A Few Ideas I've Noted

Hello,

I recently came across this game thanks to a video from Biffa Plays on Youtube. I’ve been playing the game obsessively ever since and I think this is some of the best money I’ve ever spent on a game.

That being said, there are a few things I have found myself wishing for several times in the course of my games. I hope these can/will be helpful for the future:

  1. Resource finder/filter - some sort of dropdown menu that allows you to not only hide unwanted resources in the game, but can take you to the closest node to your town center. I often have at least one resource on each map that is scarce, they are often difficult to find again either due to icon similarity (blueberry/hawthorn, medicinal roots/willow) or simply because there is a lot of visual clutter from hawthorn, greens, and the like.

  2. More terrain options & fixes - the leveling tool is great, but it is difficult to get the hang of in its current state. I have frequently stranded laborers who will flatten terrain and create unpathable terrain. Unpathable terrain is unable to be flattened, which makes working mountains extremely difficult. As for the additional options, it would be nice to terraform directly up or down with the tool. Up would allow us to make earthen ramps (which would help with mountain scaling) or fill in small ponds, while down would allow us to create new water works like moats or irrigation. Farms with direct access to water (on an adjacent tile) could have better rates of fertility gains or loss or have a yield bonus.

  3. More infrastructure options - specifically, I would like to see docks, bridges, and ships added for high level cities. Docks could be a T2 structure that allows us to path settlers across shallow water (basically a wooden road over water) that would also serve as a great decorative feature. Bridges could be a T3 (wooden) or T4 (stone) structures that could cross rivers if they are ever implemented or to cross difficult terrain such as steep valleys without using the terrain manipulation. I would also like to see more options with the transportation logistics. Perhaps a depot building that will collect all goods, but with a lower capacity and no spoilage rate reduction. The wagons can then be sent to these depots directly instead of to the production locations. Furthermore, the ability to dictate routes for each wagon to ensure consistent coverage of each satellite camp would allow us micromangers to maximize efficiency.

  4. Moving resources - We can move blueberry bushes to a designated location, which is great, but why can we not do this with other gathered resources? While I don’t think all resources should be movable, certainly the willow, medicinal roots, mushrooms, hawthorn, etc… would be able to be moved? If the aformentioned terrain manipulation options were implemented you could designate specific terrain types for certain resource - like willow requiring direct access to water. This would make it slightly more worthwhile to explore the largest map sizes, as finding one more of a rare resource would actually be worth it if they can bring it back with them. Right now finding the one willow on the map all the way at the edge is basically the same as no willow at all.

  5. Building changes - In the same vein as above, adding chicken coops as a food option would be a great place to collect egg resources. I’ve also noticed some of the progression doesn’t make sense, specifically that the armory is a t2 building that requires iron ingots, but the smeltery that makes ingots is a t3 building. Nothing was more frustrating to me than having a map with 318,000 iron ore near my city that I could not do anything with until T3. Smoke Houses need an upgrade at some point - perhaps havinig 2 together could be merged into a larger smoke house with bonuses to speed and capacity? They are great in the early game when paired with hunters and fishermen, but once I start butchering cattle I quickly run into the problem of too much meat, not enough preservation.

  6. Building Changes Part 2: Electric Boogaloo - The housing AI needs some work. I’ve stopped bothering with temporary shelters because nobody ever seems to actually use them. This exacerbates an issue with extant resource gathering, wherein there is currently no way to effectively house or defend far-flung production areas, as the villagers tend to just run back to their home back at the city, and since they don’t seem to care about the temporary shelters they spend most of their time running back and forth instead of working. By changing it so that each villager will automatically take the closest empty housing spot to their assigned place of work we could then create working villages in the far-flung regions of the map, turn them into forts even. On my current map for example there is a perfect spot near a mountain of iron, lots of trees for the work camp, at least 15 spots for mining various resources, even some good hunting and gathering spots, but as much as I would like to turn that into its own satellite community, I cannot.

  7. Maps & Naming Things - I love maps, one of the things I like most about maps is naming things. I know a lot of people want a minimap, so let’s roll them into a new Cartography building. This building could do 4 things: 1) Enable the minimap for explored areas. 2) Allows you to designate areas and give them a name. The names could then be called out with certain alerts like “raiders are attacking Grassy Knoll!” or “Villager was attacked near Aspho Dell!”. 3) Enables a new widget to display these names, just as we can with villagers and resources. And 4) Enable the Cartographer profession, someone who will automatically explore new areas of the map, can identify and mark resources you designate, and create the Map luxury item to be sold to the traders.

Edit Since I’m thinking about it now - the Cartographer could requir skins, as another sink for that resource, and the maps it produces could either be sold or be given to hunters, herbalists, and fishermen which, when they carry one, could vastly increase ther effective range.

I know this is an extremely long post, I thank you for sticking with me through it all. I love, love, love this game and I want to see it be the absolute best it can be. I will be more than happy to answer questions or criticisms in the comments!

4 Likes

One thing about Topic 4 - Moving Resources; If this was created as an option, I could see everyone strip-mining the entire map of movable resources, leaving it barren and boring. So it might not be the best solution. I see what you’re getting at though.

3 Likes

Sure! I think one of the valuable modifications is to allow players to set benchmark for leveling tool instead of being totally decided automatically. For now, I have no idea at all about how the ground would become after each leveling

I could see that, but hunting and static resources like coal and iron would still need to be considered. I also don’t think every gathered resource should be movable, or should have restrictions placed on where they can be moved to.

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