With regards sapphires:
- Initially there were no offers other than box offers at special times and they were quite limited
- As a result most sapphires were bought from the bank at FULL price (unheard of now)
- In addition there was no 75% healer offer
The advent of permanent offers on the top right of the screen and the healer made the game approx x9 times cheaper, both came nearly together at the back end of 2015. Time wise in the game that was about 3/4 months after the 2nd KT / KOC / KoK etc server war. What Roanne would have done with those offers.
In addition now there have been many mainly bonuses to troop power so that a single dragon can be worth over 8k. Armour, wisdom, building bonuses, extended lost arts etc etc. So troops are approx x3 more powerful than before. You get x3 more for your sapphires.
All in all then the game has got approx x30 times cheaper.
So to begin with, despite ppl having only small armies built (I remember when 10m was A LOT) the money required to unbalance the game was just too large. Yes league with coiners got an advantage but it was simply an advantage that better organisation, understanding of the mechanics or just hard work raiding and exploiting every benefit smartly could offset.
Then the above changes took place and it took a further 6/9 months for a set of people to buy a game unbalancing hammer (spending less than Roanne) and the game has been going to ruin ever since, with it getting ever cheaper to buy troops.
Now there are players who have bought hammers than entire leagues of 150+ members haven't managed to amass in their entire 3 yrs+ of players. There are only a handful of league who can claim league offence bigger than the largest coined hammers.
And so the game became completely unbalance. That makes it pointless for most people to participate. And unsurprisingly the games have died.
The analogy I like to use is why would anyone want to play a game of chess if the other person had paid to start with all queens.
Hmm I should make a micro-transaction based chess game, I bet it'd make a killing.