So, Docks and Revolutionaries are out of the question, there is no excess for these, and these favours are usually to immediate use.
But which other favours are the best to use for conflict cards? For now I keep Tomb-Colonies 5, and exchange Society with the baronet aggressive option on their conflict cards.
I am almost sure I miss something profitable. Menace reductions have (almost) no price for me now though, so best plain Echo values would be nice to know.
Surely, I am not the first to ask, and somebody have the answer to share maybe?
I usually choose to save up rare Favours and to loose a most accessible Favours (Society and Criminals for me). It’s ironic since they are my most developed and RP-reasonable connections.
Society favours can be spent so profitably at court that I usually use the conflict card to cash in Tomb Colonies instead. Hell, the Church, and the Rubbery Men all have multiple conflict cards, so those can be good ones to plan on cashing on. The Great Game cash in on their conflict with the Church has a slightly lower pure echo value, but gives second chances, with Sudden Insights still being useful at endgame for the goat card and Port Carnelian.
If you have favours from both Rubbery Men and Tomb-Colonists, there is the possibility for misfortune to happen at the carnival. There, you are given the choice to save either a Rubbery Man or a Tomb Colonist. Saving either one will grant you at least one item worth 12.50 echoes, 10 carnival tickets, and 2.50 echoes worth of items per 3 of the opposing faction’s favours. Do be warned that this will consume all of the opposing faction’s favours.
Personally, I recommend saving the Rubbery Man. He grants you few more items compared to the Tomb-Colonist, his item (A Magnificent Diamond) is harder to obtain than the Tomb-Colonist’s (A Scrap of Puzzle-Damask, which can be up-converted from silk items), favours from Tomb-Colonists can be readily obtained at the tomb colonies, and the Tomb-Colonist presumably has a higher chance of surviving compared to the Rubbery Man. I feel less bad abandoning him compared to the Rubbery Man.
The kaleidoscopic church: Dump Church favors if 7 favors, otherwise Bohemian.
Contact in Great Game: Dump Church if 7 favors, otherwise GG.
Brimstone or Frankincense: Always dump Hell favors.
Youthful High Spirits: Avoid; always turn Docks favors into expedition supplies.
Devil and the Child: Always dump Urchins favors.
They all look the same to me: Dump Rubberies if I can use the suspicion reduction or Constables < 7 Favors, otherwise Constables.
Amber in the Well: Dump Revolutionaries if I have an extreme excess of Rev favors (5+ with Rev favor generators in hand), otherwise Rubberies.
Misfortune at the Carnival: Always dump Rubberies.
Going Gentle: Always dump Society.
Crime or Punishment: Dump Criminals if and only if I have 7 favors and can use the suspicion reduction, otherwise don’t play card at all.
The Acacia and the Butterfly: Avoid; keep Docks below 5 favors and turn them all into Expedition Supplies.
A Familiar Face: Dump Urchins if I have 7 favors, otherwise don’t play at all.
All my Tomb Colonist favors go to Collection of Curiosity turnins, meaning I always have 5 or 6 favors. Excess criminals go to Implausible Penance minister beating, and also Thief Cache expeditions. Docks go to expedition supplies. All other favors in excess to go the various Calling in Favors. edited by Kaijyuu on 4/13/2018
So are these conflict cards generally more profitable than cashing in favors individually throughout London? I had always thought they they were less so - but that was at a cursory glance and I never actually did the math.
I do know that most favors are individually cashed in at 4.2 echoes/.
In most cases you’ll make more money cashing them in with conflict cards, yes. The main reason is that each turn-in with Calling in Favors costs an action, whereas the conflict cards only take one action for multiple favors.
A reasonable baseline is that it takes 1 action to gain 1 favor. So, turning in via Calling in Favors (other than in the flit) means that it takes 2 actions to get 4.2 E, or 2.1 EPA. Most conflict cards are ~8.00 echo turnins for 2 favors, so 8/3 = 2.66 EPA.
Here are some old numbers I have (these may not be completely correct and omit some options that I don’t choose for various other reasons).
[table] [tr] [td]Card [td]Option [td]Echo [td]Favour [td]EPA [tr] [td]Penance [td]One Stone Spirifer [td]4.80 [td]1 [td]2.40 [tr] [td]
[td]Burn It Down [td]9.00 [td]3 [td]2.25 [tr] [td]
[td]Topsy [td]14.00 [td]5 [td]2.33 [tr] [td]
[td]Beat Minister [td]20.00 [td]7 [td]2.50 [tr] [td]Kaleidoscopic Church [td]All Options [td]8.00 [td]2 [td]2.67 [tr] [td]Contact Great Game [td]All Options [td]7.50 [td]2 [td]2.50 [tr] [td]Brimstone [td]All Options [td]7.50 [td]2 [td]2.50 [tr] [td]Crime or Punishment [td]All Options [td]6.00 [td]2 [td]2.00 [tr] [td]They All Look the Same [td]Finger Guilty [td]8.00 [td]2 [td]2.67 [tr] [td]
[td]Finger a Scapegoat [td]8.50 [td]2 [td]2.83 [tr] [td]Acacia and Butterfly [td]Widow Advantage [td]18.10 [td]5 [td]3.02 [tr] [td]
[td]Widow Advantage [td]23.10 [td]7 [td]2.89 [tr] [td]Youthful High Spirits [td]Sabotage [td]9.00 [td]5 [td]1.50 [tr] [td]
[td]Sabotage [td]13.50 [td]7 [td]1.69 [tr] [td]
[td]Convince [td]17.50 [td]5 [td]2.92 [tr] [td]
[td]Convince [td]22.50 [td]7 [td]2.81 [tr] [td]Devil and the Child [td]All Options [td]8.00 [td]2 [td]2.67 [tr] [td]Amber in the Well [td]Convince Rubbery [td]8.00 [td]2 [td]2.67 [tr] [td]
[td]Convince Revolutionary [td]8.50 [td]2 [td]2.83 [tr] [td]Going Gentle [td]Discretely Inform [td]8.00 [td]2 [td]2.67 [tr] [td]
[td]Sneak [td]7.65 [td]2 [td]2.55 [tr] [td]
[td]Break Him Out [td]8.65 [td]2 [td]2.88 [tr] [td]Misfortune Carnival [td]Save Rubbery [td]18.10 [td]5 [td]3.02 [tr] [td]
[td]Save Rubbery [td]23.10 [td]7 [td]2.89 [tr] [td]
[td]Save Tomb Colonists [td]17.50 [td]5 [td]2.92 [tr] [td]
[td]Save Tomb Colonists [td]22.50 [td]7 [td]2.81 [tr] [td]A Familiar Face [td]Return to Widow [td]13.50 [td]5 [td]2.25 [tr] [td]
[td]Return to Widow [td]22.00 [td]7 [td]2.75 [/table]
The take home is that almost all are more profitable than Calling in Favours, other than Crime and Punishment which was too nerfed. Note also that if you are in late game and can Return to the Empress’s Court, you can sell blocks of 3 society favours in one action, which if you do batches of 6 at a time (paying an extra 1 action to return to the court) amounts to an EPA of 2.78 (plus some suspicion), so I usually dump my Society favours there.
That said, there is also the matter of opportunity costs, such as the cost of not having spent Favours of one type but getting cards that would let the player gain more, if he/she has less than 7 of them.
For example, there are not many storylet-based ways to expend Favours: Urchins; even Favours: Revolutionaries have a storylet to spend them on.
I find the wikia’s handy table quite useful. I usually play only the neutral options on conflict cards, if I play them at all, but I sometimes check that table to see whether I can easily get rid of some Menace, or acquire a rare item, by playing one of the other options.
If you guys are counting the action to gain one favor and the action to cash in that favor when calling in individual favors, are you counting the same actions it takes to gain the number of favors needed for a conflict card to appear in the first place? Don’t they require five of each faction? Which would mean ten actions before cashing in on the conflict card.
No, I only count the cost of acquiring the favours actually spent on the conflict card (plus one to play it) in the EPA, not the cost of getting to the card appearance threshold. So if a card consumes two favours, the EPA is gained echoes divided by three, whereas if the card consumes five favours, the EPA is echoes divided by six.
Including the "cost" of getting to the threshold would introduce a lot of double counting, since I usually sit at 7 favours per faction (at least for the factions that only consume 2 at a time on conflict cards), and so pay that threshold cost only once (dropping to 5 favours, where the card is still available, and building back up). Also, I’m not using the EPA in some complicated way like determining optimal dependent sequences of plays (for which I suppose I could see incorporating threshold costs). I just use the EPA to know whether or not I should play a flipped opportunity card given my current goal of maximizing echoes for the cidre grind, Since I only play cards with EPA > 1.78 or so, about the only cards I play these days are cards that grant favours or conflict cards (plus a few others with high payouts). If I’m maxed out on favours and have a card that grants that favour, only then will I Call in Favours to drop down enough to play that card, taking me back up to 7.