hello ive tried a few times to restart the game since the “deep mines” have been released, correct me if i am wrong there are alot of deep mines in the various maps, but not so many ordinary mines, now since you need such as “sand” “clay” to develop but all you have in range is deep mines. how can you develop since deep mines are a t4 building ? how can you make bricks or develop soil to how you want if you dont have access to them apart from buying them from the trade post ? should we not make sand and clay ordinary and do away with those types of mines as deep mines ? or re balance the ammount of both that are placed on the map when the map is created ? thanks stupot11
There are some seeds out there that are a bit more balanced deep vs regular mines and of course there is always the trader, but I am inclined to agree with you. Not really a fan of the deep mine mechanic or at least in its current form. Would rather see regular mines having the option to upgrade into deep mines or deep mines being able to be placed once a regular mine has empty out the easy to reach rescources. Where they produce a bit slower but at least its limitless.
Several observations, from generating over 100 maps in 8.3 with ‘Deep Mines’ and playing to Tier 3 or 4 on several of them:
- The maps are far more random than before, as in picking Pioneer, Trailblazer or Vanquisher Resources seems to make no difference in what you actually get in the way of resources especially the ‘balance’ between regular and deep sources for all the minerals.
- On the other hand, after much searching, I am convinced that, at least on Large Maps, Somewhere on the map there is both a Deep and Regular deposit for everything. The major problem is Access. As an example, on my current map the center of the map where I started is sadly devoid of large stone deposits. After 6 hours of playing, I finally found the Deep Stone Deposit - on the side of a lofty snow-covered mountain off at the edge of the map. I’m going to have to terraform a large part of that mountain to get access to the Deep Stone, but it is there. Luckily, the same mountain also has a large regular Gold Deposit (13,000, which is probably enough to last me as long as I’m likely to play on this map!) and multiple regular Iron deposits, so I can make the work of flattening and shaping the mountain provide access to more than just one resource.
- There is more randomness in the quantities of the regular deposits. On 8.2 maps and earlier, I rarely saw any deposit with less than 600 - 1000 or more than 6 - 9000. Now I regularly see mineral deposits with as little as 200 or well over 10,000 (like the Gold deposit mentioned above). This makes finding a deposit only the first step: next you have to figure out how long it’s likely to last, or even if it’s worth accessing at all (don’t know about anybody else, but a deposit of less than 300 will last me barely two years of game-time, so investing in a mine and allotting workers and a wainwright to haul the ores out for such a short time becomes a real consideration)
- Working on Large or Medium maps now generates a separate game in itself, because to access both regular and deep deposits you have to access the entire map, and then set up infrastructure to haul resources from the far edges of the map to your town. Managing the roads and wagons to do that, and protecting the mines, workers, wagons, etc from raiders becomes a complete mini-game in itself, and frequently requires building a ‘satellite village’ for the workforce digging up the resources, and then protecting the whole collection from Raiders - who will inevitably appear on the map right next to whatever distant settlement you had to build to get the resources needed to combat the raiders.
I can sort of understand having at least one of each deep mine on a map, but for me that rather negates the map seed side of things. My latest map is a Plains one so I expect not to see much, if any, in the way of iron on it, indeed I found one small iron deposit so far; it’s a medium map and I’ve just about uncovered all of it. Yet it also has 2, maybe 3, deep iron mine deposits which, for me, doesn’t fit with the map seed/biome generated.
I get that Crate want to provide these so people can continue to play maps however long they want to, but for me it’s ruining the map seed mechanism somewhat by doing it this way. By all means have deep mines, but limit them to the same restrictions as normal mine/pits have for generating on a map. I think if my map seed is unlikely to spawn any iron then that should apply to deep mine generation as well. If I have to continue to rely on a trader for iron then for me that’s fine; it’s part of the challenge of playing that map seed.
Completey agree. One of the sad changes with the Deep Deposit system is that it appears to have largely divorced Resources from the map type: the amount and type of resources as a combination of Regular and Deep Deposits seems to be independent of what type of map you are playing on. At least, I have found little difference in resource availability between Alpine, Lowland Lakes, Idyllic Valley and Plains maps that I’ve generated in 8.3.
To me, this rather defeats some of the purpose of having different map types.
I have to wonder if it might be a bug that you can place a regular mine on a deep mining pocket but can’t mine any of the ore there. For instance, I built a gold mine on a deep gold vein thinking I would be able to mine something, even if slower. If there is nothing to mine there, I feel it should not have let me build the regular mine there.