Therein lies the problem. Selective enforcement and poor communication.
Like you suggest, the speed enhancement suggest they’re not that concerned about people playing too fast. But then they come out and justify the Elspeth thing by saying people are playing too fast.
The double talk and stuff just needs to stop.
I think these might be somewhat related. Elspeth was an issue for a while and wasn’t dealt with, and then the change came very suddenly. My guess is that the devs didn’t want to leave it in place with 4x on the horizon. Either on their own was OK, but the possibility of them together had to be removed. But that’s just my guess 
Is it an exploit if my defense is Sacrifice x 3 + Elspleth last spot?
I didn’t hear them talking about players playing too fast, but people side-stepping actually playing the game. Anyone exploiting the 1-troop Elspeth thing, once enough people were doing it, just had to jump on the treadmill and never give a thought to what they were doing. Anyone trying to use this Elspeth/DK team probably needs to keep a close eye on the teams they are invading to make sure there are not too many warded/impervious troops. Maybe people are just retreating from any battle that gives them the slightest headache. Again, I don’t know. But this is no different from any number of other “can’t fail” super teams that have been introduced in the past.
I have been using this bat sac elspeth purp DK team all day now and this is the perfect description
Edit: it is nice when DM procs on both famine on first turn tho
I have to agree that this is actually now hurting the community more because the insanity of 40% of the GWs are Famine x2 are bleeding into the regular PVP as well. The other 37% of the Kerbx2 which again is not giving me many real choices.
I rather fight bots and Elsbeth… easier for the majority
I love the risk in this team as well, if it backfire, oh well, no worries in PvP.
I try not to use it in my revenge battles tho, since they give double gold. 
I think it’s pretty lame that the developers are forcing certain playstyles on the players, including literally sabotaging them from behind the scenes and replacing what they think they are playing with, with something else… I’ve never heard of a game doing that.
It’s also sad to see that what’s being addressed is a symptom, and not the cause. The reason people like to play 1-troop defenses is not because they just love teams like that. It’s because the reward system motivates that play, for three reasons:
The obvious conclusion for anyone who is trying to maximize resources is to play as many battles per hour as possible, and you do THAT by making your defense the weakest you can, to minimize your overall team score, and thus make your opposition weaker, your games faster, and your overall resource gathering more efficient.
The devs talk about how 1-troop defenses doesn’t follow the playstyle they want to see… well, I would have assumed that “maximizing your gains and resources” wouldn’t be a “bad playstyle”! How is trying to earn the most resources per hour of play such a bad thing to do, that they need to cheat in order to prevent you from doing it!?
The solution is obvious - alter the reward system so that playing a strong defense team, and playing other, stronger defense teams, is BETTER in terms of what you earn from it, than playing weak teams. What they have done is frankly just dumb. An easy and clear way to improve things would be to award 5x glory for 2T and 10x glory for 3T fights. Same for gold, and traitstones. The simple answer in general is to make it so that 3T battles award more resources than it’s possible to earn by fighting a rapid series of 1T battles. If you combine that with greater rewards for your defense team actually winning vs the paltry dribble that you now get, then suddenly not only will players desire to play the higher-tier battles, but they will strive to make their own defenses more robust. This seems pretty easy to me, which again is why I can’t believe they chose this “quick fix” over something even easier to do.
Ask any HR department and they will tell you “You get the behavior you motivate and reward”. So, alter the rewards to motivate the style of play you’re after, instead of having the server override players and cheat on their behalf to try to force people to play inefficiently.
So, until the rewards change to motivate some other type of play, I guess the new model is to make your defense team 4x your weakest troop, which is likely still “not in the spirit” according to the devs, but does actually respond most efficiently to the rewards system that the devs have put in place.
A long, thoughtful and largely lucid post, thanks. However you misjudge some of the common motivation for setting these 1TDs:
…like many of the posts, ad nauseum, above, you assume that 1TDs are set in order to advantage the player’s resource gathering. This isn’t the only reason, and, for me, not a reason at all. I have always set the 1TD for variety; that is, to stave off the endless tedium of every consecutive battle being one of two meta teams.
That is another excellent reason for playing 1Ts, and I agree that they are often the only relief from playing Famine & Company or Kerberos & Company.
My motivation right now is normally to maximize my traitstones over time, as I’m looking to try to trait up my troops. All this while making the required gold and trophies for my guild, etc. The most efficient way for me to do that is to fight battles that are fast - because I don’t get any more traitstones from a 3T battle than I do a 1T, so of course there’s no particular reason to play against a 3T if my goal is to get more troops traited up.
Ironically, this week in particular the devs have put an event in place that absolutely supports the “fastest battles possible” goal, because you earn ONE event stone per battle, period, regardless of whether it’s 1T or 3T. So, again, what’s being motivated is very clearly “as many battles per hour as possible” over any other goal, at least in terms of this week’s event.
As long as setting your own defense as low as possible translates into weaker opponents, then it feeds right into a “most battles per hour” strategy, which is a perfectly valid playstyle, and not one that should be quashed by the devs given they themselves have put that very motivation in place.
Exactly! It would be like giving a child a piece of candy and then punching them in the neck for eating it…
Yes, they have now said, essentially “We’ve designed things so that setting up a 1-troop defense (and fighting those teams) is the fastest possible way to earn rewards in the game (and would also be the fastest way to complete this week’s event), but now we’re going to prevent you from doing it. Ha! Joke’s on you!” Yeah… that’s just great.
Now that I’m seeing the bait-and-switch 1 troop defences for myself, I would say it’s more like they took a candy-sized rock and wrapped it in a candy wrapper…
What’s especially amazing about this is they’ve actually implemented a “free-rider” problem where there was not one before, making the “quick fix” even more nasty.
Before, there was a “give and take” to this - if you wanted to benefit from fast, weaker opponents and thus earn more per hour, to do so you would set your own defense up with 1 troop to minimize the score, etc. However, note that by doing so, not only do YOU benefit by having weaker opponents but other players with the same strategy benefit by being able to play YOUR 1-troop defense. So you were essentially donating your own defense to “the cause” while benefitting in return, quid-pro-quo style.
Now, however, you can benefit while contributing nothing. You can still set your own defense to 1-troop, and thus lower your score as before to minimize what you have to fight against. HOWEVER, the server now “conveniently” swaps out your own weak defense for some other, stronger team you have, so that the rest of the community and other players who might also be trying to do that, do not see your weaker defense team at all, and you can realize the benefits of your server-selected stronger team winning more often, while still making things easier for yourself.
In trying to keep in the spirit of things, I have set my own defense to 4 copies of my weakest troop, so that (hopefully) the server won’t override me and both I and others can benefit from attempting to shorten battle durations and thus earn event stones and traitstones (and gold, glory, etc…) more quickly, again, just as the devs have designed the game to do.
I have also been using this for a couple of weeks now and I agree that when that DM hits the big bads on the enemy team I actually giggle a little bit…
No, this sums it up much more effectively:
Nice. I have a new project for Halloween trick-or-treaters, not that anyone would take a candy apple from someone who looks like me…
Why has this not been at least addressed? The way everyone seems to be ignoring this issue is troubling to me…
Now that the unity port for the important ppl is done can we get this fixed please?
I’m curious to know whether the unity port had any effect on matchmaking so that the 1 troop defence no longer provides any benefit (regardless of the score that is reported). I assume not.