Risk/reward ratio

[Amyality the Relentless]

I am glad when negotiations are one of the tasks to complete the daily challenge. I'm a confident negotiator, my system almost always works, my city has a surplus of goods. Easy task for me. Defeating a large army...? not so easy. Im not the best fighter. So...I up my attack GBs, get a Traz and a couple of rogue hideouts, get lots of troops from completing lvl 4 GE each week, activate a tavern boost...and go for it! I usually complete these tasks, as well. I maximized the effectiveness of my city. I succeed. You have to have a strong city to prepare for the challenges of this game. Listen to the advice here in the forum. These guys know! Your city can solve all your problems if you build it to meet your needs. So many players want to bypass this step, looking for an easier way. This IS the easier way.

 

[DeletedUser33179]

You could lose a negotiation every single time. It gets more and more unlikly with a larger sample size, but you are never garaunteed to win even one very complex negotiation if you played even 100 times. There is no real skill or pre planning, you just roll the dice. We were better without it.

Incorrect. While there is no pre-planning involved, skill is very much required to successfully negotiate. It's a probability-logic puzzle.

It's a nice challenge. I enjoy it - much better & more thought provoking than fighting, (where lots of troops with a level 5 Traz + the trifecta of primary fight GBs at level 10 + some event buildings' attack boosts allow me to win every single time now).

Perhaps that's actually why you & some others wish there weren't required negotiation quests. You can guaranteed win most/all battles 1st try, but can't necessarily do so when negotiating.

 

[DeletedUser33036]

Incorrect. While there is no pre-planning involved, skill is very much required to successfully negotiate. It's a probability-logic puzzle.

It's a nice challenge. I enjoy it - much better & more thought provoking than fighting, (where lots of troops with a level 5 Traz + the trifecta of primary fight GBs at level 10 + some event buildings' attack boosts allow me to win every single time now).

Perhaps that's actually why you & some others wish there weren't required negotiation quests. You can guaranteed win most/all battles 1st try, but can't necessarily do so when negotiating.

I don't like it because you are not guaranteed to win it even if it was your 10th try. Each attempt is an independent chance that does not effect the proabability of any other attempt. As there are only so many attempts, logic can only take you so far. The amount of goods is less important than the random nature. Additionally let us compare a DC with a complex negotiation to the 48th and final level of GE. Both require 8 goods for each negotiation, but the 48th level gives you a 50 percent chance to get something like a terranced farm, while DC challenges at best give something like 5 percent chance for an indian palace, and GE even gives you an option for battle if your city is developed enough. Sure DC gives you one more chance, but the ratio is still lopsided between the two.

 

[DeletedUser31442]

I typically only open provinces for an event but after the event completed I still had like 5 sectors left over and figured going by past experience DC will ask for negotiated sectors before too long - with the more they ask for the fewer other quests demanded. But it hasn't turned out that way, the few times it does ask for it it always demands something else I cannot do (typically a hard negotiation which was not an issue in the past) and if I see that or take a sector by fighting one more time I'm just gonna finish off these sectors myself and that will at least save me one wasted day of DC a week.

 

[DeletedUser33179]

I don't like it because you are not guaranteed to win it even if it was your 10th try. Each attempt is an independent chance that does not effect the proabability of any other attempt. As there are only so many attempts, logic can only take you so far. The amount of goods is less important than the random nature. Additionally let us compare a DC with a complex negotiation to the 48th and final level of GE. Both require 8 goods for each negotiation, but the 48th level gives you a 50 percent chance to get something like a terranced farm, while DC challenges at best give something like 5 percent chance for an indian palace, and GE even gives you an option for battle if your city is developed enough. Sure DC gives you one more chance, but the ratio is still lopsided between the two.

What irritates you about negotiating - that you can't control it entirely due to a random factor- is exactly what I enjoy. It adds a challenging dimension to the task. If you work steadily to improve your negotiation skills, you are guaranteed to win within only a few tries. I've done so each week for the past 10 months - needing a range of 1-3 tries to successfully win even the most complex negotiations every time for all of GE, quests & events. Others will tell you the same.

As for comparing the prizes for DC vs GE... We get 365 DCs in a year. To win a DC prize, we only have to do 2-4 different basic tasks. We get 52 GEs in a year. To win the top prizes which are on its 4th level (not including TOR relics), we have to work through 48 fights/negotiations of steadily increasing difficulty just to get to that level + another 16 increasingly hard tasks to get to the final prize. Without spending a bunch of medals for extra turns, it takes a few days to fully complete a GE. The fact that both GE & DC have negotiation tasks is irrelevant. GE has far fewer chances to win per year & far more effort/time required. That's why GE's top prizes (diamonds, TF, etc) are typically better and with better odds.

Just because GE gives a choice between fight & negotiate doesn't mean Inno should give that same choice for everything in game. It's intentionally designed to include both passive city building & active fighting, wanting to encourage growth in both aspects for all players. But, many folks who mainly fight will perpetually complain about negotiating. And many folks who mainly negotiate will perpetually complain about fighting. Oh well, such is life in FoE.

 

[Emberguard]

I don't like it because you are not guaranteed to win it even if it was your 10th try.

There are no guarantees in life

Battles you are not guaranteed to walk away with no damage or loss of troops unless you're so unevenly matched that it wasn't even a battle.

Negotiations you are able to get an advantage in as well with careful planning.

Don't aim for the right goods, aim to gather as much info as quickly as possible until you know the answer. Eliminate options before you lock in options. If first try results in too much green cancel and start again - you haven't lost much

If on your final round you have duplicate correct answers and a 50/50 chance go for what's already green. Random is such you're more likely to be correct going for the duplicate if it's your final chance and don't have a definite answer (I know it doesn't sound random, but when negotiating that seems to be the pattern the game gives me)

And then there's diamonds. As long as you're doing GE there should be enough income to cover the expense of a single extra turn in DC. If you can't afford even that, don't worry about it. Either increase your goods or skip the quest