Epic challenges can be too challenging !!!

I personally agree with the OP. The lvls, especially when you first start on those Epic challenges are extremely difficult to get.  Unless you waste a ton of real life money to get the items needed.  

I suggest making them not so challenging the first time or 2. Then raise the difficulty.  

FYI, 10 gold tokens = 1 gold speed-up.

If you're going for gold, you need to be well established in bronze/silver token buildings. You also need good storage, and a good amount of simoleons for shopping.

I do a gold epic project every day (sometimes every 13 hours). I often finish gold in 1 hour, other times I get into situations like the one you described, and it could take me 6 hours.

I do plan ahead though, I try and keep 5 of each item in stock, and often more of the hard-to-find items in GTHQ like Milk, Bread. I do typically have 5 gold speed-up tokens before I start too, it's just all about being prepared. I now have 20 gold epic project buildings, so I pretty much have to use 2 speed-up tokens a day just so I can collect more.

Here's a list of the items I required for my last gold project, it did cost 125,000 Simoleons, with many expensive tasks backed up near the end. I do have 8 x 3 token buildings, and i've deleted as many 1-2 token buildings as possible (so they don't hold the task - you can only have 8 active).

http://answers.ea.com/t5/SimCity-BuildIt-Strategies/Epic-Projects-cost-breakdown/td-p/5107298

FYI, i'm level 55. It's probably cheaper for much lower levels, however you might not have as many 3 token buildings, so it will require more completed tasks and cost more anyway.

Gold epic projects are meant for the cities that have it all, it's kind of an end-game thing for players to work on. I actually like the epic projects and enjoy the challenge. Prior to this update I only had 220 storage (now 350), and crappy specializations.

I continue to feel that one way to balance the Epic Projects is to limit the tiered Tasks to like-tiered items.  By that I mean the following:

• 1 Star Tasks should only require "1 tier" items such as Hammers, Grass, Caps, etc.
• 2 Star Tasks should include "1 tier" items but now include "2 tier" items such asGlue, Grills, Green Smoothies, etc.
• 3 Star Tasks should include all possible "tier" items.

I understand that the quality of Task depends on the quality of building placed in the city, but I don't want duplicate 3 Star Specialization Buildings in my city.  I find such repetition to be tacky and unwanted.  It seems that the current mechanic behind Epic Projects demands that you strive to only place 3 Star buildings, thus limiting the build diversity that I thought this game is trying to encourage.

By fine tuning the Tasks to require more level appropriate items, more mayors can at least participate in striving for Silver Epics, at the least.  (I doubt that Gold could ever be reached, but I don't expect mayors under certain city levels to easily reach Silver nor Gold.  They just don't have the resource production available to do it.)  It would also prevent ridiculous shenanigans such as 1 Star Tasks requesting 4+ of a high production item, even back-to-back or in multiple Tasks simultaneously.  This type of event roadblocks lower lever mayors from moving forward in an Epic Project.  Granted, the Devs have make Bronze level Epic Projects available with only 10 Star points, but I feel that this kind of limitation only hurts the gameplay experience.

I like the Epic Project challenges.  I do strongly feel that they could use some fine tuning to make them more appealing to a broader player base, but maybe that's not what the Devs have in mind.  Maybe these challenges are intended only for the more developed cities to keep those mayors striving to develop their city in a new way that is more applicable in the "end game meta" of SimCity BuildIt, but at the risk of overtly alienating players they just haven't said that.

It's been a few months since I first complained about the epic challenges.

And thanks to the helpful suggestion of "stock up before you start," I've managed plenty of cheetah buildings along the way (and also discovered that the number of pieces to make a token has increased steadily since - now I need 13 pieces to make a cheetah token)..

Having spent all my time on epic buildings has left me with a slight problem:  I'm running out of regular buildings to upgrade.  Epic challenges don't seem to apply to any buildings other than the original building type (Tokyo, London, and Paris buildings have yet to be flagged for epic upgrades)..

This is not a proven theory or have i tried to prove it but it seems to me that as you progress through the project tasks will require items you don't have or few of. I always make sure that I have at least 10 each of items that are time consuming to produce or require 2 or 3 time consuming items to produce and I never had a problem getting the gold token. Sure I have had to spend time searching the global trade HQ to buy items but never had too many problems finding them nor did I use a lot of money to buy items to complete the project.. So yes a silver token is really pretty easy to achieve and it is pretty easy to get to that 100-120 point range. It's after that that things get tough but its not impossible.

So you stockpile both items and simoleons which you say has taken you a week just to get 1/9th of a cheetah token. So it will take you 2 months to get the 9 pieces to get 1 token and ultimately 18 months to have enough buildings that will give 5 tokens (which is the maximum) in a 24-hour period. I'm assuming a person would need to dedicate a lot of time to do this. Games should be played in a person's

spare time, not take over the person'so life.

Preparation and patience are the key here...and the lower your storage level the more difficult the task.

First, work on getting your storage to 500 to the exclusion of everything else. Once you get there, your epic life will be improved exponentially.

Boring? Perhaps...but this game is for turtles not cheetahs. 

You need to focus on increasing the city storage first. That takes months... and u need a feeder city. After that you get like 7 off each item, and then start.  I usually reach 140 in less than 15 minutes. One time i completed in 23 minutes, but usually i need to start produce what’s missing and let it be for a few hours , and then it’s easy to complete.