Well everything is "not hard", when you use boosters and diamonds. It´s like saying traveling 40 km is easy, when you have a car. If you have to walk it´s quite another story. It´s doable, but ain´t something "you just do".
When I first read that "in old setup" difficulty was the same in all round 1 provinces, I thought "have they ever played the game!". In the early provinces you fight one- and two star enemies, which is far easier than fighting 3 star enemies..... Then I remembered the one time I went to province 32, and yes the % of lost troops didn´t change as I vent along (only the number of lost troops evolved, and surpassed my production capacity).
I can see severel ppl directly linking how far you get in the tournament to the chapter you´re in. I must admit, that if anything it´s become harder to score "high" in the tournament. But I don´t have a fire-phoenix, and don´t use boosters. I have leveled my martial monestary (and a few other military AW), but it doesn´t compensate the increased difficulty. I can still fight and win most encounters, but with big losses. It´s harder to produce enough troops, and produceing enough goods to cater is almost impossible. Luckyly you don´t need that much goods to do anything else.
Maybe I´m doing it wrong, but kp are not what "slows me down" in the tech tree. Sentient goods and guest race goods do. But ofc. that can change in the latest two chapters.........
A unrelated sugestion: why don´t you make giving neighbourly help, as easy via worldmap as via roster/mail. It´s good, that you made it so easy via roster/mail, but why not go the full way