Yes, I have to agree with you on and about this, as that does seem not just a little, but a whole lot excessive, regardless of what the prize is/was. Just like for today, one of the "Quests" I got, I needed to Negotiate 3 GE Encounters. Now what the problem is here, is that I had already completed the 3rd level, and so needed to do this in/for the 4th level. And as I have opined before, that more and more over the last 1- 1 1/2 yrs, whomever at Inno is responsible for making these decisions, that they are making Players build their cities a few certain ways, compared to when I 1st started playing in Mar 13', that us Players had a lot more freedom on how we could build our cities. I mean, it's ridiculous that we need and/or have to waste the precious space in our cities, with having umpteen Blacksmiths built, all because of the possibility of getting a bunch of Quests, that want some outrageous number of 4 or 8 hour productions. DOH!!
And it's bad enough that the Devs had really nerfed GE for the Players who are in Arctic Future (the only Age/Era that they raised the "enemy" unit bonuses by a lot, for ALL of the levels and Encounters), but for doing Negotiations in the 4th, or even 3rd level, there is 7 and 8 different Goods/items to choose from (which they also includes Medals for choices, of which I'm still saving for the most recent Medal Expansion, and need 520 K Medals), yet you only get 3 tries/chances to complete the Negotiation. Well only 3 tries, UNLESS you spend DIAMONDS, which I'm sure is the whole point of them writing these types of Quests (and making the Negotiations this way). So it's either NOT complete today's Challenge, and get the "penalty" for not completing it, OR have to spend possibly a good amount of Diamonds to complete it.
I know and understand we don't "have to" do the DC, but at the same time, I do think that for a good number of the different "Quests" are total BS, for the ones that I have gotten, just during this 1st week of the DC being available to everybody. DOH!!