I played through the 3 levels of the spire this week and I quite enjoyed it
That is not to say it couldn´t use some more tweaking, of course.
The fighting wasn´t really a big novelty. Big squadsizes make the fights costly, but there are much fewer in the spire than in tourneys, which makes manual fighting more useful again, so I would say that is positive. I stopped manual fighting in tourneys for the sheer number of fights I do there.
But the convincing mini game is the big novelty and I really like the idea. Usually I am more of a fighter, but I really would go for the convincing option if it were more strategy and less random luck. So for me the biggest improvement would be to increase the number of turns to 4. Obviously the difficulty would have to be increased in other ways to keep it interesting and not a free giveaway. Two options would be to either increase the amount of different resources involved (more difficult) or to simply increase the amount of goods needed (more costly). Obviously all that would need to be re-balanced, but for me 4 turns would make the whole game more fun.
The gates are obviously meant to stretch the whole spire over a 5 day period, which I find no problem with, obviously this first time I was impatient and used some time boosts on it, but in the future I will simply try ad take it easy and that way leave the spire with more time boosts than I entered with.
Same goes for diamonds, spending diamonds is no big deal if you also gain them, I will just try to end up with more than I started with.
Lots of new buildings, like the upgraded versions of Unleashed Unit upgrades, Wishing Wells and Trading outposts are fun! Absolutely nice to get those. And especially the dwarven armorer is great for playing the spire. makes the fights so much less costly.
The set is also very interesting, not excessive in size and produces goods previously not available from set buildings (spell fragments and catalysts) in addition to T2, Mana, Seeds... All useful stuff.
I would say a very welcome addition to elvenar world. We are moving more towards a pick and choose game, where lots of different options are available for what one feels like playing. Some die-hards may always try and do everything all the time. But with tourney, spire, an event of some sort and a guest race, you can have 4 things going on at the same time, which is more than I plan on trying to keep up with. For now I have opted out of the guest race, which lets me comfortably play tourneys and events at the same time and I will add at least the first level of the spire every week and maybe more depending on what the goals are for the tourneys. So I am very happy to get options to choose from instead of being forced to do everything available just to not get bored
Keep up the good work!