I grinded to tier 4 finishing yesterday, and ran the game for a few more in-game years today just to be sure of the results. Sadly it seems like deep mines are deeply inefficient. The tldr is that on a per-worker basis they churn out roughly 25% as much ore as their tier 2 counterparts. I mainly ran this trial with gold mines, and the tier 2 mine was on a nice fat deposit but I donât know that the deposit changes efficiency, only how much ore is available at that spot. The mines were both near each other so any variables around travel distance for workers from their houses or to dropoff the ore is basically not an issue.
Itâs a shame that this is the case, I had grand plans of making a dozen or more upgraded foundries all of which would be churning out gold, iron, etc. around the clock lighting up the night like a small star. Unfortunately itâs not that feasible. Deep mines require double the number of workers to be fully staffed so you basically need 64 (4 x 16) miners working in 4 deep mines just to achieve the same results as a tier 2 mine, and if youâre playing in the mountain map the soil isnt great so achieving a roughly 1k population is much harder since the trading system doesnât allow for you to make yearly trade deals to import food reliably/consistently.
I made a video detailing it all if you want to see how things were set up in-game.
Why would a deep mine be equally efficient as a normal one??? Infinite resources comes at a cost. Itâs how games are balanced. I just achieved 1k pop in 37 year town on vanquisher. If anything this game needs a nerf.
yeh i mention the need for balance in the video, but considering you need double the number of workers for 1/4th the ore (so basically 1/8th efficiency) it seems a bit low to me.
I feel like some immigration events happened less on new patch. Maybe I just was not at max efficiency yet. I feel like 1kpop can be achieved under year 30. Just need to find the right system.
I suspect, but havenât tried to prove it yet, that speedy population increase would require maximizing Food Production and Amount of housing - rather than, say, Higher Tier of Housing or âextraâ goods like Pottery, Soap, Clothing, etc
1000 population, after all, would âfitâ into 250 of the lowest Tier housing, which you could cram around 6 - 8 Markets depending on how you were able to configure them. Youâd have to start Farming really early, because I donât think most maps would support more than about 400 - 500 pop with just hunting, fishing and gathering, but you should have the population to work as many fields as you can place.
If I were going to try it, Iâd go Pacifist, though - wonât have time to build much in the way of defenses while trying to bust everything for pure population increase.
I should have specified. It was on pacifist mode as thereâs probably no way you would be able to trade or produce enough tools in 30 years for the 200-300 raider armyâs. I have found you need to upgrade some housing and get higher tiers to increase immigration events. But focus is food and housing for sure
I didnât find any issues with deep mine personally. Itâs supposed to be a lategame solution and it, well, works. For lategame you have enough gold to constantly purchase all raw resources from traders and itâs more than enough to effectively mitigate low deep mine production output. Make sure that your trade post is located near / foundries / other raw resources production chains.
I think real problem here is population limit tbh. Itâs really hard to maintain deep mines when only max 1000 ppl is available only. You can build multiple deep mines at same location, but 1000 ppl is just too low limit for proper city.
It would be great if developers will allow us to disable population limit with configs or anything else. I do understand why there is a limit for âpublicâ version, but it will be great to go with no population limit on our own risks.
Blockquote I think real problem here is population limit tbh. Itâs really hard to maintain deep mines when only max 1000 ppl is available only. You can build multiple deep mines at same location, but 1000 ppl is just too low limit for proper city.
Yeh I go over this in a bit more detail in the vid although I may not have conveyed it well enough. Essentially the deep mines are 1/8th as efficient so if you have 10 deep mines of each type at full employment youd need 800 people just to run the mines leaving you with not enough ppl for food production let alone other tasks like smelting, smithing, etc.
Trade routes with predictable imports (perhaps having to pay a premium) could fix issues with food production, but yeh allowing you to have more citizens would as well. cheers.
Well, Iâm using Add Villager mod and Iâm currently running 1700 population city. As I see from my playthrough, deep mines shines when you have enough population to maintain it, and with constant trading itâs easy to have enough resources from mines / trading and maintain food production. I have more problems with laborers count requirements, it doesnât matter how much population I have I always low on laborers, and for sure attempts just to brutforce it with houses easily leads to starvation, shortage on lumber / firewood / shoes / basically anything and you end up with all needs covered, but still again lack of laborers.
Anyway, Deep Mines vs Normal mines is quire engaging. I like how normal mines are still looks like real reward even in late game, you still have reasons to build normal mines to finish the map and make $$$ of it.
Iâm not sure how it will works with real unlimited population, because âAdd Vilagerâ basically spawns an adult, and I think that it may be worse.
I agree with your conclusions. Iâm willing to accept that the deep mines arenât meant to be as efficient, but the difference makes them essentially a waste of a feature for me until they strike a better overall balance.
I find the biggest issue for me in Tier 4 are the upgraded military buildings. They double the cost of guards and soldiers, but definitely donât double their effectiveness. So if you have the people and space, itâs more strategically favorable to build a second guard tower or barracks rather than upgrade the first. Thatâs just deeply disappointing gameplay.
I think only deep gold mine is so unefficent, my deep iron/coal/sand are digging up like 200-250 units per year with 16 ppl in. Didnât pay much attention to clay but it was enough to keep 2 brickyards and 1 pottery running at full capacity.
There are still building maintenance costs + you will need increased number of soldiers available in lategame. But itâs quite interesting point, depends on map / raiders decision barracks may work as improved guard towers which are easily wipes out entire raid group.
Personally for my 1700 playground, I just fired all guards because guard towers are useless against 400 man raid army. The only towers with guards are currently working are scouting towers which helps to detect raiders much before they reach my city, just to have some time to deploy soldiers.
Fire disaster after fire disaster, I wish I can back to 1000 people population lol. Even if everything is well optimised, placed correctly with all production chains and depots there is still not enough production of everything.
I think later I will create a thread with my experience & findings with that. Issues which Iâm constantly dealing are about laborers count, food production, lack of gold and that guy with spices can not bring spices for 10 years in a row and gg my gold deposits. But there are funny 400 mob raiders which are being eliminated by deployed 120 full plate & heavy weapon army and itâs fun.
And wax. I disabled storage for wax everywhere but still somewhere 5000 wax is stored no idea where and why.
Revisiting OP topic, I think Deep Mines production should be doubled, but amount of workers should be decreased as well (so same numbers will be as an output still). Each deep mine creates a HUGE disbalance with population/food production/laborers and itâs impossible to balance it out back.
Yea, the numbers can go down a bit if the mine is far from living quarters. My last playthrough my deep sand mine was running like 230 - it was quite close to the town center and iron +/- 180 but it was a bit further away. Coal was a little bit further than iron but it was still digging 220-230 units per year - these numbers are still worth it. The problem starts when you try to dig gold - itâs totally not worth it - 1 fully manned deep gold mine could provide enough ore to smelt +/- 50g per month - doesnât take a genius to realise these people coulddo much better money by doing literally anything else.
inefficient. The tldr is that on a per-worker basis they churn out roughly 25% as much ore as their tier 2 counterparts. I mainly ran this trial with gold mines, and the tier 2 mine was on a nice fat deposit but I donât know that the deposit changes efficiency, only how much ore is available at that spot. The mines were both near each other so any variables around travel distance for workers from their houses or to dropoff the ore is basically not an issue.
