There will be always advantages for some players ofver the other.
Right now the focus in this thread is on bears but there are so many factors. if bears need to be nerfed for "balance" reason and increased competition thats fine. but if that is the goal we cannot point at a single point of failure. if balance is the key. then we should look at all points of failure. and that is very complicated.
For starters in the name of competition there should not be an exploitable tournament formula, that only certrain players can exploit.
There should not be stackable pets
There should not be old sets in the game thave give a huge goods bonus (my 500K t1 set for example)
You should have a set of rules, that any player, at any time can work towards and reach it in any point of the game.
We now have a ruleset where you should reverse your game which ain't possible.
If pets are changed in the grand scheme of things thats fine, but I am agains any change that only hurts certain players for no balance reason. because without all parts balanced there is no balance anyway.
Do people with multiple pets have an advantage? yes thats a fact.
Do people who have not placed all expansions, and are camping in certain lower chapters have an advantage? Yes thats a fact.
Do people with certain old sets have an advantage because they can use there massive goods production to get an edge?, Yes thats also a fact.
All 3 points are massively important, this thread only talks about 1 imbalance and ignores all the others.
This should not be about multiple pets, but about the tournaments in general.
There is no way in the world that changing the pets on itself would fix anything, it would just be advantages to another group of elite players.
It would not fix anything so I am agains it for that reason and that reason alone.
My personal estimate is that a top tournament player with 3 brown bears should score about 25% higher than a similar player with 1 brown bear.
@CrazyWizard's assertion earlier in this thread about how hard such a change would hit him would imply a much greater benefit than that (more than a 100% increase in fact) but I'm struggling to see that myself.
The difference is all about how far you can get, the more provinces you unlock the less the difference is score between with and without bears.
Just becauese you have 100% more units to burn doesnt mean you get double the score your 25% off might not be that far off. it might be even less. but with a 25% less score I do not end up in the T10 but maybe T50 that difference is huge.
The main issue is the unfluence of expansions and research. martial prowess is reached halfway the elvenar chapter. after that all goes down each chapter adds about 5-11% more unit production and asks about 20-30% more units to reach the same score is quickly escaltes into a point where no bears can fix that deficit anymore
but last but not least is the tourment formula research*expansions*wonderlevels.
Optimal reseach we already determined halfway the elvenar chapter. but those other values are key.
Wonderlevels we can control, we can remove and destroy wonders, but we cannot undo expansions and this is where the reason my bears cannot compete agains expansions.
lets say I build a town using only 1/4 of the aviabl expansions. and lets pretend the value of research if 3, and the value of wonderlevels is 2.
3*1*2=6
3*4*2=24
This means a player who focussus on building with less expansions will have a tournament thats 4 times as cheap that a player who places 4x the expansions.
Since bese production is potentially 150% (100+50% simia) you would need 9 brown bears and the accompanying petfoot to compete with such a town.and each chapter added adds another few bears.
This is why a tournament focussed town cannot be beaten by brown bears, it's just waiting untill such town start to appear in greater numbers and totally control the tournaments.
With focus and dedication, and the help of friends you could built a tournament chapter 16 account with as little as 25 or so expansions. thats less then 1/6th of mine and in a spire focused group you could make 19 of them premium expansions reducing the cost even more.
You end up with like 1/8th the tournament costs with the same production, we already build relic focussed town where you could buy yourself to the top with 0 relic bonus and some event building based production that doesnt care about your relic bonus, and when those started to appear up in the leaderboards they introduced the current all relics are given each tournaments to patch that hole, but the expansion hole is much harder to fix. t would need a tournament rework.
If a tournament rework would happen and things make sense again then we can talk about multiple pets but currently the old tournament "elites" needs those pets to compete with those with a more limited set of expansions research.
Competition will always be between a small group of "elite players" the general public can't care less about the top spots.
there simply aint a giant group that can end up at the top of the leaderboards.
Now fingers are pointed towards the stackability of pets, but the imbalance in expansions / research is a much bigger issue than any set of stackable pets can ever achieve.
When I was called an elite snob for fighting for my pets it turned out that that the finger pointing came from someone who has a mayor research / expansion advantage. an elite from the other side of the coin. (thou in the future he to will be trashed by much more efficient towns on his side of the coin anyway)
Because lets be fair if you actually compete in the tournaments, you are by definition an elite, there are only 10 spots for 30.000 players in the top 10.
For anyone who ain't an elite the tournaments score doesnt matter anyway, and who has how many pets, and who builds a town with as little expansions / research. they do not care about in the least/ why? because they do not compete, they just have fun.
I can talk about balance in the tournaments overall, and the issues and solution. but it's a complete packages, I cannot stand that someone points fingers at my bears so he/she can benefit from it massively. it's like a olympic sporter who want to make sure he/she will win by poisoning the best players in his league.