Something will always be the limiting factor. Why not a production badge?
For that matter, what counts as a Production Badge...
There are badges from things you make; 4 Supplies, 3 Goods, Enchantments, CC, Vision Vapor, Military and Coins, for a total of 12 out of 16.
There are badges from things you gain elsewhere; Enchantments, CC, Relics, Vision Vapors, Coins, for a total of 4 out of 16.
There are badges from things you use; Enchantments, Encounters, Vision Vapors, AWKP, for a total of 4 out of 16.
just a quick typo: you have the CC in there twice, if you remove it from the second line your numbers work out
I agree production badge is a rather non exact term. Maybe amount production would be a better term? Not sure.
Anyway maybe I should leave that line of thought altogether and instead say: Fun factor increasing badge? Skill badge?
I am just sitting there and think: What happens if the limiting factor is a certain badge, meaning what will we have to do to increase that badge?
Now the bracelets is exactly what I don´t want to be the limiter, because the result is: we have to plaster our cities with upgraded T1 factories, how dull is that??? Well we can use MM enchantments and the ETC and MHalls AW to increase production, but still.... In my eyes even far duller (and more annoying) than having shanty towns. If anything it could imbalance the trader for a while because suddenly everybody overproduces T1 (depending on overall participation in FAs of course) I can see lots of negative and nothing at all positive. One of the worst possible choices I find. Changing it from T1 production, to any goods production would certainly help (not eliminate) with the negative sides above, but my excitement would still be limited as to the fun factor of goods production...
CC production? Somewhat more interesting. At least it´s more than 1 action you can take (upgrade MA, change MA production, play more spire, place more libraries). it is also a useful resource to produce. So better yes, but still not great.
Tourney badges (encounters, relics, enchantments) are a whole different story. I like the idea of those being the most important in a way, because tourneys nowadays actually do require skill. Also there are other ways to increase the badges outside the tourney. But on the other hand, why should a FA be decided by who is best at tourneys? What´s the point of having an FA altogether then?
VV badge? It basically will depend on how many CCs you have stored up and how many diamonds you are willing to spend on flipping the MA. Both of which are not bad ideas anyway (producing garbage with high VV count is detrimental of course), CC production (see above) is a rather varied task. Diamonds can be made in the spire to a limited extent, but still it would be a rather obvious pay-to-win badge, something I really don´t like.
Coins? Technically probably not the worst candidate: Increase neighbour help everywhere, finally some use for all the coin instants, one can place and build more residences to increase output as well as use Culture boost/EE enchantments. So I would say complex enough. will lead to residence farms instead of shanty towns, which is of doubtful use, but anyway. But really coins to decide who wins the FA? The fun factor is rather low on that one.
Using enchantments (or KP instants): Far too one dimensional and the winner will be whoever has most of the old towns with zillions of the item in storage. The opposite of exciting.
Troops production? Well at least it is a useful thing to do and it would therefore be a good lesson for everybody to try to maximize it. There are a few ways on how to increase troop production: AWs, Crafted buildings, troop instants. So probably one of the better candidates. But still I can´t find myself excited about the prospect to decide the winner of an FA based on how many troops they can produce. It doesn´t feel right.
What´s left is the old badges I think: And while it does take skill (increasing shanty towns is not as easy as it sounds) and especially lots of determination to make more of these badges. It is complex enough in the setup stage to not be boring (while the collection is not the most exciting thing I´ve ever done), but of course it produces nothing useful so that´s another downside. It is also counterproductive in terms of ranking points. So I´d say OK but not a stellar group of candidates. Of course there being many different ones it means not one of them sticks out because they are interchangable. Make more of one, makes less of another.
So as a summary I would say:
- there is not one great choice for a limiting factor
- If we want the FA to change from how it was the old badges cannot be the only limiting badges, because if they were it was the same as before with minor changes.
- that leaves 2 choices:
1. Add other, better badges (not sure that would be easy or even possible?) and make them the limiting factor.
2. use the ones above and work really hard at balancing the required numbers out. The more badges are close enough to each other, the more interesting the whole FA event gets. Different FS will have to compensate in different ways to improve on their special "weakness". There won´t be one boring way to the top.
I am afraid far too little time and effort has been used in the balancing part of the FA. Some badges are clearly junk badges, while other are clearly too rare. The shanty towns can be adjusted according to needs (that is positive). But very few very rare badges mess up the entire system of the FA, because everything else becomes junk automatically.
I know this is not an easy process, but Inno added new badges intentionally. One cannot just spend 1 days brainstorming session on which new badges to add and then nothing after, it takes infinitely more time to test and balance things and it seems they have cheaped out on the process. Beta saw some changes, but a lot more is needed to make this a far better event. And for me that is essential, FAs are my favorite event. I don´t want to see them go down the drain.
