Spire of Eternity feedback

[Risen Malchiah]

Ive yet to solve a logic puzzle - how do yo uido it?

Early on, it should be very easy. Try giving each ghost something different. The ghost will either accept it, or tell you somebody else needs it, or tell you nobody needs it. After your first attempt, you will use those first results as clues to where to put stuff next. For instance, if you gave the first ghost coins and he says somebody else needs this, then you give that first ghost something other than coins and give the coins to one or more of the other ghosts. It is REALLY helpful when a ghost says "nobody needs this" because that narrows down the possibilities of what everyone else needs. For the first few encounters, success should be near 100% unless you make a mistake.

Later on when encounters present you with 5, 6 or more options, then it becomes much more difficult. In that instance, if my first attempt does not yield any "nobody needs this" results to reduce the number of goods I'm playing with, I will quit that encounter (not using the remaining 2 attempts) and start over completely. The correct answers are random every time so you may have better luck doing it over. Sure, you waste some goods in that first attempt, but it beats wasting goods in 2 more attempts only to fail and be tempted to spend diamonds to continue.

 

[DeletedUser7738]

The Spire is difficult but without pet food it is excruciatingly painful. Is it luck (RNG - if there is one), Fixed (like bookies do) or individual player targeting? or something elser? But, in the past 6 weeks (I'm a 3hr rotation player) I have only been offered to craft exactly 4 pet food - FOUR! Others report seeing 2 or more a day ... it is truly frustrating. Even fewer troop boost bldgs are being offered to boot! I do buy diamonds once a month, but that is in jeopardy with all that is going on.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

The Spire is difficult but without pet food it is excruciatingly painful. Is it luck (RNG - if there is one), Fixed (like bookies do) or individual player targeting? or something elser? But, in the past 6 weeks (I'm a 3hr rotation player) I have only been offered to craft exactly 4 pet food - FOUR! Others report seeing 2 or more a day ... it is truly frustrating. Even fewer troop boost bldgs are being offered to boot! I do buy diamonds once a month, but that is in jeopardy with all that is going on.

try to build up some stock, I stocked a bunch and as so in good periods it rises, but in bad periods I dont feel it.
Off course if you are already at an all time low it will be hard to stock up.

Try to figure out how much you are getting weekly on average over a 9 week period and force yourself to not use more than that number.
If you indulge yourself in good times you will feel the pain in bad ones. and they feel they come at least twice as hard.

But if your frugal, it will pay off in the long run.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

I have an odd request for the Spire. Can the clickable hit boxes of the encounters & chests be enlargened? I sometimes have to click 2-3 times on a chest for it to register that I'm trying to open it, I thought it was just me misclicking, but after so many weeks on multiple browsers, there seem to be points where the cursor changes icons but the encounter or chest still isn't clickable.

 

[DeletedUser24439]

I still find it baffling how often I fail 4 option negotiations. And yes, I know how to optimize my negotiations. Probably just another rigged mechanic of this game wouldn't surprise me...

 

[KarlD]

I still find it baffling how often I fail 4 option negotiations. And yes, I know how to optimize my negotiations. Probably just another rigged mechanic of this game wouldn't surprise me...

How DO you optimize your negotiations. I'd love to improve on negotiating. I usually fight and don't negotiate much.

 

[DeletedUser24439]

How DO you optimize your negotiations. I'd love to improve on negotiating. I usually fight and don't negotiate much.

Give a different resource to each spirit on the first turn.
Alternate resources to each remaining spirit on the second and third turn.
-ALWAYS give spirits with a red resource one of the yellow resources if possible. Give a resource that hasn't been tested yet to a spirit that had a 'wrong person' resource. The idea here is that you can potentially give a spirit the right resource with little information given. You want to avoid being left with one spirit that has had all red resources as that gives no information and you are left with an unfavorable crap shoot.
-Also, you are better off quitting if the first turn yields 5 'wrong persons'; this provides less information than reds.

It's not full-proof, but it does significantly increase your success rate. I generally have a high success rate with 4 options and a moderate success rate with 5 options. However lately, I've been having the worst luck with convinces and seem to get a majority of 50/50 guesses wrong.

 

[KarlD]

Give a different resource to each spirit on the first turn.
Alternate resources to each remaining spirit on the second and third turn.
-ALWAYS give spirits with a red resource one of the yellow resources if possible. Give a resource that hasn't been tested yet to a spirit that had a 'wrong person' resource. The idea here is that you can potentially give a spirit the right resource with little information given. You want to avoid being left with one spirit that has had all red resources as that gives no information and you are left with an unfavorable crap shoot.
-Also, you are better off quitting if the first turn yields 5 'wrong persons'; this provides less information than reds.

It's not full-proof, but it does significantly increase your success rate. I generally have a high success rate with 4 options and a moderate success rate with 5 options. However lately, I've been having the worst luck with convinces and seem to get a majority of 50/50 guesses wrong.

Thanks!

 

[samidodamage]

How DO you optimize your negotiations. I'd love to improve on negotiating. I usually fight and don't negotiate much.

@Socrates28 found a really good video about this on the Gems site and posted the link for it in an FS msg for all of us. You can get to it here:
Gems: Diplomacy Video

 

[KarlD]

@Socrates28 found a really good video about this on the Gems site and posted the link for it in an FS msg for all of us. You can get to it here:
Gems: Diplomacy Video

Nice video. Thanks for sharing it. There's one thing I would do differently in the negotiating at the boss at the end of the video. I'd do what Sir Brandon Starr recommended above and introduce the Gems on the second round and I'd also offer seeds again because we actually don't know anything about seeds with respect to the remaining 4 spirits. I'd offer them in the 3rd and and 4th positions because those spirits I know something about. I at least know that they don't want those goods. I want to spread the knowledge so I would avoid offering an unknown good to a spirit that I know nothing about what it wants. When I get a not-needed response I really don't know anything about what it actually wants because I can't eliminate any of the remaining goods like I could with a somebody-else-needs-it response. I very much want to avoid situations like in the video were I might need 50 diamonds or, heaven forbid, 75 diamonds to solve it. I typically don't want to continue unless I know I can solve it with just one 25 diamond guess. Here it could have cost 50 diamonds so I probably would have started over.

 

[Socrates28]

I have an odd request for the Spire. Can the clickable hit boxes of the encounters & chests be enlargened? I sometimes have to click 2-3 times on a chest for it to register that I'm trying to open it, I thought it was just me misclicking, but after so many weeks on multiple browsers, there seem to be points where the cursor changes icons but the encounter or chest still isn't clickable.

I have also had this problem over multiple weeks, but only on PC browser.

 

[mucksterme]

I still find it baffling how often I fail 4 option negotiations. And yes, I know how to optimize my negotiations. Probably just another rigged mechanic of this game wouldn't surprise me...

I like how player incompetence becomes "rigged game."

It is very hard to fail a 4 option negotiation.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

@Socrates28 Yeah, I should have mentioned the clicking problem is on browser. No problem selecting encounters or chests on mobile, though I tend to avoid the Spire on mobile if I can help it. Some encounters are difficult without manual fighting to get the best results.

 

[KarlD]

I still find it baffling how often I fail 4 option negotiations. And yes, I know how to optimize my negotiations. Probably just another rigged mechanic of this game wouldn't surprise me...

Although I have sometimes suspected Inno of rigging the game (mostly in terms of what is offered for crafting or how often diamonds are won in the wishing wells and genies) it would actually be a lot more difficult to rig the Spire negotiations. They have to be logically consistent with results after they tell you what the spirits want and don't want. I guess it's possible that they could make sure you lose whenever there are situations where you can't absolutely determine the answer on the third guess. They'd be changing the odds for something that you already only have a 33% or 50% chance of getting right to something significantly less, but what's the point in that?

I like how player incompetence becomes "rigged game."

It is very hard to fail a 4 option negotiation.

I feel like I'm pretty good at the negotiating process and I played 10 games using my simulator and only needed 4 tries once, but there were 3 times when there were 2 possibilities and I just happened to guess correctly. So I don't think that one has to be incompetent to just have a run of bad luck on those occasions. But 60% of the time I was sure about what was needed by the 3rd guess.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

How DO you optimize your negotiations. I'd love to improve on negotiating. I usually fight and don't negotiate much.

I got a nice one for you.

Spoiler

With this first try I have 3 correct 1 the wrong place and 1 unknown.
I still have 5 options left, and I know where the supplies should be.
Instead of picking supplies on my second try I instead try 2 different goods in the hope to find the corect answer,
The chance to find the correct answer for the next turn is now 40% and 60% that I still don't know the answer.

Spoiler

On my second try I choose scrolls and treegum, buth turned out to be incorrect, this leaves coins, supplies and orcs as options left, a 33% chance
I pick orcs and since this is my last turn I set supplies in the correct position.

This turned out to be the correct answer but that one is only flashed briefly so I wasnt able to get a screenshot of it.

The result is that instead a 20+25% chance I improved the odds to 40+33% to find the correct answer a mayor improvement.
You might already have employed this strategy, but maybe it inspires someone

 

[KarlD]

I got a nice one for you.

Spoiler

View attachment 7363

With this first try I have 3 correct 1 the wrong place and 1 unknown.
I still have 5 options left, and I know where the supplies should be.
Instead of picking supplies on my second try I instead try 2 different goods in the hope to find the corect answer,
The chance to find the correct answer for the next turn is now 40% and 60% that I still don't know the answer.

Spoiler

View attachment 7364

On my second try I choose scrolls and treegum, buth turned out to be incorrect, this leaves coins, supplies and orcs as options left, a 33% chance
I pick orcs and since this is my last turn I set supplies in the correct position.

This turned out to be the correct answer but that one is only flashed briefly so I wasnt able to get a screenshot of it.

The result is that instead a 20+25% chance I improved the odds to 40+33% to find the correct answer a mayor improvement.
You might already have employed this strategy, but maybe it inspires someone

I have indeed already been employing that strategy on the rare occasion(s) I'd seen it, but thanks for sharing it. It's good for stimulating thought on the negotiating process.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

I have indeed already been employing that strategy on the rare occasion(s) I'd seen it, but thanks for sharing it. It's good for stimulating thought on the negotiating process.

You would be suprised how often I skip an item, even if it's position ain't clear yet, this was a clear example but you can use it more often, it's a little but of a gamble but overal it gives you better result since you get more information, sometimes it doesn't pay out but thats part of the deal.

 

[KarlD]

Do you ever get the feeling that some people view the negotiating process as more akin to a slot machine than a logic problem? Like you put different goods in different positions and then it randomly decides which ones are winners. Then you place goods in the remaining positions and it randomly chooses which of those are winners. You just keep spinning the wheels and hope that by the 3rd spin you get all 5 winners. I get the feeling there are more than a few who feel that way. Whenever someone alludes to how random convincing the spirits is I'm pretty sure they're seeing it that way.

If you do happen to view it that way, please STOP. The only random part of the process is when the system determines what each spirit needs and that is, of course, so you don't know what they need. It wouldn't be much of a game if you knew what the solution was already. But once the negotiating process begins, BEFORE you make your first set of guesses, the needs of each spirit are fixed. The needs of the spirits don't change and the responses of what's not needed, needed by a different spirit, or are a match are based on the fixed needs of each spirit. If you make smart choices you can greatly reduce the number of goods and diamonds needed to negotiate.

Below is an interesting negotiating example I came across while playing with my simulator. The "Goods" column are the goods available to be offered to the Spirits for that guess. The "Spirit #" columns show the goods offered and the result of that offer. "WRONG" means some spirit(s) needs that good but you guessed wrong. "NOT NEED" means nobody needs that good. "MATCH" means you have a satisfied spirit. In this example you would have already paid 25 diamonds for a 4th guess, which you should pretty much expect to do when you have 8 goods to choose from. You have enough information to determine what each spirit wants, but it takes a bit of thought to figure out the answer. If you got the wrong answer then you are likely spending more on negotiations than necessary.

Many people will have trouble solving this example by virtue of the fact that they can't enter information into the table. It really helps to enter into the table the good you know a particular spirit needs because you will need that information to narrow down the possibilities for other spirits. If you were actually playing the Spire or using the simulator you would see the choices you made for each spirit so it would be easier to solve.

	Goods	Spirit 1	Spirit 2	Spirit 3	Spirit 4	Spirit 5
1	ABCDEFGH	A-WRONG	B-NOT NEED	C-WRONG	D-WRONG	E-NOT NEED
2	A CD FGH	F-WRONG	C-WRONG	G-WRONG	H-NOT NEED	A-WRONG
3	A CD FG	D-WRONG	A-WRONG	F-WRONG	C-WRONG	G-MATCH
4	A CD FG					G-MATCH

Spoiler: Solution to above negotiation

C D A F

 

[KarlD]

You would be suprised how often I skip an item, even if it's position ain't clear yet, this was a clear example but you can use it more often, it's a little but of a gamble but overal it gives you better result since you get more information, sometimes it doesn't pay out but thats part of the deal.

Can you give an example of another situation where that might apply? There's a more limited example in my above message example where I know some spirit needs D from the first guess, but I don't bother offering it again until the third guess because I wanted to get some information on other goods first. I'm not sure if that is what you had in mind.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

In the above example I would have given up after 2 tries.
You would have needed at least 1 or 2 matches in that round.
There is a smaller dan 25% chance that you are wrong and a small chance you can get the answer with 1 extra round.

As for more examples, when I have time and see one of those options I could make schreenshots from it.
Which I in general forget because I am to quick
, but I know I use this quite a bit, but I am not sure I would use it in an 8 variant, I should be in the position to see when I use it and when I don't.