I have done some digging and it seems this must have been in the post teleport era.
Since the introduction of the spire (and teleport spells) I see dips in your fellowship ranking score up to 50% around FA's.
Both pre and post teleport (or spire for that matter) as I said all FAs in 2019 and 2020
That means 50% of your cities have been "destroyed" only thanks to the teleport spells it does not take 6+ months to rebuild.
But it looks like your fellowship (with thanks to the teleport spell) seems to have been able to "mimic" those specialised fellowships.
Impressive, but not many are willing to be that drastic, but yes in rare cases it is possible. this was one of the things I pointed out the second the teleport spell was introduced. it created a possibility to play a FA like those mad fellowships without the same drawbacks.
But for us the fun was already gone, and we had no interest to use that "loophole" to become competitive again, there needs to be another change, a prize we really really really want to have. We won the first, we won the first Glorious Arch (or whatever it's named) so we have seen it, done it, proved it, and with that for us the FA is dead.
Much closer to 100% of us are serious about FAs, you don´t win an FA with 50% slackers.
As I said we did the same things before the teleport was invented, we actually sold half our cities and then rebuilt after, of course the TP spell made this unnecessary and made it more accessible for other FS to join in the fun. But it made us just as much stronger so it didn´t prevent us from winning.
If FAs were about rewards, we would have stopped playing them long ago. They are about creating FS that actually are good at cooperating, it is the only event in the game that actually requires cooperation. So I see it as the ultimate team challenge, which is why it is my favorite event in the game. Rewards are completely uninteresting to me. it´s about being the best. The only positive aspect of increasing rewards for me would be to attract more competition.
The current changes revived part of the FA fun at least for us as a now more casual fellowship, it's no longer a burden we have to struggle trough but it was quite the fun experienced and it returned some of the fun we once had.
It's not that we do not have all those teleport spells that we could use, it's just that it feels wrong. to us it still feels like "destruction".
Indeed I would say that is the best thing about the new FAs: More competition, but in the end it comes down to the same thing as always: dedication. Those that want it most, will score highest. Even though the FAs were basically upside down, the Top 5 are basically the exact same as always.
One very common misconception is that "destruction" is bad for your town. It actually is the opposite, towns always work far better after a good purge. This is one of the reasons why I disagree with FA is bad for tourney scores, it is actually a synergy. A good FA purge makes towns more efficient and increases tourney scores. The only things FAs are bad for is the ranking screen. Ranking is dead weight and is what impedes tourney and FA performance both.
Your fellowships tournament record is nothing to snarf at, each week awesome score but it looks like to reach that goal several members have been saving up goods for several weeks for a massive score. still awesome results but also points out the save X spend once is king
(noticed one player going from 1600 to 16200 lol)
Personally I never saw a point in motivating my fellows to go all out in 1 tournament. but It was interesting to follow what that german fellowship created way back when they went for a mad score for the first time, it created a sort of an arms race between some fellowships on a world stage thanks to the abilility to track scores with elvenstats.
It also looks like at least part of your fellowship has been modifying there town to fit the new tournament format (many destroyed wonders?)
This no doubt helps in raising space for upcomming FA's
So ill's guess this new "change" does not benefit your fellowship, and thats a fair observation.
Scoring 16000 points on average has gotten a bit difficult, but we have both types of fellows, some score 10 or 12k every week, others score high when they feel like or when we push for a team score.
Pushing to a crazy goal has often benefitted us greatly, like the first time we scored 10 chests made us want to do it every week, so the next 2 month we spent getting to that point and since then we have never not scored 10 chests. Same thing when we decided to finish the team spire for the first time in a big push week and after that we did it every single week. If we had never pushed it we would never have gotten to doing it every week. It´s probably psychology, once you see it´s possible and not as daunting as you first thought it actually becomes easy
The new tourneys: I personally have deleted maybe 25 or 30 AW levels, a EE12 and Forge11 were the biggest I think some other small stuff. And I have slowed upgrading down to nearly nothing, so maybe I could have 50 AW levels more than I have now? I don´t think many of us have deleted much. The point is mostly we have always focussed on military AWs because they have always been the best AWs for fighting, the new tourney has made the difference between military and non-military bigger, but has not changed anything fundamental. So we have always had military AWs and not much besides, which means there is not much to delete.
Not wasting space on useless AWs sure helps with playing the game in general, and of course also FAs
However the new FAs actually finally give us AWs that are good for FAs, which will to a small degree impact tourneys, but it is not that big a deal.
But most servers do not own a fellowship like yours (pretty sure a few do, but there are many servers), those FA's are/where domintated by the fellowships a mentioned before, and I am sure it was no different on your server in the pre teleport era. It's no fun to whack half+ your town to then rebuild it for many many months. It was one of the reasons I sometimes lamented new chapters as with each chapter the rebuild time became longer and longer and longer. I rather ignored the quest, made a smaller settlement, reached the finish a little bit slower but then saved so much time on rebuilding my city that it was worth it.
This again is the same old misconception: Getting rid of the old stuff is not only making my town better, it is also one of the most fun parts of playing FAs. Rebuilding used to be somewhat of a challenge, but armories for example are fast and easy to rebuild, I often still sell them out of habit or to save TP spells for other things, but anyway, nowadays(since TPs) rebuilding after FAs is a matter of minutes. Either way, before TPs and after we have won. Because we wanted to win and were willing to do what was necessary. FAs and tourneys does not exclude each other, they help.
Those fellowships with permanently destoyed times are historically the norm, and your the outlyer (as far as my knowlege goes, I do not track all servers and worlds lol), if teleport spells would have existed in the time when the FA was introduced it might have changed a lot, but once the fire is gone in a fellowship, it's hard to lit the fire once again
As for the spire, you are so right, gold is gold, thats how I feel as well, but last week there was a massive outcry on I think the US server because another "fellowship won" with a score a little above 1575, and that was cheating and "spoiling the competition" according to the TS.
And thats not the first time we noticed that complaint.
But there is no competition there, if there was it would be who reaches the top the quickest and would be who reaches the top in the first 5-15 min of a spire. which would be very unhealthy.
Relight the fire! Yes laziness is addictive, that is definitely one reason why we throw in internal challenges like record breaking weeks. Keeps the whole FS more involved and active. Its those weeks when everybody shows up, the chat goes crazy, and everybody has so much more fun. Doing 17 chests every week with no challenges always makes the FS fall asleep. Scores dropping slowly but steadily. A spark is all it takes to light the flame
In the beginning the spire was a real challenge individually! Then the team spire started and it actually was a competition, because nobody managed to get to the top at all. It was a real race to try and be the first to finish, took us a few weeks of playing before we attempted a big push, it was coincidentally the week the spire ranking was introduced, which made it all the more fun reaching the top
Since then we´ve reached the top every week. For the first couple of month we came first every week, but other FS have cought up and by now the spire is really no competition anymore at all, 7 or 8 FS reaching gold every week, a few others occasionally, but because the max is so fixed there is no real incentive to push. The workaround is possible, but well there really is no point behind it. To me now, the spire is a fun mini game (fun, quick, easy and great rewards, what´s not to like?) and a huge resource grab for everybody, but not a competition
