With each star you complete on a province, the cost of negotiating and the toughness and number of enemy troops increases. Also, the more provinces you do, the tougher they get. So trying to complete the 3rd star will be harder than the 1st star, and the 8th province on your list will be tougher than the 1st province on your list. Also, the tournaments for your boosted goods relics tend to be a little easier than the tournaments for the other six goods. And supposedly, the planks tournament is the easiest of all nine, whether you are boosted in planks or not.
Also, the more advanced you get in the game's chapters and research, the better you will get at the tournaments. While someone in chapter 2 or 3 may be able to earn a couple hundred points, someone in chapter 8 or 10 or 12 could earn anywhere from 1000 to 3000 points. Oh, and the further you get, including leveling up your military buildings, the quicker your troop production will get. In early chapters it may takes hours to produce a single squad, but in later chapters it can be minutes instead. The Ancient Wonders you build makes a difference in this too. Some of them increase squad size, some increase training speed. If you want to do a lot of fighting and less negotiating, you will want to build those Wonders once you research them.