With the manual fights I could complete the first map (in an earlier spire), now went to the half of the first map with fighting. Then I completed the remainging encounters (on all 3 maps) with diplomacy (I'm familiar with the feature from FoE), except 3-4 encounters.
e.g. in the middle of the 3rd map I've completed a manual fight (original squadsize 3200, in spire ~7500). I've lost 4 squads of treant during the 2 waves --> 5000 treant, which costs about 435.000 supplies (and takes 15 hours to train). The reward was 10% supply, which is 410.000 supplies (end of tech tree). So I spent 15 hours training time, and 10 minutes to complete the fight and lost about 25.000 supplies. The same for the other encounters. Solution: reduce the suadsize drastically.
The implementation of the diplomacy is good, I think it is better, then in FoE (implementation = look, how you interact with the system). It's easier to use, don't take too much unnecessary clicking. But the balancing is really bad (like the fights). The only thing which maybe acceptable is the tier 1-3 goods. Mana, seeds and tier 4-5 too much, especially if someone is in middle of a chapter. (no tier 6, which is ok because I'm in the chapter where it was announced, but it would be better if it would require it if all the techs are completed).
So while I completed all the maps, I used about 4-5x my coin and supply storage (
~160.000.000 coins and ~16.000.000 supplies), more than 100.000 seeds, I'm not sure about mana, but over 500.000, some orks (I have too many of them to recognise the changed, so I maybe I used a lot), and I don't know how many tier 1-5 goods (but also a lot, like 10000 marbles per offer).
What I get? About 1x my coin and supply storage (maybe a bit more), some diamond (~100-150, but used about the same amount to buy extra guessing rounds), some portal profits (my """"main"""" rewards (last boss) was a 25% one, and somewhere was some 5-10%), some catalists (max. 10), a lot of spell fragments, some time instants (maybe ~10 hours, but used a lot more to open the gates - like 100 hours maybe (the cost of all gate time)) and one building (traiding station, which produces 10% portal profit in 48 hours and expires in 50 days, so at maximum it is 240%). I don't remember any other rewards, and maybe I'm mistaken in some numbers, but you can see the cost-reward ratio.
When there are 5 types of goods, it is doable, but in the last boss there are 8 types of goods, which is too much, and needs 3-5 times to get it right, so you can count it 20x the cost of one offer, and that will be the cost.
The rewards should be much better, we mentioned a lot of possible options above. But also a cost-reduction is needed, because we can't produce that much resources, to complete it every week.
And not the same rewards on all of the chest, and all of the map (the rewards on the 3rd map are about the same as on the 1st map)
Also it works the same, as in FoE. But the difference is that the costs there are a lot less. A normal encounter there costs several hundred of goods, but the "diplomacy" there requires only 1-4 (and only the 4th map (there it has 4 maps, the 4th is very hard - like here the 1st
) requires a bit more). So the cost is way less, then a single encounter on the map. But here, it is way more --> people won't play it. Also the rewards there are much better. And the diamond cost of missing goods are way cheaper there (5 diamonds per good, here if you don't have 1-2k, it is over 50 --> people don't buy it for that much cost). To buy an extra round in FoE is 10 diamonds, which is ok. Here 25, too much (if it were 10, more people would buy it --> more diamonds in sum). And there the first encounters on each map require only 2 kind of goods, than 3, and so on (I don't know the first half of the first map, but the others started with more rounds)
And again it is the same (except of balancing - which have to be corrected first). It could be better if there will be some extras in it. Like some players said, if they don't take what they need, it would reduce the costs by a bit. Or
some other ideas, like:
- when a spirit got what they needed, you can't offer them more. If you could offer them anything else it could increase the chance to find the right combination (you know you will lose those resources, but offer them to see if anyone else needs it or not) --> more logic.
- exploration (you give them one kind of good (let's say 10k marbles) and they say if anybody needs it. And it doesn't cost any round. Also this could be limited, like 3 rounds and 3 exploration 'round' - it would be much more logic based, like when to use those exploration rounds).
- ignoring a person (spirit). You can decide to not to pay to e.g. one person, and it is completed if the other 4 has the resources they needed. Or it can be limited to the whole map / spire, that let's say you can ignore a spirit 10 times, and use when you want --> more logic.
- or the same to goods. In X amount of times (let's say 10 times) you can say that I don't want to pay with this good - so it can be with 1 good less --> easier, but you have to decide when to use thet option (can't use on every encounter) --> more logic
- why all encounters have 5 spirits? And why there are always 3 rounds? You could change these as well to make it more interesting
- chance for extra rounds, the rewards could contain some extra round 'instants', which can be used in a later encounter to increase our chance there (e.g. on a boss). So more logic on when to use them
- it is good that the goods changes when you lose, but it would be great if we can change some goods (and not have to spend some (a lot) to do one round and get new ones). e.g. you can select one resource (only once) before every convincing to an other random resource. This way you can optimize your losses.
- they can accept more goods. One is the main resource they want, and the other is an 'ok' one. The convincing is success, when most of the spirits (3 of 5) got there main resource and the other ones at least there 'ok' one (or they also got they main resource). If one got they main resource, they don't accept any other one (like now). But when you gave them an 'ok' one, you can choose between you offer them an other one to guess the main one, or don't offer a new, and stick with the 'ok' one (and try to convince the others) --> way more logic
- Every spirit would have a require item (like 5% gold instant, a rune, some spells, units...). If you decide the give them those, you don't have to convince, so don't have to pay for them --> more opportunities, especially in the later rounds
- If you convinced one successly, but can't convince all ones (at the and of all rounds - so you failed), you could get a reduce on costs next time. So if you failed once, (you get new types of resources like now and) the amounts are reduced to say 75%. The next time you lose the same encounter, the costs reduced to 50% or so... (also the initial costs should be reduced to the current amount like I said before) --> less losses, more likely to peoply try it again.
- You can have hints at the beginning of the convincing. Every spirit tells you one resource that don't required (it may needed for other spirits) --> more logic
