I asked and I was told that Plarium did no changes to how Prizes and their payouts work. As your Prizes top level gets higher, the payouts get much bigger, but also more rare, which may be why you feel that it is different than before.

A personal suggestion: if you are reviving units lost on Prizes, at least do so during global revival discounts (the last one was 7 days ago). You'll save a fortune.

Lauren Moody said:

Seams to be problem with payouts from light houses, Units I have put in last 5 days with no payout, with all my rubies used to revive to try finish off more lighthouses, with no payout or return . Always a loss pirates that you never come ahead takes the since of playing this game. Going take long time to recover the loss and money put in these units to even try have fun , We cant play have wars with other clans for fun and they system takes all what we make anyway , Make players think of playing this , or who are the pirates?

There is a proper way to hit the LH to get huge payouts, over the long run, but most can't or won't follow the procedures.

The trick is add to the bank n the bank only counts res, not units lost. As it pays, they get bigger so one must keep a record of the last big payout as your bank now needs to be refreshed with, usually, 20% more to get another big payout. Payouts do not come on a schedule so one could lose all and have to cook more and more before getting paid again. In the end, you will be rum negative with 40 to 60 million in units and no way to keep playing.