I'm not going to say anything new here, but I can't quite figure it out at this point.
I made the assumption that the reason the formula was implemented was down to a lack of understanding of the game mechanics by the devs. The reason is that there is surely no way that you would create these Ancient Wonders and then intentionally break many of them by re-designing a system which punishes anyone's later progress, either in terms of those AWs, or in terms of any kind of story progression past chapter 15.
So it seemed to me that it's just a matter of them reading some of the valuable feedback and then going back and running some more alpha testing to see if it's true and what went wrong. Then they would need to pull their formula apart and create something which works better. Something which the game can sustain... but if that was likely we would have seen it happening by now.
I understand making it more difficult. I understand cutting back the rewards. I don't understand, though, the fact that they now knowingly have a system that entirely destroys the balance of gameplay, and they don't seem to be doing anything about it.
Maybe they don't want the end-game players. That's one way of looking at it. They could be releasing new chapters that they know people either won't want to play or if they do they will quickly become soul-destroyed by how it makes things more difficult. In either case it ends up with the players leaving. So perhaps that's what they want - a fresh generation of newer players who won't complain the same because they won't remember when we had things that were so much better.
That would be a bit weird - Like wanting to split up from a partner, so you do it by becoming more annoying until they leave you.
But even if this is the case, have they not been doing this long enough by now to realise that even if Elvenar survives this transition, then all that will happen is a new generation of players will appear who are all willing to push the boundaries of what is possible. Strange uninteresting tournament efficient cities will start to appear and some of that new group of players will figure out how to beat the mechanics and score massively again. Then all the information will get passed down to everyone else - These are the Ancient Wonders to never build. Never place an unnecessary expansion, etc, etc. So how do they think it will be in another year's time? They will need to do it all again because it will be much worse then than it used to be before.
Sorry, I'm just rambling. Like I say, nothing new.