Many thanks to
@Hekata from me, too, for finding and posting this info. I also wonder why this would appear on one Forum and not the rest?
1. In 2021 we get new prizes in the Spire
Interesting - and this seems to confirm the rumours of planned Spire additions/changes which have been circulating for some weeks. I've heard three possibilities (some or all of which may be wrong, of course, as with all rumours): 1. The addition of a new building or buildings similar to the current Moonstone Library Set, but producing different Goods/Resources; 2. Extra Encounters or a new Stage (or more) being added to the Spire itself (and in this regard, I myself would not be surprised, sooner or later, to see the Spire becoming 'endless', as Tourneys are now - that is, limited only by one's willingness to spend Resources and/or Diamonds on it); and 3. Some kind of ability to earn Artifacts (whether complete or in the form of 'Artifact Fragments', as some players have suggested), either for Phoenix buildings only (as the rumour I heard seemed to imply), or for other or even all Evolving Buildings (so presumably, in that case, some kind of 'Universal Artifact', even though this idea has, so far, not so been popular with Inno).
While Spire fans will no doubt be very pleased about both the official and unofficial information we currently have on this subject, I myself am not at all happy about the increasingly central - arguably unavoidable - position which the Spire is assuming within the game. Not only am I very unlucky when it comes to winning anything worth the time, effort, and Resources the Spire demands, but at my stage in the game (approaching halfway through Ch. VIII), I am in a sort of No Man's Land when it comes to the Spire. My Elven City is neither early/small enough to have low/reasonable Spire Diplomacy costs and Squad Sizes (as well as sub-3* Enemy Units, which is a very significant factor), nor is it late/large enough to be able to cope with high Diplomacy costs and/or large Squad Sizes comprising all-3* Enemy Units - which I started to see once I entered Ch. VIII, even though I have none of the advanced Mercenary Camp Units which are essential (or at least very useful indeed) in successfully opposing these 3* Enemy Units.
I regard the Spire as at best a Resource sink, and at worst a net loss of Diamonds more often than not, since I have to use Diplomacy far more often than I would like (due to aforesaid lack of late-game 3* Units), and it only takes 5 or 6 unlucky attempts at Diplomacy (combined with infrequent Diamond prizes in those Encounters which offer them) for the end-of-Spire reward Diamonds to be less than what I have spent in earning them. And this being the case - at least until I have access to decent late-game Units - I personally am not pleased to anticipate even more of the game's best rewards being gated behind the Spire. As they say, though, and based upon the pro-Spire posts which I often read on this Forum: YMMV.
* * * * * * * *
For example, we already see a weakness of the system in the fact that the impact of the levels of ancient wonders on the pattern is the same for all wonders. We strongly agree that some ancient wonders are more important for tournaments than others, and the formula does not currently take this into account.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone connected with Inno admit that there is a problem with AWs in the tournament calculation.
In pursuit of my ongoing attempt to win the prize (?) of Official Forum Cynic™ - and being always mistrustful of all PR announcements from large companies these days, especially those issued in response to customer dissatisfaction - I am not sure that this rather ambiguous comment means the same thing to InnoGames as we would hope it might mean to ourselves. Much as I'd like to be proved wrong, my interpretation of this indicates that we are more likely to see increased penalties added to the Tournament formula for the military-boosting AWs before we see reduced penalties (or as we may even hope, no penalties at all) attached to AWs which don't enhance (and/or which actively harm) Tournament ability.
It seems that Inno is set on a course designed to reduce the performance (and Resources, if the recent FA changes are any indicator) of the game's more keen/advanced players, while increasing the relative performance of the game's earlier/more casual players, who will be unlikely even to have many (or any) AWs at all, let alone to read these Forums and/or do their own maths, and thus realise how AWs affect Tournaments/the Spire and adjust their game accordingly, and it is this observation (not only pure cynicism!) which informs my opinion in this respect. I would also argue that the following part of the document more or less contradicts the quote above, or at the very least does not support an overly optimistic reading of it:
And it's the same with ancient wonders, the progress of the research tree, or common extensions. Of course, there is a discussion about how much better these players should do, but we do not see any "penalty" among the above-mentioned factors, which would unbalance the overall tournament result of the player.
* * * * * * * *
[...]
from the analyzes we've done, we don't see that players with more premium expansions do worse than players with fewer. On the contrary, these players continue with significantly better results than the other players being compared. And it's the same with ancient wonders, the progress of the research tree, or common extensions.
The strange part (I don't know if it is in response to something) is he seems to be defending the fact that premium expansions don't make it more difficult than regular expansions. I haven't seen anyone claim that they were. Perhaps that is coming up on the Czech forum.
I read this part of the document rather differently, although of course the fact that the original is not in English may be affecting both the content and my interpretation of it (and this is another reason, I'd say, for InnoGames to translate this document themselves into all of their player languages, rather than relying - as I hope they do not! - on Google Translate or similar utils). Anyway, my understanding of this is that Inno have decided that players with more Premium Expansions ("these players") gain more advantage than those with fewer Premium Expansions ('the other players being compared"), not that they (or the players) believe that Premium Expansions create more disadvantage than non-Premium ("common extensions").
* * * * * * * *
We [...] read the feedback from the players (indeed, we got a lot from the forums thanks to our skillful community managers)
Finally, I wonder if I am alone in finding the apparent implication(s) of the above comment in praise of Inno's own staff rather unfortunate, or even somewhat insensitive, considering not only how dissatisfied many players are with regard to the new Tournaments, but also the major (unpaid) - and still ongoing - effort of, in many cases, those same players in providing detailed, comprehensive, and entirely voluntary feedback? Perhaps it is indeed just me, or perhaps it is an error of automatic translation, but this comment would seem to imply
* that, without the intervention of the CSMs, the hundreds of pages of Forum feedback was not, inherently, of much value? I am sure that the Community Managers did a wonderful job, but if congratulations are to be handed out so publicly, I think it would have been at least polite to acknowledge the many hours of work done by the 'fortunate' conscripted Beta-testers of the EN Servers, too, or even offer a 'well done' - especially to those who diligently data-gathered and then calculated the Tournament formula, so that the rest of us even knew how it worked... seeing as Inno wasn't, and still isn't, in any hurry to let us know.
* The other possible, and less pejorative, implication is that nobody at Inno except the CSMs actually reads the Forums... which is also hardly admirable.
As far as I know the only way is buying primary event currency for horrible deals or buying diamonds on that last day offer, but there you also buy mostly diamonds, so the deal doesn´t get better for event currency, you just get more diamonds with it (I think,if I am off there that might explain a part). But unless there is a way to convert the diamonds into event currency as well you still have to spend the same amount of real money (you only end up with zillions of diamonds)
