No fair play!

[Gladiola]

@Elivarian You might need to cater some of those provinces, which means it might take more time to accumulate the goods you need to negotiate, whereas before maybe you could have fought through them. That does seem to be a change from the way the game was back when it first came out.

 

[JessMac]

Not sure if anyone said this already but always scout the province that costs the least amount of money. Even when you are over scouted this will still make the province easy to medium. Or at least it does for me. Hope that helps.

 

[JessMac]

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

I’m surprised you’re not in a Fs. A good fs helps more than anything. And if you have most of the ancient wonders you would have been able to begin fighting most of your stuff before ch6….

 

[Elivarian]

Not sure if anyone said this already but always scout the province that costs the least amount of money. Even when you are over scouted this will still make the province easy to medium. Or at least it does for me. Hope that helps.

This is how it is for me, and i still need to scout 9 more to be able to enter chapter 5. So in no possible way can i get them cheaper. I'm forced to scout them no matter what, and they will just be crap expensive to cater as well as impossible to fight.

 

[Fayeanne]

I see you have some provinces you haven't completed yet. When the technology page shows how many provinces you need, it's indicating completed provinces, not scouted ones. You need to finish all eight encounters within the province (see where it says "Collected Relics: 0/8") in order for it to count for opening the chest on the technology pane.

Do you have any provinces you opened that are Medium or less that aren't completed yet? I'd suggest doing those rather than doing any more scouting.

 

[Lelanya]

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.

Try going for all military type prior to scouting, like Squad Size Upgrade.

 

[ajqtrz]

@JessMac Not in a fs because I wanted to do some "experimenting" until I get to Ch 6 at least. Nearly there now.

@Elivarian Yeah, I get the same note of "very hard." I just do it anyway as my troops, even with all the squad size improvements, just die on the battlefield and leave the enemies chuckling as they march off with barely a scratch!

To cater all that I have 15 residences maxed out and collect all the coin instants I can. When I get to Ch 6 (Dwarves) I'll try some fighting again. Hopefully, using UUU, ELR and MMM's will work. I've saved up a bunch of those so we'll see.

AJ

 

[Elivarian]

I see you have some provinces you haven't completed yet. When the technology page shows how many provinces you need, it's indicating completed provinces, not scouted ones. You need to finish all eight encounters within the province (see where it says "Collected Relics: 0/8") in order for it to count for opening the chest on the technology pane.

Do you have any provinces you opened that are Medium or less that aren't completed yet? I'd suggest doing those rather than doing any more scouting.

I need 9 more than the ones already scouted, both but not completed. They're waiting to be completed when the event starts

I need 13 provinces to open chapter 5. I have 3 scouted and one scouting now. Will set one more over night.

 

[Fayeanne]

They're waiting to be completed when the event starts

Ahh, understood. That's just really strange; I don't recall being required to do Very Hard provinces just to proceed. You haven't skipped any optional Squad Size Upgrade technologies, right? (Puzzling...)

 

[Deborah M]

I asked in my FS and nobody who was online remembers having to do "hard" scouting to complete chapters. This subject brings up a complaint about mobile vs. PC. On mobile it is a real pain to tell what provinces should be scouted next to stay in the ring that players are up to. The PC version has the really nice honeycomb Province Overview that was a great improvement to the map. In the conversation it was hands down, doing scouting on the PC is best so you can see the difficulty very easily.

 

[Elivarian]

Ahh, understood. That's just really strange; I don't recall being required to do Very Hard provinces just to proceed. You haven't skipped any optional Squad Size Upgrade technologies, right? (Puzzling...)

Only 5 and 9. But as i understood it writing support, it does not effect the cost of a province. The provinces cost is fixed when doing adv. scout. It only does so that we can bring a bigger army to the battlefield, and thereby loose a lot more troops because they aren't winnable anyway.

But i have just written again and asked for clarification on it.

 

[Elivarian]

I asked in my FS and nobody who was online remembers having to do "hard" scouting to complete chapters. This subject brings up a complaint about mobile vs. PC. On mobile it is a real pain to tell what provinces should be scouted next to stay in the ring that players are up to. The PC version has the really nice honeycomb Province Overview that was a great improvement to the map. In the conversation it was hands down, doing scouting on the PC is best so you can see the difficulty very easily.

It's only a problem in lower chapters. I have a chapter 16 city on EN server, also a 13, which i have green and yellow provinces on.

 

[Fayeanne]

It only does so that we can bring a bigger army to the battlefield, and thereby loose a lot more troops because they aren't winnable anyway.

This is true only for things like Tournaments and the Spire. Actually, regular map province encounters are the only types of battles where Squad Size Upgrade has a beneficial effect.

In regular map encounters--and only regular map encounters--your squad size is as advertised in your city's Army Camp. The enemy squad size for a given province is determined by the scouting costs at the time that you scouted it--but then it remains fixed thereafter. If you increase your own squad size, you will increase your advantage against the enemies because their squad size stays fixed. Researching a Squad Size Upgrade technology may change the color/difficulty (e.g. from red (Hard) to orange (Medium), etc.) if the new difference in the squad sizes is significant enough, but does not always, because the colors/difficulty levels are tiers, and sometimes the increased squad size isn't enough to cross one of those tier thresholds.

I hope I'm making some amount of sense.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Only 5 and 9. But as i understood it writing support, it does not effect the cost of a province. The provinces cost is fixed when doing adv. scout. It only does so that we can bring a bigger army to the battlefield, and thereby loose a lot more troops because they aren't winnable anyway.

But i have just written again and asked for clarification on it.

TL;DR: Your Squad size is what? 99? and SS techs 5&9 will add 42 more. That's a 42% increase in your ability to fight on the map which will have a massive impact. Skipping those techs is why your provinces are listed as very hard, and researching them will fix it.

Spoiler: Squad size and world map explained

The cost of a province is only affected by

• the distance from your city
• your advanced scouts tech and
• how many provinces you have scouted (minor)

That cost determines how many enemy units you will face. Once you start a scout this can never change for that province.

The color or difficulty of a province is based only on how many units you bring vs enemy units.

How many units you bring is affected only by your squad size, so increasing this will change the color and difficulty rating even after a province has been scouted.

So, while support is correct in that researching those techs won't change the cost/enemy side of the equation they will change your side and make battles/ratings easier.


Note: other military techs like unit upgrades will certainly help you win battles as will certain buildings in your city, but those are not reflected in the color/difficulty rating of a province.

 

[Elivarian]

So to sum it all up; Again, i does only let me bring more troops to the battle.

But if the cost is 1200 Steel, 200 Crystal, that will always be the same no matter how many SS researches i can do.

And last; Are my troops even good enough to fight an overcome my enemy, when they have counter units, am i not lost , and have lost a lot of troops again ?

 

[SoggyShorts]

But if the cost is 1200 Steel, 200 Crystal, that will always be the same no matter how many SS researches i can do.

Correct.

Are my troops even good enough to fight an overcome my enemy, when they have counter units, am i not lost , and have lost a lot of troops again ?

Yes, your troops are good enough, just bring more. You can do that by researching the SS techs that you skipped.

 

[Elivarian]

Correct.

Yes, your troops are good enough, just bring more. You can do that by researching the SS techs that you skipped.

Thanks @SoggyShorts

I'll do that and try see how it goes. I do though need to have enough troops for tournament too.

 

[Silver Lady]

I had a crunch point around chap 5 where every province was hard or very hard even though I wasn’t over scouted. Somewhere about chap 6 or 7 after competing the advanced scouts my provinces went back to being easy and a few very easy. BTW - I’m in chap 9 now and still have easy provinces. I think this will prove true for you also.

 

[Darielle]

Ahh, understood. That's just really strange; I don't recall being required to do Very Hard provinces just to proceed. You haven't skipped any optional Squad Size Upgrade technologies, right? (Puzzling...)

It's unfortunately the same for a tiny city that I took over from my son a couple months ago. He left the city long ago, and I recently decided to develop it because it had some cool old event buildings on it. I just started chapter 5 in it, and all of the provinces are hard or very hard, and yet I still need a ton more scouts to open the next chapter, so they'll definitely all be very hard by the time I get close to the end of the chapter. None incomplete and I've done all squad upgrades. Scouting in rings; none of this straight line stuff. Since I know all the newbie mistakes now, I should not be faced with this horror, but I am. When I first started in October 2019, there's no way that I had to slog through all this garbage just to open the next chapter. I think they've slowed new players down on purpose by making the provinces harder. Maybe they realized that new players were all overscouting so they tried some of their heavy-handed "fixes." Anyway, it's a lot less enjoyable now, and that's not because I know more or any other reason, other than the fact that it is, indeed, harder than it used to be.

Edit: I have to modify this because I do now see a couple of provinces that I scouted and haven't completed, and one medium province still to do along with the hards and very hards. But overall, the same.

 

[Mykan]

That slog for new players has been there since they changed the battle system, years and years ago. Honestly this is the first time I have heard anyone say they didn't get hard provinces in the first 4-6 chapters. Every single town I ever made since then or people I know who started one since then face the same issue. Crazy amounts of forum posts complaining about it over the years. Many fellowships just give freebies to new players to help them through that pain and negotiate past it.