Difficulty, AI and Balance. My experience

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
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First of all, FF is a great game with lots of original mechanics and beautiful atmosphere.
I’ve played only once, 7 hours (20 in-game years). v0.9.6. Let me share my experience.

  1. Difficulty. I’ve set to Vanquisher and prepared to die, but … game was very easy with no challenges at all.
    1.1. Raiders very weak, can be killed by 2-3 hunters with some micro. 6 archers + 6 swordsmans are unbeatable without micro. Just send them against any Raider group (Alt + Click) and they will kill them without loses. Even if you do not abuse Raiders AI (check AI part). So, Walls and Towers are useless, because you can kill all raiders in the field before they reach village. But sieges are the most interesting part of such games!
    And 12 soldiers can beat any Raiders camp without loses (except one with 4 towers).
    1.2. No hunger, just build Fisherman hut + Smokehouse and forget about food. Nothing can stop food collection. I love survival games like Rimworld/Stronghold, but in FF food collection is just a routine, not challenge.
    1.3. No more than 2 sick villagers at the same time (and recovers very fast with 100% guarantee, just need hospital).
    1.4. Every hostile animal easily killed by 2 hunters. Just need some micro.
    I understand that i can add difficulty by custom tuning (will try later), but it looks un-natural, like “skip first 100 turns” in other games".
    Proposal 0: Add at least 2 difficulty levels (5 in total). And add remark that player can’t lose in first 3 levels.

  2. AI
    2.1. Raiders is moving without attack, one by one in line. If you just intercept them on the march - most of them will die without attacking.
    Proposal A: Move using formations (not in line)
    Proposal B: Move in “kill on sight” mode
    2.2. Small raiders groups (5-6 mans) every time came in the same places (Ruins). That a purpose of this attack? You can just send your 6 swordmans to kill them all. It’s just a routine, not challenge.
    Proposal C: Small raiders group must attack outpost / mines.
    2.3. On year 20 (250 villagers, 24 soldiers) came 26 raiders. I’ve tried to remove all villagers and soldiers from the village (just call the Bell on the City center). To see how much damage Raid will do. Result: no damage. All died near the city center. It looks like raiders do not want to make damage, just pretend they want to. They walk past Gold mine (with 40 gold ore stored), but hits only temporary house nearby. And even did not destroyed temporary house (about 10% health left). Why? Thieves ignored 40 gold ore. So i can conclude that Raiders is a fictional disaster, soldiers / towers / walls is not needed at all.
    Proposal D: Thieves should “steal on sight”. Amount of stolen displayed in icon/bubble will be helpful.
    Proposal E: Part of Raid warriors should “destroy buildings on sight” and “kill villagers on sight”
    Proposal F: Raiders should make some calculations before attack. If forces is not enough to destroy City center - do not come to City center, destroy buildings on the way.

I understand that taking too much damage to village will be hard to restore, because supply chains are fragile and killed people can’t be restored fast, but we can solve this by:

  • Raiders can stop harassing after some time. Can retreat (or die under city center) after destroying some building / timeout reached and so on.
  • Boost after Raid (morale / immigration / productivity)

2.4. Even in “Attack” formation Archers do not shoot enemy in range. Has status “Waiting”, “Moving to destination” (but holding / not moving). After some time - starts shooting. Looks like “enemy in range” algorithm has a bug. The most annoying with wolves. Wolves can come close to Archers and attack them. Move + Attack command (Alt + Click) also has a problem: sometimes Archers move close to enemy instead of shooting. After about 10 meters - starts shooting.

AI is the most common problem in long strategy games because online match vs human is not possible.
And i have an abstract question: Why nobody uses Neuro-net? A lot of players can teach neuro-net for free just playing vs AI.

  1. Balance
    3.1. Bread is useless. Required 4 farmers + 1 mill + 2 bakers. Has farming risks. At the output: 500 - 800 food (6 months storage time). Same 6 fishermans + 1 smoke produce 900 - 1200 food (19 months storage) without any risks.
    3.2. Farming (including animals) is useless at all. Requires too many peoples and buildings with small output. Hunting / fishing / fruits are more promising.
    Proposal G: Tune balance to make Farming more effective, decrease fishing / foraging effectivity after some years.
    3.3. Improving village do not have too much advantages. Taxes / luxuries / trade requires a lot of people and do not give too much in output. Sending people to Gold mine is much more effective.
    Proposal H: Decrease Gold mine effectivity of add bonuses for upgrading buildings (more peoples in houses, more taxes…)
    3.4. Peoples was the main problem for me. I’ve built everything for them, but every time got “Laborers amount very low” warning. Especially after 100 villagers. It’s looks like “peoples, spent to attract new people is not pay off”.

  2. Interface
    4.1. Fish depleting is not clear. Fish amount in the lake is not changing until drops to 0.
    Proposal I: Add warning when Fisherman’s huts is too much for the lake, or other indication of fish depleting process.

4.2. Gold report is unclear. Monthly and more detailed report will be helpful.

4.3. “No water in house” indication when house is right under the Well looks strange. I understand that the problem is that Residents just far away and did not refill water. But when Fisherman has all that he need in the hut, but must return home to refill water - looks strange.
Proposal J: Display “No water” warning only when resident tries to refill water but unsuccessful.

4.4. I’ve set Ruins as Priority target, no other priority targets exist. But workers do not want to go to Ruins. Only when i have a LOT of workers they do.
Proposal K: Priority must work as expected.

4.5. When i build something on the Tree/Rock, clearing ground automatically sets as a Priority for workers.
Proposal L: Manual priority should be more important when automatic.

4.6. “Units do not want to do what i want” - is the most annoying in FF and in similar games (Majesty, Settlers…). So, when i send worker to Wounded villager / expansive item (Sword/gold…) on the ground / ruin… I’m expecting that he will take care.
Proposal M: Make the same mechanic like with Hunters → Dead animal carcass.

General proposal:
Possibility of attacking another village will be great. On the same map (like Settlers) or on the another map (like Rimworld).

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My village for better understanding

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I think a lot of what you said has merit, but there are a few caveats.

Firstly, the game isn’t really meant to be about survival. It’s not Frostpunk. Playing is less about “will I survive?” then “how will I develop?” That’s why the game has many partial failure states (raiders getting through your defences and stealing stuff, epidemic, food shortage, etc…) but it’s extremely rare for those to push you into a completely unrecoverable nose dive. In other words, the obstacles the game throws at you are indicators for what you should improve, not punishments meant to kill you. Whether you consider this a good thing or not is a matter of taste.

Secondly, what map are you playing on? That matters as much as the difficulty setting. Outside of Idyllic Valley or Meadows, you simply can’t put more than a handful of fishermen / hunters / gatherers. The resources simply aren’t there - or are too far away and lead to death from wild animals or logistics gridlock. Farming is more labour intensive than being a hunter gatherer, but it scales much better. On, eg, Alpine valley you simply won’t be able to feed more than 200 people without farming. Although, even then, I’d farm beans / roots before moving on to grain->flour->bread because that’s expensive to set up.

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I’ve used default Map on the start.
I bought FF after several reviews that it’s a challenging game in TOP 10 of new strategic games: “Every winter is a challenge” showed as a slogan of FF. i’ve expected Frostpunk :slight_smile:

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First of all, I’m sure you’re a very good player because not many people can give such a comment after only 7 hours of playing.

1.1 Yes, raiders are too weak now, but it wasn’t like that before. The first time I played FF (version 0.9.2), in the 20th year, about 50 to 60 raiders attacked me with the support of catapul. Yes, you read it right, it’s catapul. Since it was the first time I knew about the existence of catapul in FF, it took me a while to realize that my defenses were being destroyed at an abnormal rate. 6 light infantry were sent out but just barely destroyed the catapul but all of them died because the surrounding defenders were very strong. Not to mention the rams siege engines were also very formidable. Now in 0.9.6e in year 20 or so there are still raiders attacks consisting of weak mace and archers, no catapults or rams at all. This is the result of some players choosing the wrong difficulty and having their settlements destroyed by raiders, they started complaining and our lovely game developers are very soft-hearted and indulgent. Devs have nerfed raiders continuously making them pathetically weak like now.
@Devs: making the game easier may help you gain satisfaction from many inexperienced or weak players but it loses the fierce appeal of the survival genre - what hardcore players need. You are losing more than gaining.

However, don’t be disappointed, raiders will get stronger as time goes on. At some point, invaders (demanding gold tribute) will appear with an elite army consisting of both light infantry and heavy cavalry supported by catapults and rams. ~500 of them attacked my settlement with a population of ~2000.

1.2 Not exactly. The map you are playing is probably “Idyllic valley”. This map has the advantage of being blessed with a lot of deer, fish and wild vegetables, berries growing all over the map. At the first levels with a low population, hunting and gathering will bring better results but when your settlement has grown long enough and is large enough (2000-3000), you should only keep deer hunting for the purpose of skinning while the fields are the main source of food. I will explain why below. If you want to have harsh survival conditions in terms of food like Frostpunk, you can choose the map “Arid highlands”. You will be much more satisfied.

1.3 At the beginning of the game, it is true, especially if you play on the map “Idyllic valley”. But if you play on the map “Arid highlands” - where it is almost impossible to get enough herbs (without importing), the number of people dying from diseases will be much higher. I also reveal a little more to you: disease outbreaks in FF increase with the level of the Town Center and the population of the settlement. When your settlement reaches 2000, even if you have built 4 level 2 hospitals with thousands of Medicine bottles (the most advanced medicine in the game - made from medicinal roots, honey and willow), just a little carelessness, at least half of your settlement will be submerged in the red cross symbol due to the outbreak of smallpox, a few hundred residents will return to the motherland :v

1.4 Maybe because your playing skills are good, not many people can do that when facing a ferocious bear. However, if you do not detect it in time or the hunters do not arrive in time, 1-2 of your residents may be killed by the bear.

You are absolutely right about part 2. The game’s AI is quite bad and needs much improvement. However, it would be acceptable if the devs tripled the number of raiders in raids.
Archers are only really strong when placed in forts and watchtowers, especially on high points for +18 attack

3.1 Bread is not useless, you just haven’t produced it properly and used it at the right time.
With the “Idyllic valley” map, I never touched wheat production/use when I was in Town Center level 1 and 2 because the upgrade conditions for Shelter level 2 and 3 were quite easy because only 2 or 3 types of food were needed. This means that just hunting and gathering, you have enough quantity and types for a settlement of 200-300 population.
But what about Shelter level 4 and especially level 5? You will need 4-5 types of food to own these very nice houses (completely different from the makeshift look of level 1-3). Without bread and its upgrade (cake), you cannot achieve this goal.

3.2 That’s about the variety, but what about the quantity? Once your settlement reaches a large enough number, you will realize that hunting and gathering will not be as effective as proper farming and raising of livestock.
I usually build 9x9 fields with 6 farmers working on them. These fields require a lot of labor to build, increase fertility to a maximum of 100% (using clover, beans, soybeans, compost),

Add clay/sand in appropriate amounts for each crop to get a +10% yield bonus - this means you have to be selective about what crops you plant in your field rather than just randomly setting them up.

I have 4 types of fields and this is how I rotate my wheat field:

  • Year 1: Clover, wheat
  • Year 2: Clover, wheat
  • Year 3: soybeans, weeding, clover
    With a little random compost, I always keep the fertility of my field at its highest level. With 4 types of interwoven fields, my fields rarely spread plant diseases to each other and bring the following yields:
    Wheat: ~2100 units / crop
    Soybeans: ~800 units / crop
    Total: ~5000 food units / 3 years / 6 farmers
    I’m not very precise because I’m currently playing on the “Arid highlands” map - the natural conditions there are many times harsher than “Idyllic valley”.

And the important thing is that they only work 9 months / year. During the 3 winter months they can do other things like chopping wood for example (you need to turn off the auto-assignment option and push the number of farmers to 0), not to mention they can quickly harvest honey, beeswax if beehives are built on the fields.

3.3 For me, the value of high-level Shelters is that they are the money to upgrade the Town Center and unlock more effective production and defense buildings. The amount of tax gold brought in the current version is even a bit redundant for me. Less is more challenging and the game will be more interesting

3.4 That’s because you develop too fast and become unbalanced, leading to not enough Laborers. The number of Laborers is the suggested number that the game gives them to do the jobs, which is also very important. You need to go to the career board, point to the number of Laborers to know how many you distribute. Cutting down on the labor force from other professions is a solution. One way is to moderate the population growth rate - this is a double-edged sword because the population grows too fast, which means that in the early and mid-game, your settlement will have a large number of children and they only participate in work after turning 16 years old. You have a population of 300 but if 100 of them are children then it is normal for you to lack Laborers. But in the late game these children will now be the main labor force and you will have an abundant source of manpower

4.1 I do not like fishing because if you are careless and do not set up a smokehouse to smoke meat or fish only, they can travel kilometers to get a fish or a piece of meat. Moreover as I said above, farming and raising livestock are more productive.

4.2 Taxes. You are right, more transparency is needed. However I do not care much about this issue because I always have a lot of gold, especially earned through trading posts

4.3 Do you have enough wells and are near the market? My population has never had a problem with water, even on the map “Arid highlands”. The workers at the market will deliver all the necessary items to each house so that the villagers can focus on their work.

4.4 That’s because your Laborers are too low. Even if you prioritize them, the villagers won’t prioritize excavating the ruins.

4.5 Try to prioritize and increase the number of construction workers for that building. Another way is to use Work Camp to mine wood and stone in a large construction area.

4.6 This is true, especially the rescue of the wounded. However, if your Laborers reach the recommended level, you will feel much more comfortable.

  1. General proposal. I have sent a proposal to the devs about allowing troops to attack the castle - where the greedy and shameless nobles are. If you can destroy their army (~3000 soldiers), you will meet the game’s victory condition. But it seems that this cannot be done in the near future.

Conclusion: FF is a very good game and has a lot of potential. The devs just need to push the game’s difficulty to the limit (I recently posted in another topic) and it will be great. Enjoy the interesting things waiting for you to discover in the later stages of the game :smiley:

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Hey Rustem

Thank you for the detailed feedback!

I can understand your feeling that the game initially is not that challenging, unfortunately, we’ve kind of been beaten down to this position after years of feedback from more players that the game is too difficult.

We are soon adding in difficulty scaling for villager hunger, which will allow me to restore the challenge of providing food in higher difficulty settings. This will come probably in the next patch after this current one we’re working to get out.

Also note that the default map is “Idyllic Valley” which was specifically created, after complaints about maps lacking sufficient / every resource, for more casual players who just wanted an easy time, with lots of resources and easy food available. The description reads “ideal of pioneers just starting out”.

If you want to have a struggle, try “arid highlands”.

While early raider difficulty tuning could probably use some work, I think you will find it does get more challenging later on. Around 300 population raider difficulty starts to really ramp up, when higher-tier types of raiders begin to show up, along with siege weapons and cavalry. Later on you will get a new harder type of incursion from “invading armies”.

Some adjustments were recently made to combat, to overall increase the time-to-kill, so battles lasted a bit longer and it may be further adjustment is needed to get balance back to the right spot. Raider difficulty will improve with the next patch.

Attack-move archers is a known bug we’re currently working on. Should be fixed in following patch.

It’s a good idea to add the ability to direct villagers to retrieve the wounded. Will look into adding that. Soldiers that die in combat though lose their gear - can assume it was destroyed / looted. We do this to promote the continued production of new gear and make losses more impactful. If you could just constantly salvage all the gear, the game would get easier and easier.

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Thank you for the detailed response from experienced FF player!
Can you, please, advise how can i get 0.9.2? I love to lose/die very much :slight_smile:

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Hello!

I understand about arid highlands, but my main concern is about Raiders.
A medieval game in which walls and towers are useless - loses very much.
FF has a good mechanics and great atmosphere, i believe you spent a LOT to develop it. A simple custom setting like “Raiders count rate” will solve difficulty problem. “Game-too-difficult players” never look into such settings :slight_smile:

P.S. My micro is not so good. I believe, my Dota 2 friends can beat 20 raiders with only 1 hunter + some villagers for absorbing damage :slight_smile: So, AI problem still present :slight_smile:

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There is a type of raid early on that is mainly “thief” type raiders, which do very little damage. If you get a raid of 20, with other raider types, especially archers, defending with a single hunter and some villagers seems fairly difficult without some losses, unless maybe you’re using the town-center to kill them off? All in all though, that early on, it is hard to support much army, so it has to be possible to defend your town before you have a barracks.

250 villagers is still relatively early in the progression of things.

It is hard to strike an ideal balance between walls / towers and army. In the past, people would often just build tons of layers of walls with dozens of towers everywhere. In real life, this would have taken hundreds of years to quarry so much stone. In a game, people feel that they should be able to do this though and leave negative reviews if they can’t. So the compromise is that, yes, you can get enough stone and build crazy layers of walls and towers but soldiers are effective enough that, that isn’t necessarily the best way to play.

On the other hand, later in the game, when you get large raids, raider groups often come from multiple directions and once your town is fairly large, it can be difficult to get your army to where they need to be in time. Walls buy you time and towers can help fend off smaller raid groups that, while not threatening to your main army, could still steal a lot of valuable items if not stopped in time.

We will look at more custom raider difficulty options for release.

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Ok, will wait for Raiders difficulty setting. Please, allow crazy values in this setting. I’ve bought PC especially for FF (i use Mac), please, do not disappoint me :slight_smile:

P.S. About 1 hunter vs raiders i mean: in field, without city center.

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Oh wow, I just saw what you were talking about where the raiders all just run in a single-file line and don’t attack… that is busted AF and it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

Will get that fixed immediately after this patch goes out.

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One problem with archers and hunters is that as soon as a crossbow is available they’ll dump their faster hunting bows for one. Hunters should always use a bow, as well as tower guards, crossbows being reserved for archers in barracks. Being slower they will always need infantry protection.

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Actually, it’s not that there is no way, but in my opinion, this is not worth the trade-off because from version 0.9.2 to 0.9.6e, the game has had many valuable improvements.

So in my opinion, there are 2 more effective options:

  1. Send a request to the devs and ask for more power for Raiders
  2. Use a mod to increase the number of raiders

Currently, there is such a version on the nexusmods page. It takes a few more steps to use them:

Personally, I have never used any mods because I always believe that sooner or later the devs will realize / listen to the opinions of the players to make FF a great game.

However, when version 0.9.7 comes out with built-in mod support, I will definitely use this raiders mod because at the end of the game there is not much left to develop while raiders are not strong enough

Here is a video of a player using this mod and the result is the entire settlement was destroyed :v

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcok6Lfjxhc&list=WL&index=37

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If the raiders are strong, the player will have to find an effective defense

  • If the wall is too weak, the troops and raiders can easily penetrate, the player is forced to build many layers of walls close together. This is really not good in terms of aesthetics. But it would be better if you provide more level 3 walls and gates with 2 times the HP of level 2 walls, then the problem will be solved. Level 3 walls / gates will consume a lot of resources and can be created from stone + iron. Actually, I think the current level 2 walls are “not as beautiful” as other great structures that you have worked hard to design.

  • But if you increase the power of the army, especially the heavy cavalry, too much like in the current version 0.9.6e, players will no longer need walls or watchtowers but can easily bring the army to destroy the elite invaders from a distance to avoid affecting the production process and also avoid the innocent deaths of civilians.

I know it is very difficult for you to receive too many complaints that the game is too difficult, but you also need to ask the question:

  • Are those players really good? If not, have they chosen the right difficulty of the game?
  • After the above players have played for a while and have more experience to know where to arrange the defense system (high points, choke points), how many watchtowers and fortresses, how many soldiers are needed, will they still complain and reduce the difficulty?
  • What do more advanced players who like a big challenge think about the game being too easy compared to previous versions?

So the simple solution is: Devs create a 4th difficulty mode for hardcore players to choose from. This is similar to what you did “default map is “Idyllic Valley” which was specifically created, after complaints about maps lacking sufficient / every resource, for more casual players who just wanted an easy time, with lots of resources and easy food available. The description reads “ideal of pioneers just starting out”.”

The ideal balance would be: The player would not be able to defend with just 1-2 layers of walls without the support of heavy infantry, spearmen and heavy cavalry, but these types of troops would not be so strong that they could defeat invaders from a distance without the support of watchtowers and fortresses.

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Maybe will add a more detailed response later, but I like that fact that the game is experienced as difficult. As former EVE online player, I dont like the predictability of other games, unless you choose to play like that (Anno 1800 IE).

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This mod will definitely make you excited because raiders will be much stronger and make the game more attractive as you wish:

To use the mod, you need to do the following:
Access the workshop and click register
Enter the game as usual and then exit
Run the mono version of the game and the mod will be initialized
In case the mod does not run (MelonLoader reports that there is no mod running), do the following:
copy the d.lll file from the folder “Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\1044720\3468680444” to the folder “Steam\steamapps\common\Farthest Frontier\Farthest Frontier (Mono)\Mods”

There are also many other mods that you can refer to Reference: Steam Community :: Farthest Frontier

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Watermelon? You mean MelonLoader?

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Yes, MelonLoader. I remembered wrong because it had a watermelon icon :smiley: :smiley:

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There’s also a side project of MelonLoader called LemonLoader, just to keep the fruit analogies simple lol