I'm in complete agreement about the Willows. I never built one of those monstrosities and they're certainly not in any way essential like various advice would leave you to believe. From the get go they give worse mana per square than more than one of the smaller standard mana producing buildings. The culture may be better if that's of particular importance.
Exactly, I already started to add points in the Main Hall Woodelves, with 2nd round tournament it will be done, and I have so far 105K mana, so counting decay and gain I'll be able to research it.
Edit: Upon checking the game, I see it's only 40K mana... I was thinking 130K for some reason, maybe to level it up, but I bet that in three days, my MH will be leveling up to woodelves. No willow.
Edit again: Yup, 133K mana to level up. Easy peasy. And I have already room for the extra 1x0 it grows.
Really? I was never lucky in life so I have to depend on work
What has life to do with that? I run two businesses, and I am usually busy. I feed a lot of diamonds from wells, and genie. So, nothing to do. I only spend 30 minutes or more when I am doing "tournament all the way", so it is not about time neither.
With event buildings alone, you do good without the willows, you do not need to touch the Spire (although it will massively help.)