I just don’t understand this from a business point of view ( I really need to finish my article about paywalls so I can post it to forum and reference it ).
This undercuts several paywalls, making the company less money. This makes farming season 1 even more boring, and plodding through season 2 for coins even more disheartening.
Ideally Atlantis, with its higher World Energy cost would pay better on recruits, food and ascension items ( ingredients are not a paywall, they are a distraction ). This would encourage IAP for loot tickets, VIP Passes for loot tickets, triple strong color 5* teams for faster Real World speed autoplay ( we also need more team slots which Devs could require gems to purchase), IAP for ascension items for 15, legendary training, 5* heroes for Farming.
This were all common complaints on the forum about the season 1 map.
The Devs should have created the best five teams of triple strong color 5* heroes made solely of heroes from legendary training, then created five provinces that were weak to each color and vulnerable to each team. To encourage farming all five provinces have a different World Energy cost ( and ascension items ), but the best food/ WE ratio and recruit/ WE
Example:
legendary training, triple blue 5* team might be best in 9 WE province which paid 4.5- 5 recruits per 1 WE ( total 40- 45 recruits )
legendary training, triple red 5* team might be best in 12 WE province which paid 4.5- 5 recruits per 1 WE ( total 54- 60 recruits )
Repeat for green, yellow and purple, legendary training, triple strong 5* hero teams.
Currently I plan on running Atlantis stages once for the normal pay out then going back to my season 1 autoplay farming. 8-7 is relatively fast with triple green, no red. 7-7 is a poorly designed stage. It is faster than 8-7 in Real World speed autoplay due to 33% less mob waves, and 50% less bosses, and slightly less food per WE and recruit per WE then 8-7, but is a yellow/ purple stage. If the Devs had made it a yellow boss, yellow/ red mob, then a triple purple, no yellow team would be ideal for Real World speed autoplay encouraging players to level 5* purple heroes from legendary training.
MY PERSONAL OPINION
All the pay walls, and many of the HOTM/ event heroes, appear to be centered on Titans. Which makes sense from a business point of view since titans are the only social aspect of Empires until the Devs work all the kinks out of War match making ( which for some players will be never since Titan AI is much more predictable, and beatable, than human running war attack teams ).
But a majority of a players interaction with Empires is farming ( world map for recruits, raids for food, war for ascension items, gem quests for summons, rare quests for guaranteed 3*/ 4* ascension items ). The Atlantis map just seems a huge missed opportunity to change the farming aspect of the game.