No fair play!

[LadyLisbet]

Greetings,
Just venting here, please read with patience.
I started a new player & new city recently, but have been playing for a while. I do not recall the incessant roadblocks in progress that I now encounter, particularly in the provinces. Finally made it to Chapter 3, getting almost nothing but Very Hard and Hard encounters to face with infant forces and other resources. I can only go so far without the rewards from province encounters, which I currently cannot win or negotiate through save by significant sacrifice.
Challenges like, Fight and win in 4 encounters, just ain't happening.
Icing on the cake: Today I finally got a Medium difficulty province to scout - huzzah! - and while waiting for the scout to complete its task, checked out the World Map to find my next possible step. I located another Medium with a path to needed relics, only to see it transform to Hard when the previous scouting completed.
What the...?
Here ends the rant. Thank you.
LadyLisbet

 

[The Unbeliever]

Every time you launch a scout, it makes the next province slightly harder, and so on and so on...
Keep in mind that for the first couple chapters, you are only expected to scout & complete just 10-15 provinces vs. the more common 25-30 provinces per chapter by Ch4/5 and on.

As well, it's been a fact for years now that fighting is an absolute ****-show much before Ch6, where you finally get to begin unlocking some 3* barracks units.

Basically, the game is horribly imbalanced, and INNO don't care.

 

[Huor]

What caused me issues is I was not scouting based on the information in the scoutable tab of the province overview in the browser and tended to wander outside my "circle" based on the relic types I wanted. Now I scout from the province overview, which as a chapter 6 player are all showing as easy even though I would not scout them as they belong to chapter 7. I use the incomplete tab to make sure I have not scouted more provinces then I need to unlock the advanced scout of the next chapter. At this time I'm 114 of 130 provinces and all 16 I need in the incomplete tab are all easy. I also don't do any scouting unless a quest asks for it (hopefully it's an event quest asking!) or I'm getting ready to leave the chapter. Don't know if this method is actually helping make this easier, but it seems to work for me.

This feature is not in the app, and other than fighting, this is the only thing I use the browser for.

 

[Gladiola]

Don't feel too pressured by the questlines. Decline the declinable quests until you get to one that you can do. I do a lot of "Make 2 advanced tools and collect coins" quests. I haven't been able to do the "fight encounter" quests since sometime in chapter 2 I think.

I do as Huor recommends, not scouting unless I need to complete provinces to get to the next chapter, and while I still have all "Hard" provinces at the end of chapter 5, I expect them to drop to "Easy" when I do the advanced scouts research for chapter 6.

 

[LadyLisbet]

Thanks to all for your insights and suggestions. I do decline ridiculous quests, but it makes me wonder why they are there to begin with; the team HAS to know how discouraging it is to new players. Not sure if I resent being "winnowed out" more or less than I would being suckered in.
Question to the infrequent fighters: Do you gain Expansions strictly via research and/or diamonds? 'Cause province successes are the only "free" way to get more land space.
Anyway, appreciate you all for chiming in. Cheers!

 

[Gladiola]

I strategically keep my city small so I don't have pressure for expansions, but if I did want more expansions I would negotiate rather than fight. Having good production of your boosted goods and reliable trade partners (through a good fellowship) is fundamental to this strategy. Tournaments are a great way of accumulating relics to increase boosts.

Making efficient use of space and upgrading buildings rather than having more of them, as well as carefully choosing culture buildings (event buildings are often best) is probably the biggest key to success in Elvenar. It's all about planning space effectively.

Edit: I notice that you have a number of non-boosted manufactories and that your fellowship has a lot of small players who may have trouble trading with you. You could develop a strategy with them to improve your trade practices so that you can all produce boosted goods, or look for a neighbor who can help you with trades. Alternatively, you could look for a fellowship with a few largner players who will be able to take your trades. That would take a lot of pressure off your need to expand your city -- you could focus on building a few factories to much higher levels.

 

[Alram]

I do think that the early chapters are designed to help new players learn to balance their city.
It's sad to see players beyond the early chapters who never learned to balance.
*I ignore expansions until I desperately need the space.

 

[crazy dog lady]

unfortunately, Gladiola, the provinces which are hard when you finish a chapter will only drop to Medium when you start the next chapter. :/

 

[Gladiola]

@crazy dog lady I have had a few drop all the way to green in the past. But I'm not counting on it in terms of my strategy. I mostly negotiate in provinces anyway.

 

[BrinDarby]

I never understood the rational of the early Chapters.
Sure ya need to learn to play city tetris and you need
basic researches including troops, but the non Event
questlines just herd players too far too fast, @ a time
when they don't know any better...

Many mmorphs like this @least allow a acct reset. Players
then play for 20-30 days to see if they like it, then reset and
basically .... play for reals .... heh heh. Elvenar doesn't give
that option, not that I've noticed.

You cannot reverse having a MainHall too big too fast...
You cannot reverse overscouting in the same way.... Sure
if you realize that 2 lvl 9 marbles work better than 1 lvl 15
then you can sell the lvl 15 and rebuild the smaller ones.
You can't do that if ur overscouted or over MainHall'd, to
fix ur problem...lolololol.

Its hard to go back to anything less than 700% boost... but
starting a new city means you don't make all those little
mistakes you ( and I ) prolly made in ur 1st city....

The reason it seems tougher this time is you know more now,
before everything was new so you didn't realize it was that
hard.... ya just didn't know any better..... hehehe

 

[Lelanya]

Hi @LadyLisbet
I don't know about you but when I started playing there were no colors on the provinces. The scout squad leader still said things like, "This should be easy", or, "I don't think we should". There were provinces I could fight, and ones where I spent literally days collecting resources to get to Ruffian's city so I could polish it. I don't think it's really that much harder now, it's about the same.

What has changed is our space requirements. We get way more event culture than before, so we keep more hybrids. There are nifty troop producing buildings now. We get an evolving building every 7 to 10 weeks, a set once a year, and we need to keep spare space and population for shanty towns.

 

[Mykan]

As well, it's been a fact for years now that fighting is an absolute ****-show much before Ch6, where you finally get to begin unlocking some 3* barracks units.

The biggest reason it is such a mess is the squad sizes are not comparable as the enemies SS grows faster than the players at the start. Not having access to all troop types and some units really needing the extra promotion starts only compound the base poblem.

Basically, the game is horribly imbalanced, and INNO don't care.

Thanks to all for your insights and suggestions. I do decline ridiculous quests, but it makes me wonder why they are there to begin with; the team HAS to know how discouraging it is to new players.

Sadly they don't or they don't care. I lobbied for this to be addressed for years and finally gave up when the head CM came out and said they do not see it as an issue. Granted they also mentioned they could solo hard fights with a single squad of treants, something the average (heck even above average) player is not capable of doing, the AI certainly can't do that .

 

[Aritra]

I don't know anything about fighting, early chapters or otherwise, but as a cater-only player, I have found negotiations in early chapters to be particularly cheap. Maybe for early chapters, simply negotiate more?
(my younger city is nearing the end of chapter three, therefore recent experience of early chapters vs longer ago for older city)

 

[ajqtrz]

I haven't fought a single fight outside of the quests in my chapter 5 beta city. I cater it all. To do that I have a lot of residences and workshops AND I scout all my neighbors (not in a fellowship yet, saving that for ch 6). I produce enough resources to scout things and that means I can pretty much do the "hard" scouting as well.

So, my "recommendation" is to focus on building the basic production capabilities -- coins, supplies and goods -- and cater until you unlock enough troops to start fighting. When I start fighting I'll have hundreds of squads ready as I continuously produce troops even though I know I'll not need them for a long, long time.

That's my method and while going is slow, it's not that slow for me.

AJ

 

[Elivarian]

I started quite some years ago on EN servers playing Elvenar. If i remember correctly players were waiting on Halflings chapter

I started a city here on US to be able to use the forum. I see exactly what @LadyLisbet writes, it's way harder than when i started those years ago. I catered all my way to chapter 15. Took a rather long break 1.5 years. Took up fighting to not have to produce all those goods for tournament, and now Spire.

But just getting the required 50 provinces to enter chapter 4 is a pain. Can't fight them. Troops just gets wiped out unless there's a really good match. Catering is costly and takes a lot of time to produce the goods for it. And yes, the steel problem is something too

 

[FAR2019]

For someone who CANNOT buy Expansions, I have found that as I advance through Chapters (I'm in Ch 9 now) the more Provinces you have to finish to get a Free Expansion. When I started the game 2 yrs ago (if I remember well) you would only need to complete like 4 Provinces to get a Free Expansion. Now is like the double! So, I will have to get rid of lot of Culture buildings to find needed space. It is a bummer as I get a production bonus of 175-180% and it helps a lot!

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

For someone who CANNOT buy Expansions, I have found that as I advance through Chapters (I'm in Ch 9 now) the more Provinces you have to finish to get a Free Expansion. When I started the game 2 yrs ago (if I remember well) you would only need to complete like 4 Provinces to get a Free Expansion. Now is like the double! So, I will have to get rid of lot of Culture buildings to find needed space. It is a bummer as I get a production bonus of 175-180% and it helps a lot!

It has always grown in number required, just very slowly for the first few dozen. When you get to the last few scouting expansions, it will need 10, and then 17, and then 25 completed. And then there will be no more until a new chapter is added.

 

[Gladiola]

@Elivarian I wonder if part of why it seems harder is that you're progressing more quickly than you did with your first city. For example, maybe you participate more in tournaments because you better understand their importance for relics and KP. Moving through the research tree faster means less time to accumulate goods and troops.

 

[FAR2019]

Oh Well! At some point, I guess I will not be able to grow my city much more... maybe 10 yrs later LOL!

 

[Elivarian]

@Elivarian I wonder if part of why it seems harder is that you're progressing more quickly than you did with your first city. For example, maybe you participate more in tournaments because you better understand their importance for relics and KP. Moving through the research tree faster means less time to accumulate goods and troops.

It's the hardness of the provinces which is the problem.

Where i am now mid-chapter 4 i still ned to scout 13 more provinces to open chapter 5, and they are already very hard. Add to that that every time i want to scout a province i get a warning saying that i should wait till the hardness drops

How can they drop when they only rise and i need 13 more. When i get to adv. scout they will still be hard or very hard.