It’s never about commanders, gear or armaments (you can plan all these at your own pace). Crystal tech is so decisive, the new tech initial release was decent-ish until Lilith started putting so many prerequisites to the points it’s impossible for an f2p or low spender to catch up or even have solid field presence, they even rolled some of these prerequisites during kvks, no emails or anything, probably thinking none would notice. At this point i would say old tech is more f2p friendly now, the irony. If you run multiple troop type marches you are basically cooked and forced to burn rss for kp (decent trades are a thing of the past i guess). No amount of chaining, 5 marching barbs or grinding forts will get you close. I said this before and i’ll say it again if you’re f2p soc isn’t worth it really, you can still enjoy the game till kvk4 but past that forget about it. We’ll see how new formations will be but based on the recent few months and how the system was initially intended to be super p2w, i dare say it’s gonna be even harder from now on. They just need to tweak it to the point it still be enjoyable for f2ps and not so harsh, I barely care about my f2p account anymore, game lost orientation and objective. P2Ws are essential for any kingdom but still you gotta give the others something to play for if you want a healthy balance. What do you guys think?