The problem is that at the moment, these drops are completely unbalanced between adventures.
For instance, Tropical Sun, awards 100 Granite with a mere 25% chance. This implies a low-level player must do approximately 120 TS adventures to build a lv1 Cannon Forge. On another instance, the Fairytale adventures, though they prove great risk and loss, provide the chance to obtain up to 3600 Granite (or, 5200 with Premium) - so leeching a single Fairytale lootspot may - or may not - provide nearly the same amount of Granite as doing 100 other adventures.
I speak from the perspective of a player who happens to be at the top end of the food chain, there is currently only 4 adventures I do:
- Heroic Little Tailor (for profit)
- Bandit Nest (while I am rebuilding troops)
- Lootspot in Black Knight
- Lootspot in Roaring Bull
The way I play, I gain about 40k Granite per month, so I can't really say that Granite should be "significantly increased": I don't even know where to put it ...
Note that saltpeter is now different.
I used to have over 200k of that, but my current production has already brought me down to 160k, so I guess sooner or later my Powdermaker will go to sleep.
This is biased.6) Too many settlers drop, work on a percentage of reasonable losses since they are a guaranteed drop. Where short "fast" cuts can be made to adventures base weapons, settlers etc on these values. So say a short BK loses 400R roughly, give maybe 25% i.e. 100 settlers back guaranteed, or have a small chance of a bumper haul but a high chance of just 25%.
I remember my first BK did cost me nearly 2000 troops and took me 5 days. Reason? I didn't have:
a) MMA, Major, Veteran
b) Cannons
The 25% you are talking about are actually there. But based on the losses you get when adventuring the way BB intends you to adventure: Using regular generals, no blocks, no premium.
Check this out to see how new players feel about BK - or Roaring Bull - or even Traitors
Do you even remember Islands of Pirates?
What skews the balance is the new generals and Premium.
But you can't balance the game around people who have everything without devastating gameplay for normal people.