" The chances of Coins and Supplies as possible costs for Catering a Tournament Province were lowered. The same was applied to Orcs and Mana, but these resource requirements were made even more rare than Coins and Supplies."
Oh, if only this was true, I've been playing in Beta for quite a while and am in Ch15, I've been forced to place a Stage 2 Fire Phoenix to waste pet food on, I have 1 brown bear and although I do the spire every week I never have enough windfalls to use all the time boosts.
This week I've had to stop on Province 26 1*. Saying that mana and orc requirements are even more rare than Coins and Supplies is meaningless when faced with this:
This wasn't the first province asking for orcs either, earlier provinces were asking for 5k+. It doesn't matter how much we're told that the requirements have been reduced when they are so big. The game has been killed for those who were primarily catering, and yes those people are playing.
Province 23 on live is asking for just 372 orcs, I can't think that province 26 will be much more than that.
You can forget the big numbers now in tournaments, unless of course its your final tournament before quitting...
Its a great business model, encourage people to spend money on the game and then penalise any benefit they might give by significantly reducing the returns.
I have millions of goods on Beta because I can no longer use them for a few provinces and there's no point building more armories for extra troops as they are just cannon fodder.