Guild Expedition by Negotiation

A current hot topic in the guilds i'm in has been getting people involved in expedition since the guild championships came out and carrying 0/48 progress people started to hurt guilds.  I primarily do them via the combat route and believe that to be the cheaper option by far if you're setup to do so, but giving advice on that is specific to each age and the person's level of tech advancement.  Also, the desire amongst those who are primarily traders not to put up as many barracks as would be needed is fair enough and negotiation has the advantage that pretty much everyone will have what they need to complete the first 16 encounters over the week.

Negotiation runs into a wall by difficulty 3 (or possibly towards the end of difficulty 2) but difficulty 1, that's quite doable and I'm going to give an example of doing so on one server this week here.  First though, a description of the mini-game

1. Upon selecting negotiate you are presented with 5 chiefs to give gifts to
2. When you click the 'Select Resource' box below the chief you will have between 2 and 12 options to select for a gift (increasing options with increasing difficulty).  You may change your selections until you click 'Pay and Negotiate'
3. After selecting a gift for all 5 chiefs and selecting 'Pay and Negotiate' each offering will generate a response of 'Correct', 'Incorrect', or 'Wrong Person'
4. Any 'Correct' answers will result in that chief requesting no further gifts.  'Incorrect' means no chief wants that gift any more.  'Wrong Person' means at least one other chief still wants that gift.
5. You have 3 rounds of payment to get all 5 'Correct' by default.  You may pay for additional rounds at a cost of 10 diamonds or you may give up and come back to try again.  If you give up, your attempt will be consumed and the next attempt will be a new arrangement of 5 gifts (you can't use information you learned the first attempt).

And now a description of my strategy

1. If a negotiation starts with 3 or less options.  Or there's only 2 options left after the first guess because of options eliminated with 'incorrect' guesses then you're able to finish it up exhaustively by first trying whichever resource you consider 'cheapest'.
2. For the first two guesses, always try as many options that you don't know if there's any left first.  These guesses are primarily about eliminating possibilities, and finding an 'incorrect' is most valuable in this regard.
3. Next try as many 'Wrong Person' resources as you can in different positions.
4. Finally duplicate as many different 'Wrong Person' resources as you can.  Since you know there's at least 1 of them, it's more likely you get both a 'Correct' and either an 'Incorrect' or 'Wrong Person' as opposed to 2 'Incorrect' responses which provides no extra information.
5. Absent any other guidance, duplicate what's cheapest to you.

And now for the example of my week on an Iron Age city - Green cells are 'Correct' guesses.  Orange cells are 'Wrong Person' guesses.  Red cells are 'Incorrect' guesses.

Encounters 1 through 3
These all fall under the category of 3 or less options to start and there's not much to say about it so I'll just show my guess sequences.

Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins
	Supplies	Supplies	Supplies	Supplies

Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins
	Supplies	Supplies

Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins
Supplies	Supplies	Supplies		Supplies
Stone		Stone

Encounter 4
The first 4 option encounter. I encountered a bit of bad luck on my first try in that my initial guess got 4 corrects and an incorrect. This leaves me with only one square i can change so no way to do anything more than try 2 of the remaining 3 presents. And in this case it was the 3rd one that ended up being right, so i had to redo.

Coins	Supplies	Lumber	Dye	Coins
				Supplies
				Dye

Second try i got a more cooperative pattern. Two correct answers and both coin offerings were wrong. This means i know where the coin is and don't have to place it this turn, instead using that centre offering to help test whether there's a 2nd supply or 2nd dye.

Coins	Supplies	Lumber	Dye	Coins
Lumber		Supplies		Dye
		Coins

Encounter 5 and 6
These are again only 3 options.

Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins
Supplies	Supplies	Supplies		Supplies
		Stone

Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins	Coins
Supplies	Supplies	Supplies	Supplies
Lumber	Lumber

Encounter 7
4 Options. This was an odd one. It turned out after the first check that the only thing possible was supplies!

Coins	Supplies	Dye	Wine	Coins
Supplies		Supplies	Supplies	Supplies

Encounter 8
5 Options. With the second try on this one i avoided claiming the correct spot with the dye to try 2 of the 3 that could be in the remaining unknown spot.

Coins	Supplies	Lumber	Dye	Wine
	Coins		Wine
	Dye

Encounter 9
4 Options. Nothing new.

Coins	Supplies	Marble	Dye	Coins
Supplies	Dye		Marble
			Supplies

Encounter 10
4 Options that went down to 2 after the first guess.

Marble	Wine	Coins	Supplies	Coins
	Supplies	Supplies	Marble	Supplies
	Marble	Marble

Encounter 11
5 Options.

Stone	Lumber	Wine	Coins	Supplies
Supplies	Coins	Lumber
Lumber	Wine	Supplies

Encounter 12
6 Options. This is the first one that might get a little rough on retries. It's not terribly abnormal to get it on first try or two though. I did get quite lucky on the first guess with 4 incorrect answers reducing it to only 2 options for a guaranteed victory.

Coins	Supplies	Dye	Stone	Marble
Stone	Stone	Stone		Stone
		Lumber

Encounter 13
5 Options.

Stone	Dye	Wine	Coins	Supplies
		Coins		Dye
		Dye		Coins

Encounter 14
5 Options.

Stone	Lumber	Marble	Coins	Supplies
Coins	Supplies	Supplies	Coins	Stone
	Stone		Supplies

Encounter 15
6 Options.

Coins	Supplies	Dye	Stone	Wine
	Coins		Dye	Lumber
	Stone			Supplies

Encounter 16
7 Options. This one usually takes about 3-5 tries. This week it took me 8. Ouch. I did win the 25 diamonds from the chest after it though so goods well spent! (except for the part where i could've won it by fighting first try, but let's just ignore that.) Many of these come down to third tries where i have a 1/3 or 1/2 shot. You just need a bit of luck to get one of those right or to cut down the possibilities a lot more on the first guess. Or 10 diamonds to make a 4th guess but let's presume you're doing this to try and make a few diamonds not spend them :)

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Marble	Dye
Marble	Lumber	Wine		Stone
Supplies

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Marble	Dye
	Dye	Coins	Lumber	Wine
	Coins	Dye	Coins	Wine

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Dye	Marble
Dye	Stone			Wine
Wine	Wine			Lumber

Coins	Supplies	Dye	Stone	Marble
Supplies		Dye	Lumber	Supplies
				Wine

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Dye	Marble
Wine	Lumber	Coins	Supplies	Coins
Supplies	Coins	Wine	Lumber

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Marble	Dye
		Coins	Supplies	Wine
		Dye	Dye	Stone

Coins	Supplies	Stone	Dye	Wine
Supplies		Marble	Lumber
Stone		Dye	Marble

Coins	Supplies	Dye	Stone	Marble
Supplies		Lumber	Wine	Dye
Dye			Marble

In total I spent about 120 Bronze Age goods (so say 1 goods building's worth for the week traded around).  On average completing difficulty 1 will provide 8 Diamonds, 9 Previous Age goods, 12 Current Age goods, 1.2 Forge Points, 4 unattached Current Age units and a 10% chance at a minor event building (The Queen or Victory Tower are two of the possibilities i know of for difficulty 1 - it changes from week to week), as well as the love of your guild for providing a meaningful contribution towards their championship. The personal rewards get much better in higher difficulties, but negotiating becomes much more difficult without spending diamonds for most encounters - if you'd like to clear more, i recommend working towards your fighting infrastructure and I'll start covering strategies for that "soon".

Update: Since the release of tavern, the extra turn buff makes previously difficult negotiations much easier - depending on your silver availability you can use 2 or 3 of those buffs a week to get almost every negotiation first try without spending diamonds!