I wonder what the motivation is. For example in Arctic Future:
* Checkmate square is 9% for 9 squares
* Speaker's Corner is 9% for 9 squares
* 2 Halmbock is 8% for 8+ squares and you get useful stuff from the other parts
Compare that to
* Winners Plaza 4% for 9 squares
That's a rather drastic reduction. Is it because it is possible to "too many" of these (for any given metric of "too many"), especially for big spenders?
And the secondary bonus is
happiness.
4% would be perfectly fine if it produced something actually useful in a fair amount, or had some other nice bonus.
Reading through the posts regarding the nerf on Beta, some players apparently ended up with 10-12 Winner's Plazas in their cities... (ie: they for some reason, spent hideous amounts of money on the friggin'
beta server?!lol)
So yes, it seems like the nerf batting is indeed due to the ability for players to simply spend $100-200+ and effectively buy 50-100% attack boosts...
All the other buildings that give atk% boost thus far, are either;
a) really big & pop-intensive military buildings that iirc, all require 2-lane roads... so while spammable, it's not exactly smart city design? (exception being event-linked Drummer's Camp)
b) 1-shot event buildings that can't gain multiples (checkmate square, speaker's corner)
c) part of a set-building series, meaning to get full value you need '+X' additional buildings, AND, space for all of them, AND THEN, multiples of each to grow further a bonus. (so again, space-intensive & really hard to gain multiples of multiple buildings!
)
Honestly, I think it's a good move by Inno to nerf the Winner's Plaza...
Attacking player (especially on PvP) already has a massive advantage vs. the idiotic AI, even if players can boost their defense to 300% and higher...
Plus you have additional attack-friendly GB's like Kraken, AO, Voyager, etc...
Give a readily buyable & space-friendly boost, and the only thing that would happen is to see the forums drown in moaning over plundering & the bullies who do so.