually usefull. The fact that some of you are wining so many KP more than 99% of the other players, is actually a real problem. In chapter 16 they drastically increased the KP requirement of research. I do not think that this is fair to the other 99% of players. They will have real problems to get through this chapter. But if you had absolutly nowhere to put your KP then that would also be wrong. Therefore I do not see a problem with these levels being practically useless. Feel free to disagree with me. But please, do not pretend that the other 99% of players do not exists.

I do disagree, because they stated that the benefit of every AW level would always far outweigh the penalty. Even had they not said that then there is something still really wrong with it. It's OK to say "hey here's 5 more levels on each AW for people needing a place to dump KPs. You won't see much benefit, but it's something to do". I don't think it is OK, however, to turn around a few months later and say "hey, you know those extra 10,000KP you sunk into your Shrooms... You knew it wasn't for a great bonus, but now we're making it so it's gonna cause a big handicap against your tournament scores".... "Oh you want to revert those extra levels?... No, we're not gonna let you do that either."

 

[little bee]

Yes, you are right, the value of the benefits of the wonders differs from player to player and even for one player at different points in time.

But there is a difference between sunset towers and needles or shrooms. The only players that benefit from sunset towers are players who don't have enough wonder levels or can't log in often enough to get enough seeds from the trader. They need the sunset tower to compensate these disadvantages they have, not to give them advantages other players don't have. Therefore it seems highly unfair to penalize them even more!

The other difference is that a player who needed sunset towers in the past might overcome this need. In this case penalizing it would create an incentive to delete sunset towers. Nobody likes deleting his wonders, Inno should not create situations that make this a rational strategy!

Do you know anyone who actually build the sunset towers and wants to go beyond province 10? Some of my gildmember on live have the towers, but I am quite certain that they will overall benefit from these changes. Probably more so then you or I will. Seeds are also used in the spire, so maybe that is relevant as well. Of course I do not have a lot of data on this and I don't like to speculate without it. If we can find some actual examples, that would be interesting and might actually help to convince someone from INNO.

The part about overcoming the need for the towers, sounds more like an argument for teleporting wonders. I would fully support this.

I may be wrong, but the problem is not that a single effect is multiplicative (as you have demonstrated), but the fact that multiple effects are multiplicated among themselves.

Example: if I upgrade 2 residences, their bonus will be res1 bonus + res2 bonus, not res1 bonus * res 2 bonus.

If I add 1 expansion, 1 AW level and 1 research, these 3 bonuses (that can be multiplicative by themselves) are multiplicated among them in the today's formula, while we think that they should be summed, as per the residences example.

I hope I am correctly referring the objection to the formula

Actually building residences or upgrading them will not effect the formula at all. Researching the upgrades will. And I'm pretty sure that residences scale exponentially with level. They obviously scale proportionally with space, because you can build more houses on more space. And they work multiplicativly with the Abyss or Mountain Hall.

I do disagree, because they stated that the benefit of every AW level would always far outweigh the penalty. Even had they not said that then there is something still really wrong with it. It's OK to say "hey here's 5 more levels on each AW for people needing a place to dump KPs. You won't see much benefit, but it's something to do". I don't think it is OK, however, to turn around a few months later and say "hey, you know those extra 10,000KP you sunk into your Shrooms... You knew it wasn't for a great bonus, but now we're making it so it's gonna cause a big handicap against your tournament scores".... "Oh you want to revert those extra levels?... No, we're not gonna let you do that either."

That is a bad example because the shrooms actually continue to be usefull. Unless you need the higher training size? If you have an actual example of a wonder that is no longer usefull then I suggest you start by gathering the fact. And then you can try to constructively explain why this is wrong in your opinion. Going into hypotheticals and insulting the producers will not help.

 

[Pauly7]

That is a bad example because the shrooms actually continue to be usefull. Unless you need the higher training size? If you have an actual example of a wonder that is no longer usefull then I suggest you start by gathering the fact. And then you can try to constructively explain why this is wrong in your opinion. Going into hypotheticals and insulting the producers will not help.

I'm not sure why you're feeling the need for this aggressive way of communicating, especially when you are accusing everyone else of being insulting.

I picked the Shrooms at random. It's not hypothetical because all the AWs have had their most important power removed above level 30. However, no I'm not going to satisfy your demand for constructive facts. I've said my piece.

 

[Lovec Krys]

Do you know anyone who actually build the sunset towers and wants to go beyond province 10?

I have Sunset Towers lv 16 in my main city. And having the old tournament there I'm going much further than prov. 10. Even with the new tourney I'll go further than prov. 10 (at least for next 2 chapters, don't know when it becomes unsustainable).

If we can find some actual examples, that would be interesting and might actually help to convince someone from INNO

I don't believe anything we write can convince someone in Inno. Probably someone's job would be in stake then.
So the only thing we can do is to adapt (and deal with the fact, that our (end game top tournament players) scores will be far from their current levels and with no hope to raise again (with each new chapter, they will only decline).
It shouldn't take more than 4 chapters (max. 2 years) to be clearly visible to everyone why this new formula is wrong and will be probably changed right before tourneys (and Spire) becomes unplayable for majority of endgame players.

 

[Dony]

Like how many provinces each of you is able to fight, with wich boosts, with what fighting/catering ratio or how much of your weekly production you are using.

I can fight unlimited amount of provinces, same as in old system with minimum amount of combat buildings (which is for my cities sutainable for years from now on), with no catering, so if i choose to cater some harder combination its just all good for me. BUt all of this irelevant. I can make another acount, rise it to last chapter which will have 200%,500%,1000% less SS for first province, with the same AWs i have now. Does that makes any sense for competition playing field? Both cities will have same unit productions, why should 1 city require to train 1000% less units then others?
Developers destroyed competitive playing field with this change so hard, that best thing they can do is to remove ranking points from first 100 players and leave it be just personal/fellowshipp score, so others can live without swearing on inno for years

Simplest example: Barracks, upgraded each 2 chapters at later game:

chapter	speed	increase
7	71
9	164	130,99%
11	250	52,44%
13	350	40,00%
15	450	28,57%

This is without taking pop/culture/size into account. With them speed increase would slow down even faster.

And in next chapter even if its still subject to change its 500 speed for 11,11 % increase
While doing only research and ignoring every single new expansion and not upgrading single AW will increase my SS by 13,5% (14%-15% with last techs half year later)
Sounds like progression to you @little bee ?
Ok
Chapter 18
speed 525, increase of 5%, sounds even better?

If we can find some actual examples, that would be interesting and might actually help to convince someone from INNO.

You either ignored those posts or intentionally skipped them, i suggest you reread whole thread, there are bilions of numbers, examples, suggestions, INNO has everything what it takes to change something, and we all see what they are doing.

 

[Aeva]

Do you know anyone who actually build the sunset towers and wants to go beyond province 10?

I did and I fight up to province 55-56 on live. Yes, all the way. Every week.
Actually I build the sunset towers because they are pretty

 

[PaNonymeB]

So troop produktion is not growing exponentially like goods production is, but fighting is still more sustainable? That is actually interesting.

Actually, goods production isn't actually increasing exponentially either. For example I took the stats for stage 10 Wise golem that gives population, culture, T3 goods, mana and troops. What we see is that only population and culture (and mana up to chapter 14) are increasing roughly exponentially (constant % increase).

 

[PaNonymeB]

If you gain 0.03% benefit (your example)
untill you reach a certain point you get +0.03% improvement and 0.01 cost as an example.
But as a certain point number are going to stack up so your wonderlevel still adds 0.03% improvement but at the same time adds 0.06% difficulty and from then onwards each expansion, each research and each wonderlevels adds more difficulty (cost) then improvement,

If the formula for example would be:
research + expansions + wonderlevels then you could day each wonderlevel adds 0.03% benefit + 0.01% difficulty

but it's not an additive ist a multip[lication so if research reaches the stage of value 5, then each wonder adds 0.05% difficulty and if expansions reach the value 7 then each wonderlevel adds 0.35% difficulty because you multiply the difficuly (0.01) with research (0.01*5=0.05) and then with expansions (0.05*7=0.35)
Now every wonderlevel adds 0.03 % advantage and 0.35 difficulty/ so the added difficulty is almost 12 times as high as the advantage.

That's not how it works, yes in your example it adds at the end a value of 0.35 but to a base value of 35, so it's still the same % increase...

 

[little bee]

Simplest example: Barracks, upgraded each 2 chapters at later game:

chapter	speed	increase
7	71
9	164	130,99%
11	250	52,44%
13	350	40,00%
15	450	28,57%

This is without taking pop/culture/size into account. With them speed increase would slow down even faster.

I just counted the mandatory upgrades beetween these barack upgrades. It depends somewhat on the order in wich you research it, but I counted around 65 mandatory upgrades from chapter 11 to chapter 13 and 50 mandatory upgrades from chapter 13 to chapter 15. So those 40% and 28% would still fit into an exponential grows with a base of 1,005. This is a lot less than the base 1,01 that I calculated for culture and population, but less than the base 1,0045 used in the tournament formula. So this still seems to work.

Actually, goods production isn't actually increasing exponentially either. For example I took the stats for stage 10 Wise golem that gives population, culture, T3 goods, mana and troops. What we see is that only population and culture (and mana up to chapter 14) are increasing roughly exponentially (constant % increase).

Thanks for that chart. There is definitively some variation here but on the whole this does look more or less exponential to me. I'm pretty sure it still fits into that exponential grows 1,0045^T; maybe with the single exception in the jump from chapter 15 to chapter 16. And I only counted 28 mandatory upgrades in chapter 15 wich would translate into an 14% increase. So while not every single upgrade may give more than it takes, on the whole this looks fine to me.


@Aeva, @Lovec Krys Do either of you think you could put a number to how usefull the towers are with your playing style? If it gave you a benefit of x% then that would translate into a factor of x/ (100* lv.of the towers) that would still be acceptable before the wonder harms more than it helps. And I'm guessing this number is lower than 0,003.