50+ hours now played - feedback and ideas

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
1

I’ve now managed to put in more than 50 hours and I would like to throw out some feedback and ideas:

  • I feel like iron ore > iron ingot processing needs a bit of a bump. It seems like smelting and producing iron never keeps up with demand at tier 3, so I’d propose adjusting the production amount from 5 to 10 (per 5 iron ore);
  • Seem token, gold ore > gold ingot processing seems a little too strong. Once you start producing your own gold, it can become pretty easy as you’re never really short of cash. I’d propose adjusting production amount from 100 to 75 (per 5 gold ore);
  • I still struggle to get enough logs in storage, even with the 0.75 patch changes, from tier 3 so I think this still needs a bit of tweaking: maybe the work camps need an upgrade option where they become lumberyards or quarries and resource gathering (wood or stone) got a boost;
  • Once you start mining coal, it would be good to add a mechanic where you can enable/disable whether homes can use this instead of firewood;
  • I’d propose adding a cider press at tier 2. This would act sort of like a park, in that it is a public building and gives desirability bonus and also reduces health risks (as villagers wouldn’t necessary need to drink dirty water) but at the risk of having a bit of disorder as unhappy villagers could now get drunk at tier 2;
  • I’d also propose adding a sheriff’s office at tier 2 (sort of like a rat catcher in that it has one employee) that will deal with any disorder; at tier 3 a public stocks could be added to deal with the increased risks of drunken rampages that come with the pub!
  • It would be helpful, I think, to add some information to buildings to show how big a population it can service (at its current employment rate and its theoretical max). This would help with determining if service buildings, like the night soil collector, are keeping up with demand;
  • Finally, I think a trader needs to be added (or tweaked) so you can sell cows. Cow populations seem to grow rapidly and, although slaughtering is worthwhile for the resources it provides, it is difficult to keep these under control!
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yes

no

they’re already planning to add forestry service to replant trees

we’d need much more coal

yes

yes

yes

you haven’t hit 1000 population, have you? :stuck_out_tongue:

3

Some good ideas here.

  • It would be helpful, I think, to add some information to buildings to show how big a population it can service (at its current employment rate and its theoretical max). This would help with determining if service buildings, like the night soil collector, are keeping up with demand;*

FF lacks what most other simulations routinely have. Building stats are a big one. Currently it’s aguessing game to figure out how many of X you need to service Y number of people.

4

How do you get fermented cider from the press by just walking up to it? Or do you mean not actually like a park or public building, but like the bakery, with workers producing it for the town?

The water from the wells usually isn’t all that dirty for a healthy human, and could be boiled at home if need be - which Medieval people sometimes did, despite not knowing about germs. People were very “concerned” about their drinking water, as you can see by the punishments for anyone suspected of not keeping it clean.

Cider on the other hand can spoil, as it’s not strong liquor like vodka - it’s not high enough in ethanol content to kill the bacteria, but high rather in sugars for them to feed on (and other unhealthy germs). It’s not like modern hard cider either - no pasteurization, no sulphur added during the making to kill the bacteria, no steril bottles with modern seals. That’s why it was generally consumed where it was consumed and not sold and transported to other regions.

And replacing your entire water consumption with cider, wine, beer etc is very unhealthy, obviously.

5

Definitely some good ideas.

I’m not sure that it is really feasible, for most of the buildings, to say that you need X for a Y population. I feel like too much is interconnected.

Think of the food industry. How many hunters should I have? Well, having 20 hunters won’t do you any good if there is insufficient game to hunt nearby. Then again, once you have farms, with a ready supply of cattle to butcher, I’d only keep enough hunters to round out the protein and go after bears and boars. Maybe your village is right next to a large lake, and your fish supply is overwhelming. That can cut down on how many hunters you need. Foragers too can require you to have fewer hunters. As well as fields.

What about wagons? If your town is pretty compact you would need noticeably less than a village that is spread way out, even with fewer villagers. How do you translate that into “you need X for Y”?

Weapons/arrows? How many hunters do you have? Are you raided often, and by how many? Lots of wild boars and bears in the area? They would all affect what you need to produce.

Industrial buildings? Is 1 glass blower sufficient for a Y population? Having preservists will increase your need for glass, but only if you have sufficient fruit and veggies to preserve. So how many fruit trees and foragers with access to berries do you have?

There are some buildings that probably could have a small range for answering “X for Y”. Cobblers. Everyone needs shoes. Although I don’t know if the game takes into account how far you travel for work with regards to shoe life. If so, then that number would vary quite a bit depending on how your town is set up. Chandlers and Soap Makers. I feel those are independent enough that you could do “X for Y”.

Just thought about the Night Soil Collectors. It’s not just how large your population is, but how far they have to travel to get to the homes. I was keeping my compost bins out near the fields, to keep them from negatively affecting homes. I found that I was having waste build up in homes because it took forever for my collectors to walk back and forth. I ended up increasing the number of Night Soil Collectors.

Sorry for going on so long with this. I think how many you need of a specific building is going to be unique for your village, and part of the challenge ( and fun ).

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6

I like the cider press, but hear what you are saying. Maybe the cider press could produce hard cider for the pubs once they have an arborist and fruit trees. That would give the village an alcoholic beverage to produce for Entertainment, but without the need for wheat and honey. Obviously only once the fruit ripens.

Maybe classify it as a " *fermentationist"??? Produce cider from fruit trees, as well as brandy. The brandy could then be exported. Go Calvados!

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7

Dont know if you play Cities: Skylines, but that sim is a good example of how FF could raise its bar on the mechanics. CS buildings, for example, will tell you exactly what they need with an icon pop-up. You can ignore it but it’ll give you the information needed to fix the problem. In FF you only know there’s a problem when everything is going to hell.

8

I know of CS, but I have never played it. What type of things are in the icon pop-ups? You say the info in the pop-up tells you what you need in order to fix a problem? The problem being that you are running too low of a stock in an item?

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For example, you may see industrial or commercial buildings complain “not enough goods” or “not enough buyers”. When you begin to approach the limit of water coverage in a city you’ll see a flickering water icon above the buildings which reminds you to install another water tower or water pump.

10

OK. Thank you for the examples.

The game does currently give you warnings for some items. Low food, housing, logs, firewood… However, each of those could have multiple reasons they are low.

I have had, a few times now, my wood planks drop to zero. The solution, each time, was NOT to build more saw mills. The reason they had dropped to zero was that I had multiple building projects going on, with 30+ builders, all building using wood planks. However, I was not at a stand still. It was just that as fast as planks were milled, they were dragged off to job sites. As soon as some building sites finished up, then the mills were able to build a stock.

I once had my housing suddenly plummet by over 200 beds. The solution wasn’t to build more houses. The cause was that I had been focused so much on forging iron, that I had not forged any gold recently. I had let my village gold drop to zero. Because of that, I missed a payment on my theatres, and they stopped providing entertainment. So a bunch of houses were no longer desirable, and were abandoned. The solution was NOT to build houses, but to simply move some of the gold from my Trading Center over, and wait until the month ended and the next payment was made.

Too many resources and professions are intertwined to make it a simple “build more of these” for most of the buildings.

Also, to be honest, I’m not sure that I would want that feature. Part of the fun is trying and failing, then adapting, possibly failing again, but eventually figuring it out…for that specific map. The next map will have a completely different set of variables so you’ll have to use what you learned from before, but keep adapting.

Having the AI tell me what I need to build, when I need to build it, takes a lot of the challenge, and fun, out of the game. For me, at least. I realize everyone has different preferences.

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12

you need to make vinegar. Vinegar was a frequent addition to drinking water as well. And goo against scorbut.

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Goo? What goo? I know of cod liver oil, but goo? That vitamin C is needed to combat scurvy (the common English name for scorbut) wasn’t widely known even among sailors, nor physicians, let alone people living further inlands, where it might appear in winter.

But yeah, if you need to store water (as in sailing), adding vinegar helped make the water last longer. I don’t think that’s necessary when our villagers get their water fresh from the wells, like they would IRL in a Medieval town.

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