What to do when provinces are in Extra Hard mode and need to complete several to advance in the Research tree, open chest/next section

[Lleddirs]

Hello all... Need some Help and/or Advice here! So, I'm at the very end of Level IV with only a few more research areas to complete in the tree. I'm also getting close to the point where I need to complete a bunch of provinces in order to open the next section chest and advance to Section V. The reason I am behind in completing provinces (as I would usually complete as I go along), is because they will not change from "Very Hard" to something a little simpler! I've been waiting... I train troops whenever possible (quite often training is always moving along)... I keep up with my upgrades to all buildings... I do not have strong enough troops yet to fight in each province, so I'm constantly being forced to negotiate... however, you have to have a lot of the standard goods to be able to do that, especially when at the point I am at where the provinces are all at Very Hard. I usually try to wait until it gets down to Medium (at the very least) before Negotiating, so it will not cost too much. None of the provinces seem to be downgrading to something a little easier! So the question is... What the heck am I doing wrong here? I'm obviously not understanding something about this game. I don't have this issue as badly in the few other worlds but do have it occasionally (which are Elf worlds)! Just seems to be this one (Human)! There's got to be a trick here or something else I can do to make this a little easier. Can someone give me some advice or tell me what in the world I'm doing wrong!

 

[Gkyr]

If you still have squad size 11 and 12 tech research to satisfy, then aim to complete those and see whether that will help with the provinces.

 

[StarLoad]

Squad size upgrades are the only solution but the good news if that the "Very Hard" will change after you get the upgrade but only to Hard or Medium, depending on how much overscouting you have done. Once you clear the Advanced Scout for the next chapter don't scout any more till you can get your completed provinces in line with your chapter needs, Look at the end and see what it needs to complete the ch and only do that many.

 

[samidodamage]

Hi @Lleddirs and welcome to the forums!
This post got really long, but here's what I'd do. I took a look at your city (I think, lol! I chose the Human city on Sinya Arda on ElvenStats, then imported your city to ElvenArchitect). Since you said you still need to complete provinces to unlock the chest for Ch5:

I need to complete a bunch of provinces in order to open the next section chest and advance to Section V.

I don't think overscouting is your issue. You are at a tough spot in early chapters where fighting can be difficult; most players get through this spot by negotiating on the world map, but you have a definite goods issue and that's what I'd address first in your situation:
You are boosted in steel, scrolls, and elixir. You have 4 (lvl 8) steel, 3 (lvl 8) marble and 2 (lvl 9) planks for Tier 1 goods; 4 (lvl 6) scrolls, 1 (lvl 6) crystal and 1 (lvl 5) silk for Tier 2 goods; 3 (lvl 3) elixir, 1 (lvl 4) dust and 1 (lvl 4) gems for Tier 3 goods plus a Traveling Merchant III (Traveling Merchants are not as efficient as your boosted factories and trading for non-boosted). Since you're nearing the end of the research tree for Ch4, you should have unlocked the ability to have T1 goods at lvl 15, T2 goods at lvl 9 and T3 goods at lvl 7. I doubt you have a very high boost % since you don't seem to play the tournaments very much (best source of relics to get those boosts up). But, even with lower level boosts, building non-boosted factories is a significant loss; you could use that population, culture and space to have higher levels of your boosted factories and could then even trade at a significant discount for your non-boosted goods and still come out better than by trying to make those goods with non-boosted factories. If you sold off your non-boosted factories, you'd get back the pop and culture they're using and be able to use that to upgrade your boosted factories to the maximum, increasing the amount of goods you make and can trade for the other goods you need. Your FS there has a wide range of players in different chapters, with 7 of the active players in Ch10+, so trading for the non-boosted goods should not be a problem. If it is, that's a whole different problem you'd need to address.
The second thing I'd address is your military training queues. You will have more room, so I'd look to upgrade those as I could. The 3 (lvl 8) armories can be upgraded to lvl 15. That will increase your training size and extend the total time of your training queues. You should also be able to upgrade your lvl 8 barracks (lvl 9 opens that 5th training slot). Then, alternate upgrading armories/barracks as your pop/culture/space allows. The goal there should be to have a total training time high enough that it doesn't run out when you're away from the game (usually shoot for ~9hrs) and you'll be training something all the time. It's really hard to train enough units to replace losses when your queues are idle several hours/day. This could make your Training Grounds time really long, and those dogs are better than your barbarians, but that's only one troop so you'd still be able to train them 24/7. Those 1 star Dryads are not nearly as good as your 2 star crossbowmen. Even if you're unable to use combat much, training them is a great way to have a good inventory of troops as you get more squad size upgrades (which will cause your total number of squads to go down since there are more units/squad making each squad stronger) and future upgrades that will apply your already trained units as well as future units trained.
That's a lot of info to process, so I'll stop here. Ask questions as you try to absorb all this. And don't forget to have fun with it!

 

[Mykan]

You are at a point in the game players recognise that world map combat is somewhat broken (sadly inno does not). To keep things as "easy" as possible

• Scout the minimum number of provinces (sounds like you have done this)
• Research every squad size tech you have available

Only these 2 things will impact the difficulty of provinces. The way you scout can have an impact as well as costs jump up every ring you scout and every province.

The advice above on factories is good, the more you can make the easier it will be to negotiate/trade. You may also be able to find someone in a fellowship willing to gift you goods to get past that point of the game. The good news is that the world map combat does get easier and you will eventually be able to go past the minimum amounts.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Hello all... Need some Help and/or Advice here! So, I'm at the very end of Level IV with only a few more research areas to complete in the tree. I'm also getting close to the point where I need to complete a bunch of provinces in order to open the next section chest and advance to Section V. The reason I am behind in completing provinces (as I would usually complete as I go along), is because they will not change from "Very Hard" to something a little simpler! I've been waiting... I train troops whenever possible (quite often training is always moving along)... I keep up with my upgrades to all buildings... I do not have strong enough troops yet to fight in each province, so I'm constantly being forced to negotiate... however, you have to have a lot of the standard goods to be able to do that, especially when at the point I am at where the provinces are all at Very Hard. I usually try to wait until it gets down to Medium (at the very least) before Negotiating, so it will not cost too much. None of the provinces seem to be downgrading to something a little easier! So the question is... What the heck am I doing wrong here? I'm obviously not understanding something about this game. I don't have this issue as badly in the few other worlds but do have it occasionally (which are Elf worlds)! Just seems to be this one (Human)! There's got to be a trick here or something else I can do to make this a little easier. Can someone give me some advice or tell me what in the world I'm doing wrong!

You are doing nothing wrong, the influence of squad size research is very huge in the beginning.
So you could aim for those, alternatively you can just negotiate them, I have been negotiating world map encounters since day 1 and have always focussed on that.
Negotiation is the easiest form, and it makes scouting unlimited as with fighting you are constantly forced to stay within a certain bountry of provinces while if you have enough goods production you can just do whatever you like.

Units, use them in the spire / tournaments instead so you get more goodies to improve your game.

 

[Lleddirs]

Such good advice from All and thank you for all the encouragement!!! I got a lot out of all the different comments... I sincerely appreciate how much time and effort people are willing to make to help out people like me. I appreciate that very much!

If anyone thinks of anything else, please feel free to comment. I like reading about the different ways people approach this game. Very interesting.

Thanks again guys... Much appreciated!!! Have a great day/night!

 

[ajqtrz]

In my Chapter 5 city in Beta I tried to ignore "very hard" and, instead, build a city capable of negotiating as needed. That worked. I knew from experience fighting would be pretty tough and mostly too tough. So I put in, as samidodamage says, boosted goods buildings only. I'm in a rather un-populated area but found that once I started visiting people daily they were much more willing to grab my trades. In any case, I put a lot of the boosted mfrs in and have kept them up to as high as they can go. That works. I have 6 T1 boosted, 3 T2 boosted, and 1 T3 boosted. The "mistakes" I think I made were putting in only 15 residences (+2 magic I won in the Spire) and perhaps a second T3 mfr. If I were to do it again I'd focus on about 17 residences and 2 T3. I could do that as the extra residences would supply the population needed.

In any case, "over-scouting" isn't a problem in the early chapters as long as you build for catering provinces instead of fighting them. I think the transition to fighting, for me, won't occur until Dwarves or after.

AJ

 

[Darielle]

I have seen players who did all of the upgrades, still have a ton of provinces to do before they can open up the next chapter, and they still don't have easy provinces (not the ones previously opened, of course, but provinces yet to do.) For some reason Chapter 4 is where that can happen; I have a friend who has that problem, although not as bad as you do, Lledder. At least theirs are yellow.

One thing to remember is that provinces that are already opened (scouted but not completed) will never change. It's only the ones you haven't opened yet that will get easier when you do the squad research. So I hope you haven't opened everything yet.

 

[Darielle]

Hi @Lleddirs and welcome to the forums!
This post got really long, but here's what I'd do. I took a look at your city (I think, lol! I chose the Human city on Sinya Arda on ElvenStats, then imported your city to ElvenArchitect). Since you said you still need to complete provinces to unlock the chest for Ch5:

I don't think overscouting is your issue. You are at a tough spot in early chapters where fighting can be difficult; most players get through this spot by negotiating on the world map, but you have a definite goods issue and that's what I'd address first in your situation:
You are boosted in steel, scrolls, and elixir. You have 4 (lvl 8) steel, 3 (lvl 8) marble and 2 (lvl 9) planks for Tier 1 goods; 4 (lvl 6) scrolls, 1 (lvl 6) crystal and 1 (lvl 5) silk for Tier 2 goods; 3 (lvl 3) elixir, 1 (lvl 4) dust and 1 (lvl 4) gems for Tier 3 goods plus a Traveling Merchant III (Traveling Merchants are not as efficient as your boosted factories and trading for non-boosted). Since you're nearing the end of the research tree for Ch4, you should have unlocked the ability to have T1 goods at lvl 15, T2 goods at lvl 9 and T3 goods at lvl 7. I doubt you have a very high boost % since you don't seem to play the tournaments very much (best source of relics to get those boosts up). But, even with lower level boosts, building non-boosted factories is a significant loss; you could use that population, culture and space to have higher levels of your boosted factories and could then even trade at a significant discount for your non-boosted goods and still come out better than by trying to make those goods with non-boosted factories. If you sold off your non-boosted factories, you'd get back the pop and culture they're using and be able to use that to upgrade your boosted factories to the maximum, increasing the amount of goods you make and can trade for the other goods you need. Your FS there has a wide range of players in different chapters, with 7 of the active players in Ch10+, so trading for the non-boosted goods should not be a problem. If it is, that's a whole different problem you'd need to address.
The second thing I'd address is your military training queues. You will have more room, so I'd look to upgrade those as I could. The 3 (lvl 8) armories can be upgraded to lvl 15. That will increase your training size and extend the total time of your training queues. You should also be able to upgrade your lvl 8 barracks (lvl 9 opens that 5th training slot). Then, alternate upgrading armories/barracks as your pop/culture/space allows. The goal there should be to have a total training time high enough that it doesn't run out when you're away from the game (usually shoot for ~9hrs) and you'll be training something all the time. It's really hard to train enough units to replace losses when your queues are idle several hours/day. This could make your Training Grounds time really long, and those dogs are better than your barbarians, but that's only one troop so you'd still be able to train them 24/7. Those 1 star Dryads are not nearly as good as your 2 star crossbowmen. Even if you're unable to use combat much, training them is a great way to have a good inventory of troops as you get more squad size upgrades (which will cause your total number of squads to go down since there are more units/squad making each squad stronger) and future upgrades that will apply your already trained units as well as future units trained.
That's a lot of info to process, so I'll stop here. Ask questions as you try to absorb all this. And don't forget to have fun with it!

What Sami said!!!

 

[StarLoad]

...

One thing to remember is that provinces that are already opened (scouted but not completed) will never change. It's only the ones you haven't opened yet that will get easier when you do the squad research. So I hope you haven't opened everything yet.

I do not believe this is correct I have seen open provinces move down from hard to med after I scouted and then completed an SSU or the advanced tech for the next chapter

 

[Silver Lady]

One other thing: it’s probably obvious but hasn’t been stated exactly this way in this thread. When you scout, scout in a circle around your city. This should help you not ‘jump rings’ sooner than you have to. As @Mykan pointed out

The way you scout can have an impact as well as costs jump up every ring you scout and every province.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

I do not believe this is correct I have seen open provinces move down from hard to med after I scouted and then completed an SSU or the advanced tech for the next chapter

Originally once you paid the scout the difficulty was set based on the scout cost (read the enemy SS is set) it will no longer change. SSU change your SS not the enemies so it makes absolute sense that it changes the color of the province, as the color depends on the difference between the enemy SS vs your SS. while the enemy doesnt change (the province diffiulty) yours changed in your favour. making the battle difficulty easier
I like to emphesises the difference between province and battle difficulty these are 2 different things.

That said...
Advanced scouts originally did not change anything as you already paid for the scout so the province difficulty was already set on that value, but this might have been changed silently somewhere in the past.
I am not certain but I think I have seen the difficulty change also after a advanced scout tech which would imply the enemy SS can now be changed after the fact.
But it could be either way, I am no longer certain it's how it was in the past or if they now do affect former scouted provinces.

 

[Guurt The Destroyer]

I do not believe that Advance Scouts changes provinces that have already been scouted. I scouted some very hard provinces, and they seemed to stay very hard after doing an Advance Scout. It made me realize that over scouting is a massive waste of resources in most cases, and now I only scout was is necessary for the chapter end and/or what is necessary to have 12 provinces open for a tournament (beyond 12 provinces at my level is too hard at this time).

 

[Lelanya]

Advanced Scout definitely changes the difficulty of the provinces. It's the only thing that does change it every time. However, there is no observable difference between a red province, a red +1, a red +2, and so on.
This issue is further compounded by the fact that the mobile app has no 'colours' to use as a guide, nor the available province readout either. They must choose by cost of the scout and trial and error. I never send out a scout from the App, it's far too painful, nor do a enjoy solving provinces on my phone.

Most but not all squad size upgrades improve the odds in a fight. There was a point where it improves for one scout, if you skip the optional ones, and Support would make a point of telling us, only the Scout works (on that other Forum, back when Muf-Muf actually oversaw his team).

 

[Lelanya]

Chapter 3 has some yellow at end of the chapter.
Chapter 4 should have some yellow and one orange, if you play a conservative game and don't scout more than is needed.
Squad size upgrade makes a huge difference at those levels.

 

[Moho]

Can someone give me some advice or tell me what in the world I'm doing wrong!

I'm in chapter 5 where I copiously overscouted (a concept I don't believe in, but which the game apparently wants me to accept).

I recently started two new cities. I have advanced fast so far, in a way, but tried to limit myself to few scouted provinces - which I managed to do.

However, one city has scouted more than the other by one expansion, and what happens is that all the scoutable provinces now look red and VERY HARD, whereas the other city enjoys nice belt of YELLOW and mostly ORANGE scoutable provinces.

That's all I can say based on my recent experience.

 

[Gladiola]

I'm at the end of chapter 5 with 5 provinces left to get to the 100 required for chapter 6, and all my remaining provinces are at best orange. I've completed the squad size upgrades for the chapter. I'm in the sixth ring; the fifth ring was yellow and the sixth ring is orange to me. I'm interested to see if the remainder of the sixth ring drops to yellow or green when I complete advanced scouts.