Hi @ASHmazin . As to your Rant 1, Night Guy explains in his Help Topic, “Tip and Tricks for Beginners and Veterans” quoted below, that as you add buildings and monuments to your city its value increases, measured by the total gem value of all your buildings/monuments. At certain levels your city value maxes out the payout of the various TB’s starting with the purple, until finally the brown boxes pay exactly the same as all the other boxes.
He also discusses this in another of his Help topics, but I can’t remember which one. Hope this helps it make sense to you.
Regarding Rant 2, I’ve noticed the same thing, particularly when betting 5M & 10M, especially if their jackpots are a lot higher than the other bet amounts. I’ve been doing better with payouts and Free Spins betting 2.5M and 7.5M, although as you said most of the Free Spin payouts are pretty low compared to what they used to be. I haven’t seen a Free Spin payout close to or above 1B for awhile now.
I’m also not seeing as many Free Spins as I used to. These days they seem to typically come after I’ve been playing for awhile and am about ready to quit. This is true even on Wild Nights, which used to give more Free Spins than I’ve seen on any other slot.