Indeed, both you and I have the same, the most abundant ascended on EN3 server - minerals. It was very difficult to obtain ingots for portal upgrade, I had to spend some diamonds on that and I usually don't spend them easily. On EN2 server minerals was the rarest ascended and I am boosted in it there too. The gameplay was a completely different story. Because we have a half of FS doing chapter 18 more or less at the same time, we had an excellent team work there, with all minerals produced distributed amongst our fellows only. However trading limit of 1800 - 2200 goods per merchant is ridiculous, when 100K has to be exchanged. Something must be changed there IMHO.
I had some stock of 1 and 2 hour boosters, but they were gone by the middle of the chapter, then it was a matter of getting them in spire and speeding a little bit productions in the portal. The spire was very stingy on giving them at that time lol. I would like to see at least 5 badges per slot in portal with a longer production time, so that night time is not completely lost. I was completing 1 tech per 5 - 6 days on average towards the end without time boosters. Very boring process.
Before ch 18 I was able to do +9K scores in tournaments, then with one of the first mandatory squad size upgrades, I suddenly couldn't do more than 32 provinces. I must say that I'm not a tourney wiz and I only autofight, but that was a significantly felt change for me. I didn't have big change in AW levels, because I don't hunt and I don't have push accounts, so I can pretty confidently think that it's because of the research. Also on en2 server we were getting 19 chests in tournaments, but since half of the FS started ch 18, our FS's tourney scores decreased. We discussed it extensively and most of players found tournaments and spire much harder since they've started ch 18.