We are seeing more fights against 4 and even 5 different enemy types again in the current elixir tournament. This was an issue that seriously annoyed a lot of players after the big tournament changes happened and it was rightfully scrapped. Why on earth was it brought back?
5 different enemy types in current tournament.
There is no change whatsoever, it is simply (not simple) statistics, as
@Pauly7 said. If there is one main unit (in the T1 tourneys) it is very likely that you will get more than 1 of that type, making it very unlikely to get 5 different types. With 3 main units (in T3 tourneys) it is rather likely to get 3 different units types in a fight, from there the step to make it a full 5 types is much smaller and therefore much more common. I guess that is the closest to a common language explanation I can come up with. A real mathematical explanation would include lots of numbers and formulas? Unless someone else has a good one?
Also as a positive effect it makes T1 the easiest and T3 the most difficult tourneys, which I find makes sense, at least more so than having a "random" difficulty we had before in the old tourneys. But in the end all that matters is that some tourneys are more difficult than others. Would be far more boring to have them all be the same (all with a T2 setup). this way there is more variety and you can pick and choose tourneys by difficulty if you like to or if you FS has a fixed goal is at least forced to put in varying amount of effort to reach the same goal.
But if you step up your knowledge on tourney play a notch you will see that those 5-type-fights are not necessarily more difficult than any other fights. Look closer at the units involved. More often than not either 5 LR or 5 M units will be your best bet at winning.
Lets starts looking at the enemy LM unit: is a dog, you are likely to get into trouble if you use 5 mages, but you will be absolutely OK to use 5 LR. If the LM is an Ancient Orc the reverse is true: Mages will work fine, while Archers are a bad idea. If the LM is a thief, you have nothing to worry about with either LR or Mages.
Now let´s look at other potential troublemakers:
enemy LR: Mist Walker: Very bad for Mages, the other two (Bandits and Archers) are bad for mages, but not deal breakers.
enemy HR: Steinling: Very bad for LR, the other two (Orcs and Cannons) are bad, but not deal breakers
enemy Mages and HM troops are of rather little importance, you can kill them all with either LR or Mages
To simplify: Look out for Ancient Orcs, Dogs, Steinlings and Mist Walkers.
Ancient Orcs and Steinligs means don´t use LR.
Dogs and Mist Walkers mean don´t use Mages.
As you can see only 2 combos put you in real trouble
1. Ancient Orc AND Mist Walker
2. Dog AND Steinling
If you do not have either of those 2 combos you will be fine.
If you do get the combos you may have to look into alternatives, if you are lucky you can use HR troops (Abbots and swampies may be dissuading you from that idea, while enchantresses and Orc Generals make it more of a good idea)
HM can be an option when facing the Mist Walker and Echantresses, but it´s risky, the tiniest hickup with geography is going to kill you, only takes a pebble in the wrong spot, to make your giants tumble.
LM is never an option lol, if you can win the fight with LM troops you would have lost fewer troops if you had used something else.
If that doesn´t work out. Manual fight if you have that option (with a unit combo that makes sense) or cater, it happens extremely rarely. Don´t think I´ve had the case yet this elixir week (and so far I´ve done 270 encounters, which is 45 provinces 6 times). Well if it happens early on (first 20 or so provinces) in the tourneys I don´t look much at the enemies, I win the fights anyway, so I can´t guarantee there wasn´t a case like that.