@Jake65 @MinervaOz : Thank you! I'm sort-of OK at the moment with my Training Speed - and oddly, the Needles' effect of increasing the Barracks' speed [with mine still being at Level 25 - under-levelled] is actually something which I wish that AW *wouldn't* do - if only to keep the Barracks in line with the other two Troop-producing buildings, since - for me - it's better the closer they all get to min. 18 hours [but ideally about 24 hours] per 5 slots.
But I love the Needles' boost [mine is at Level 21] to Light Ranged Troops' attack power - that's still my most commonly used type of Unit, even in situations where they'd mostly die without Manual Combat, because I play as Elf in Ch.XII and still have only 2* Blossom Mages [very Auto-fight friendly], with 3* Sorceresses being only somewhat useful; I find them to be anything from ideal to entirely useless - but again, only because I rarely Auto-fight. The AI seems to understand
only the Move 2 / Strike 5 class of Mage, and keeps killing Sorcs by parking them within range of high-damage Heavy (or, much worse, Light Ranged/Light Melee) AI Units.
Also : I've come up with one other possible reason to upgrade the Barracks, or indeed anything else : just for the purely cosmetic appearance or likeability of the animations... with that aspect, of course, being 100% subjective, but NOT irrelevant. In the primary other game I play (a PC-only MMORPG, so not comparable to Elvenar), I do spend money, since I see gaming as a main hobby of mine - and there are few of those which are wholly free [even reading library-only books costs a bus fare to the library!]. In that game I've spent most of my cash on purely cosmetic aspects of the game, and the rest on a few convenience factors. I'm entirely non-competitive by nature, so even if MMOs allowed players to pay for real advantage, such as fast-levelling, more powerful weapons and armour, or whatever, as many don't, I wouldn't spend anything on that anyway.
There are as many reasons to pay to play any game as that particular game offers, after all, and not everyone will find every aspect appealing.
... and here we have a classic example of
L. Loquax appearing entirely uninvited - even by me (no, really!} - and trying to derail this post...! Argh.
Sorry...