No I don’t mean that. Never heard of it. I mean more in means of Warcraft, Dune 2000 and StarCraft. Those games expedite the technology advancements, but set a simple example. An example could be, you are building mud homes for colonists and over time your colonist get good at it, shortening the amount of time to build homes and making them stronger. With the legacy system, colonists will continue to get better at it for bonuses until, the colonists learn to make cement or mortar. This will open up refining materials and allow for stronger buildings to accomplish more. Also this advancement may slow the building process until they are good it it much like mud homes. Eventually some “specialist” colonist could be leaders or a rare bonus modifier, allowing the technology and building to be “advanced” in itself. These “Specialist” will also be away to open new paths for technology to grow. Finally with the legacy system, more colonists of older well practiced technology will become more frequently upgraded, like the legacy is being pasted down through the generations. The legacy system can be apply to almost any civil structuring in game, from politics to engineering and even militias and military specialists.
Oh, so experience and passing it on, got it. Maybe I’m misremembering things, but in the games you mentioned, troops just leveled up, essentially, right? Your system sounds quite a bit more complex.
Personally, I wouldn’t want “new” technology to be discovered while working - not every town discovered mortar (or plate armour or whatever advanced tech you may have) on their own. So a system of getting such specialist to your town to teach his new colleagues would be cool. Maybe the player can choose to return him to the lord demanding they return to their obligations to the guild, or be hanged for blashemy, or whatever else the reason they fled may be; or else, the lord will return with his army…
That would add decisions and not create a system where every experienced worker re-invents the wheel in your town. 
Of course, none of that is possible as long as we have so little control over who to assign to what profession, or a well-working automatic function.
I came at this game from CK2 (great story teller game) and Dawn of Man (really not). I would love to be able to accord some characters a bit of character. In my longest running settlement, we had a real hero in our first raid: a Hunter called Krish who stood on a ridge and shot down six men. He was 79 when I last saw him, and he was a night soil collector. I hated that. He was a hero - without him the settlement wouldn’t have survived.
The school serves the purpose of educating the villagers. There has to be some sort of benefit from this more learned populace already built in? Increased production through smarter work methods?
Nicely put! Understanding our villagers daily life will immerse us into the game play and tell a better story of our Farthest Frontier.
Having a list of tasks accomplished by each player under their dialogue box could help with this. Enable us to see how each villager contributes to village life. Perhaps build in a way for us to correct what we see as less productive task implementation, with consequences to that productivity if we’re wrong.
As it plays now, the only way to see what a person is doing is to visually watch them. But you can only watch 1 person at a time, and we as players are extremely limited and too reliant on the AI for task implementation.
The technology would be based on environmental and class or race of the colony. That way in late game you could have a united ally benefit to combine technology and advance to end game. Think of it like resources in those fore-mentioned games. Some times you would stick with mineral field or gas vents to build your primary army. In this sense you would have a larger number of fields, though depending on location you have only so much available to you. You options then are recolonize locations with needed resources and take extra time developing you mastery, or uniting with other to skip mastering and still get the benefits. You could have up to 3-5 allied colonies with mastery with in their own environment, finally mastering advanced technologies once you’ve got all resources and masteries available to you. In the mean time, your legacy system is growing and your troops, hunter, farmers, politicians, engineers and so on are passing down generations of history.
Kind of like my original post
Imagine your colony as the hero, not in part but as a whole. Team work achieved that.
I agree, it is a team effort.
But even great teamwork still needs leadership.
I would imagine heroes as a normal villagers getting some kind of status and opinion from the other villagers for their great deeds. Like, that one soldier who singlehandedly defended a whole village from raiders. Or a medic who saved a lot of lives. Hunters that gathered a lot of food when stocks were empty.
Hard to implement, as it would require some kind of system to track villagers statistics, and add some randomness to resource gathering and combat, if there is no such thing already.
But it would add so much potential to immersion and make us able to connect more deeply with our beloved villagers.
I remember that there was this guy who was chopping firewood for the entire game. I imagine him at the top of his physique, greek god’s body, absolute chad of a worker.
One day animals attacked our village. When situation became critical he stood up, left his workshop and slain two boars and a wolf single-handedly, only to go back and continue to work as if nothing happened.
Now that’s a hero.
Being able to direct an individual to load up with food and weapons so that you could explore the map without them starving to death or being eaten by wolves would be useful.
Especially on large maps.
Giving them the ability to ‘live off the land’ and survive by foraging for themselves.
Capable of surviving winter cold or an added cold weather gear bonus could be an upgrade.
Maybe some kind of Scout or Recon-class individuals that can be sent out to reveal the map, return for some R&R, then head out again to explore some more?
Scout with your hunter… it’s requires a hands on approach but it works. Take the work radius of the nearest active hunter (they’re actually out hunting and it’s best to get them as they’re headed out to hunt) and move their work radius into an unexplored area without setting it. The hunter will move with you into that area. Continue moving it in a sweeping motion to explore the areas around.
I expect this could be done as well with soldiers in a barracks. Create a single barracks for exploration with 2 soldiers and then drop the combat flag into unexplored areas. Keep moving the combat flag to force the soldiers to “explore” more. I’ll have to try this, because if it works it’s a safer method and less hands on then the hunter.
Just click and drag over your barracks and you will select your soldiers, you can tell them where to go then. Or you could simply open barracks window, chose 1 soldier and command him to go somewhere.
I always explore with soldiers - usualy a group of 4-6. Using flag is ok too.
nah what it needs is wandering adventurers and various guilds. A rework of the traders and trade system would help to, as well as complexifying the markets
This doesn’t work for me with either the barracks or guards. They never leave the building. With the barracks you have to drop the “combat” flag and with guards they apparently need some sort of incentive to get them out of their tower… aka an animal or raider.