Discussion Upcoming Tournament Changes (pre-release)

[DeletedUser3289]

Let's not drag real world politic views into the discussion, please.

Once again thank you all for sharing your thoughts, comments and concerns. As always, we will make sure to forward them all. One small note on the premium expansion concerns: Yes, they do count towards the difficulty in the current setup, but less than the regular expansions. Nonetheless we will of course forward the concerns that in your opinion they shouldn't count at all, but I just wanted to make that extra clear before everyone starts thinking they have a major influence or something, while it's actually very little.

If anyone has anything further to add, please keep on sharing.

Mildly tired of not so much, little much. How much is so much ?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

There is a cutoff in later chapters, you cannot earn expansions with provinces like we did in the early chapters. We're getting one single expansion in most of the later chapters. Perhaps in Chapter 5 someone might have multiples of expansions they can choose from, but I would certainly not believe so in the later chapters.

If someone is doing exactly the number of provinces needed to advance in the chapters, only 440 are required to enter chapter 16, while the final expansion earned from scouting is at 500 provinces completed. That means this person can still get 5 more scouting expansions after entering chapter 16, if they want to.

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

Perhaps in Chapter 5 someone might have multiples of expansions they can choose from, but I would certainly not believe so in the later chapters.

Well, I have finished chapter 16, and I have 2 unplaced map expansions, and 2 unplaced research expansions. So there is that

 

[palmira]

I think a tournament cost based on completed provinces would be better. Something similar to how costs and enemy squad size in map encounters are calculated. (Remember : tournaments are in the world map.) This couldn't be abused as a number of provinces is required to enter each chapter.

Can someone enlighten me why a tournament difficulty should be solely based on the number of completed provinces? To reward the ones that skip events maybe? It is bad as it is that the spire difficulty has one such component, with a heavy weight as the last event live showed me (and there is no cap, at least a realistic one, I have 658 completed provinces live). Completed provinces and expansions are a consequence of gameplay, premium expansions the best revenue source of the game, they should not enter the equation, chapter (or research, if you prefer) should be the main component, as it also contemplates expansions (the normal ones) and at least the mandatory provinces. Basically what you are doing is penalizing players thrice for playing the game for a long time.

I agree squad size research should be normalized, I only skipped the very last ones live, and I have a clear disadvantage in relation to the ones that skipped most, but i really hope you are not planning to make tournaments unfightable for players like me, that have, in my live server, been playing this game for a long time, spent real money to buy expansions and have been investing in AWs since the very beginning.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Can someone enlighten me why a tournament difficulty should be solely based on the number of completed provinces? To reward the ones that skip events maybe? It is bad as it is that the spire difficulty has one such component, with a heavy weight as the last event live showed me (and there is no cap, at least a realistic one, I have 658 completed provinces live). Completed provinces and expansions are a consequence of gameplay, premium expansions the best revenue source of the game, they should not enter the equation, chapter (or research, if you prefer) should be the main component, as it also contemplates expansions (the normal ones) and at least the mandatory provinces. Basically what you are doing is penalizing players thrice for playing the game for a long time.

Number of completed provinces has no effect on the Spire squad size. That was tested and found to not matter.

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Number of completed provinces has no effect on the Spire squad size. That was tested and found to not matter.

That was so for the spire. Wasn’t there some mention of provinces in the video for tournaments ?

 

[DeletedUser2630]

The fact that they want to punish older players is quite obvious for one important reason. That they included the number of non-premium plots in the formula at all. Because the number of those plots has no effect for one major reason. Buildings grow larger with each race, so the empty place remains is still the same. So counting the absolute plots is visibly the goal of slowing down and throwing sticks under the feet of those who are farther.

 

[sunrae]

@Marindor I have people in my fs who only play on the mobile app and they are asking, with the new tournament changes, when will the mobile app allow manual fighting ? Is it a work in progress or not possible at all?

 

[Marindor]

@Marindor I have people in my fs who only play on the mobile app and they are asking, with the new tournament changes, when will the mobile app allow manual fighting ? Is it a work in progress or not possible at all?

At the moment we don't expect to implement manual fighting in the mobile app anytime soon, unfortunately.

 

[sunrae]

okay @Marindor Thanks for your prompt reply.

 

[PaNonymeB]

At the moment we don't expect to implement manual fighting in the mobile app anytime soon, unfortunately.

REALLY ??? As manual fighting allows to win harder fights than autofighting, with uncapped tournament difficulty there will be a point where manual fighting will be required to fight tournaments. The situation is even worse in the Spire where catering often require diamonds (or a lot of rare goods if we keep rolling the dice) in the last part. And, in Spire and now in Tournaments, the number of encounters are low enough so that manual fighting doesn't require a tremendous amount of time. (Especially if manual fighing is used only in the harder encounters). So if you're not willing to make manual fighting available for everyone, please stop increasing the gap between manual and autofighting.
I still consider the Spire shouldn't have been released before everyone accesses to the same fighting tools. Yes, this would have meant fewer rewards (and it's not even sure as it's rewards we were previously given in events), but anyway it would have been more fair. And as an added bonus we'd maybe have the features mobile was lacking sooner. (I'm convinced (but I can be wrong) the reason why mobile got so few improvements in 2019 is because the devs had to work in making the Spire available in mobile.)

 

[palmira]

Number of completed provinces has no effect on the Spire squad size. That was tested and found to not matter.

Are you sure? I can't remember other factor that contributed to an enormous increase in the difficulty of the fights and the amount of goods needed for convincing then the 2 provinces I completed for the event.

 

[CrazyWizard]

REALLY ??? As manual fighting allows to win harder fights than autofighting, with uncapped tournament difficulty there will be a point where manual fighting will be required to fight tournaments. The situation is even worse in the Spire where catering often require diamonds (or a lot of rare goods if we keep rolling the dice) in the last part. And, in Spire and now in Tournaments, the number of encounters are low enough so that manual fighting doesn't require a tremendous amount of time. (Especially if manual fighing is used only in the harder encounters). So if you're not willing to make manual fighting available for everyone, please stop increasing the gap between manual and autofighting.
I still consider the Spire shouldn't have been released before everyone accesses to the same fighting tools. Yes, this would have meant fewer rewards (and it's not even sure as it's rewards we were previously given in events), but anyway it would have been more fair. And as an added bonus we'd maybe have the features mobile was lacking sooner. (I'm convinced (but I can be wrong) the reason why mobile got so few improvements in 2019 is because the devs had to work in making the Spire available in mobile.)

They actually looked at the possibility to equalize the difference between mobile and browser before.
Some (new) players in the browser were unable to use manual battles for a while. there were families that asked questions like" Why can my wife fight manually and I can't?"

So be carefull before you pick your poison, an equalizer would mean nog more manual battles in any shape or form on any platform.

Many of us have warned people before that asked for "less battles" and changes to the tournaments that they were playing with fire.
Stop asking for a cure when it's abvious the cure is worse than the illness.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Are you sure? I can't remember other factor that contributed to an enormous increase in the difficulty of the fights and the amount of goods needed for convincing then the 2 provinces I completed for the event.

The math behind the spire formula is known so how can you still doubt that?

 

[edeba]

I do not like the pay-for-penalty choice around including the every expensive expansions in the formula, and at a high rate of the free ones, 75%. It is a 75% claw back of a benefit that existed when purchases were made.

I've consistently seen appalling application of math in this game and I'm not so sure with all of the other compounding that is going into the inno enthusiasm to punish their best customers that they haven't tipped the scale so far against paying customers that buying expansions doesn't become equivalent to doing squad size upgrades. We aren't privy to seeing the actual math, but there are numerous examples where you can work out the math and it simply demonstrates a consistent lack of adequate numeracy, especially when linear math overlaps with exponential math.

Completed provinces and expansions are a consequence of gameplay, premium expansions the best revenue source of the game, they should not enter the equation, chapter (or research, if you prefer) should be the main component, as it also contemplates expansions (the normal ones) and at least the mandatory provinces. Basically what you are doing is penalizing players thrice for playing the game for a long time.

I agree squad size research should be normalized, I only skipped the very last ones live, and I have a clear disadvantage in relation to the ones that skipped most, but i really hope you are not planning to make tournaments unfightable for players like me, that have, in my live server, been playing this game for a long time, spent real money to buy expansions and have been investing in AWs since the very beginning.

I remember this... I also remember they did a good job moving from the original tournament to the tournament that it looks like they've slaughtered, and they've removed the main reason why they had done a good job. Right in the video they specifically said they did not want the battle difficulty to remain constant through the levels. The squad size massively increases through the provinces to losses really were increasing the further out you go.

We shall see, if they stay with what the video showed, well, trust was greatly misplaced. But, I thought the spire was crap when it first came out and like now, I was highly critical, and I think the spire turned out to be a good thing.

I think that if they don't adjust what that video showed, they are severely severing the hand that feeds them. It looks to me like a massive punishment to strategic players and to players that support the game financially. It looks to me that a player that regularly gets over 10k in the tournament might end up struggling to get 7 or 8k, and that's not going to be taken well. We also haven't seen if they touched the in game rewards we've gotten with each chest.

Anyway, it isn't over yet... I was just thinking the golden goose in here might be freeing up more time than expected because it won't just be 1/4 of the clicks, it will be 1/4 of the clicks for an ability to do half as many provinces, so 1/8th of the time...

Many of us have warned people before that asked for "less battles" and changes to the tournaments that they were playing with fire.
Stop asking for a cure when it's obvious the cure is worse than the illness.

 

[Jaxom]

I would suggest a new thread that starts tomorrow which wold take feedback based on actual experience with the new tournament system.
This has been a great thread but I would really like to see what people think after using the new system.

I do look forward to less clicks but do NOT like the though of every battle being against 5 random enemies. I really enjoyed being able to plan my troops in each different tournament. Now it simply is not going to be as much fun. Just another brainless set of Spire-like encounters.

 

[Yogi Dave]

In the US forum, I presented an idea that was passed on to the devs. The response from them according to Xelenia was "The development team really likes your idea @Yogi Dave and has been added to their list of things we should do."
Here is the thread link if you wish to read it: Method to improve troop selection for auto-fight

The gist of the idea is to have a very simple pop-up of the arena available to help with troop selection and placement. Here are examples from the thread:

Would you choose the same troops for these two arenas?

A more sophisticated one that shows placed troops and type:

Obviously, this would be very, very helpful on mobile where all fights are done blind, especially now with only 1 battle per province. This enhancement should be near the top of the list to add before the tournament changes are introduced to the live servers.

 

[CrazyWizard]

I would suggest a new thread that starts tomorrow which wold take feedback based on actual experience with the new tournament system.
This has been a great thread but I would really like to see what people think after using the new system.

I do look forward to less clicks but do NOT like the though of every battle being against 5 random enemies. I really enjoyed being able to plan my troops in each different tournament. Now it simply is not going to be as much fun. Just another brainless set of Spire-like encounters.

Beta unfortunatly ain't live, for example in the T10 of the beta world only 1 person has a "serious" amount of wonder levels.
Some problem simply do not pop up on beta.
For example the amount of "blue" cities on beta is extremly limited.
Premium expansions, premium production and wonderlevels are less frequent aviable on beta for testing.

I am certain that within the "goldielocks zone" there calculations are spot on, I am certain they didn't woke up one morning, scribbled some numbers on a paper and said lets go with it. but what if you are outside of this goldilock zone?. what if you spend a fortune on the game?, what if you worked your ass off / bought your wonders into obliovion?

What are the issues in this segment of the playerbase?

 

[CrazyWizard]

In the US forum, I presented an idea that was passed on to the devs. The response from them according to Xelenia was "The development team really likes your idea @Yogi Dave and has been added to their list of things we should do."
Here is the thread link if you wish to read it: Method to improve troop selection for auto-fight

The gist of the idea is to have a very simple pop-up of the arena available to help with troop selection and placement. Here are examples from the thread:

View attachment 7539
Would you choose the same troops for these two arenas?

A more sophisticated one that shows placed troops and type:
View attachment 7540
Obviously, this would be very, very helpful on mobile where all fights are done blind, especially now with only 1 battle per province. This enhancement should be near the top of the list to add before the tournament changes are introduced to the live servers.

Why just not add an open battlefield? this way you can skip the guess work, and every AI issue related to maps will be gone.
The top left, it thats the worng enemy or played on auto it's a 100% negotiate, manual that battle could be a nice loss free manual if the enemy matchup is right. otherwise is a full negotiate in any case.

 

[DeletedUser1953]

Why just not add an open battlefield? this way you can skip the guess work, and every AI issue related to maps will be gone.
The top left, it thats the worng enemy or played on auto it's a 100% negotiate, manual that battle could be a nice loss free manual if the enemy matchup is right. otherwise is a full negotiate in any case.

I prefer a royal battle, all 20 provinces in one time on a supermap, 100 units vs 100 units ^^ when you kill mobs, they drop a chest with rune/pc/...

But we need to wait tuesday, i think all will depend on the cost/reward, if it is scaled like spire, .... on live, i can do easily 10k+ in tournament each week, but to do spire level III, it is very long and boring (need always gold/mat) and sometimes ALT+F4 is the only solution to save the computer !