Farthest Frontier : Feedback after the v0.8 update and +60h of gaming

[Veil_The_Ancient]

Hi there!
First, thank you for this game, it is really well crafted game, with a well balanced complexity and attractivity! I’ve been a city builder player for 2 decades now and this is the game that put me right back in my teenager shoes, made me have throwbacks all the way back to games and hours I spent on Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, Emperor etc…
For that thank you and please continue your great work!

I’ve started playing FF about two months ago before the 0.8 update. My first map/seed/game was started before the update but did undergo the update. After this, a lot of problems arised (since the rules had changed) so I did let go that game a bit earlier that what I could have done. It was a random map choice (ended up in idyllic valley I think) with middle difficulty on everything except bandits that was set at the lowest and fauna that was at the highest (I wanted a game where I was confronted to the nature and not so much to human jealousy). These settings did give some room for error and help me see what to do/not do in a very rough way for my second game.
My second game was on alpines lakes valley, with mid difficulty on ressources, diseases and bandits and still with fauna maxed out. Wanted a more difficult scenario and it did deliver. Had a lot of luck on my seed and my start placement. I did take a lot of notes during this game about thoughts I had to enhance player experience, possible functionalities to had etc… And by the end, I had a way better understanding on waht to do to make my city develop quicker and in a more robust way.
Finally my third and last game (that I just considered “completed” an hour ago) was on arid highlands and with every difficulty item maxed out. Boy was it interesting but I still managed. Had also some major luck on my starting position I think.
And here I am, typing thousands of signs to give you feeedback. I’ll try to make organized, so it can be browsable and digestable^^! Sorry for the errors/weird formulations, I’m playing in French and even though I speak english in a daily manner, most vocabulary from this game is new for me^^.

First, thank you for some of the changes that came with the 0.8 update. Particularly the fact that villagers now live as close as possible of their work to naturally optimize travel times. In my first game, I discovered two different zones in the map that I wanted to exploit (for gold and ores/clay) and that were far from my city. They were really inefficiently exploited and implanting a second city did wreck everything in my game. same for limits of production/storage, the possibility to recycle abandonned buildings and being able to control what to store or not in storage facilites. The lack of these functionnalities was quit bugging me and not helping playability.

Here comes a mix of suggestions/propositions/reports coming for my experience for other updates and to make this game even better. Please grace yourselves^^.

To go further on the optimization of villagers living places, maybe creating a system to create multiple towncenters/towns could be an interesting feature to implement, preventing some frustration. For example, if I have an advanced outpost to extract gold ore, and it is attacked, having a town center to activate the tocsin could be a huge help ( to not have to manually move all the villagers to make them run away from the bandits). Also a way to tell the villagers to stay where I command them to go for a time would prevent them brain-farting and going back out of the city walls, right in the arms of the invaders and dying… I’ve had not so pleasant experience with attacks and 20 dead villagers at the end even though I handle the attackers quite easily. Just because of that weird behaviour the villagers have.

The storage could be quite improved:

• To optimize travel times (and everything else), each mine/work camp for example could be linked to a storage facility where the extracted material would be sent. Same for transformed goods (with the option to directly dispatch them to houses like for furniture).
• Having an option to divide between mutliple storage facilities the global stock of a certain good would be great too.
• Could it be coded an option to directly send a certain amount of a ressource from a building to another? I had multiple frustrating moments when a forge lacked a heavy tool but the foundry just next to it had one in stock. And no way to use it to restart the forge…
• Subtypes of storage could be interesting (maybe of the form of the standard storage but with pre-built forms with some type of goods already accepted of declined).
• Possibility to accept/fill/empty/keep a ressource in a storage facility would be nice (it was a key functionnality in Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom) and also a way to decide a min/max value of storage would be perfect (like the functionnality added in the 0.8 for production triggering/halting).
• Having a way of knowing what is available (meaning in storage), distributed (in the houses or the manufactures) in your city would be nice too. Sometimes I am under the impression I have a lot of a ressource but when I check it’s not here because it has been dispatched and I have no way to know. Also, it would be cool to be able to remove a ressource from a house (for exemple take the furniture to send it to the trade post to be able to sell because you need cash).

More specifically, in arid highlands, I had wells that were full of mater and some completely dry, could it be implemented a way to share the water? Making the dry wells full with the water on other wells. A new building to extract water could also be added (like a water mine?), to put into caves found only in this biome.

The workforce management posible improvements:

• create a system to automatically make people that are not working become laborers, at least temporarily (particularly in case of o forge not having heavy tools anymore, or farmers in winter for example). Maybe make it an upgrade unlocked at tier4 or tier3 so the game is still management intensive but what you manage evolve during the games.
• I still don’t clearly get how the laborers/builders balance is decided. Priority has a huge impact on it for sure. Maybe I missed a tutorial?
• Having a way to get an explanation about why a villager is inactive would be great.

Thank you for the easy interface to remove people from one profession, at least it is very easy to do, just not automatic^^.

Attacks/defense and soldiers:

• The alarm isn’t heard by the villagers or in a very limited manner. An actual tocsin is heard about 2km away. And also the villagers that hear it have weird behaviours, why don’t the run away from attackers and why don’t they stay safe behind walls and go back outside, right in the bandits arms? Maybe create relay alarms, an additionnal building to activate in case of attacks, to make the tocsin ring on a wider range?
• Why can’t we salvage weapons and armors from dead bandit corpses? My soldiers drop their weapons at death and these weapons are looted by bandits but not the opoosite?
• When the alarm is ringing, the soldiers and gards should stop supply acitivities and go at their post. I’ve had defenses “sabotaged” by guards that were away even though the alarm was ringing for a long time.
• There a way to spot attackers very early by building temporary shelters all over the map that feels almost like an exploit (as I get a lot more time to organize my defenses) only because they just pass by these outposts without destroying them, attack waves after attack waves. And also these building came “see” through the fog of war.
• Maybe making the cattle a target for bandits and predators. I’ve seen very fun situations where my cattle were out the city walls, and the bandits attacked the walls without even seeing the cattle^^.
• Soldiers tend to chase way to much flying bandits at the end of an attack. Should be the case only if asked. After demobilization and a “return to the barracks” order, they should not be running the map after few run aways.
• A selection mode when the alarm is ringing to only select villagers not implicated in the defense (not like newly employed guards that are looking for weapons) would of a great help to prevent to overuse of microgestion and pause to micormanage everyone on the event of an attack^^.
• Maybe a way to be able to stock weapons and arrows in towers and barracks, waiting to a villager to be enrolled would be cool but it feels maybe a bit abusable. Maybe making it a unlockable capacity for the late game? For when attacks are stronger and more challenging? Also, being able to choose the weapons assigned for someone in towers would be cool. Each guard don’t need a sword for example and loosing time to look for one in the event of an attack makes me cringe a bit.
• Soldiers could be marching in formation for defense and for exploration for example.
• We should be able to decide what target a tower is attacking (from the innocent dear in my field to the attacker).
• A cool thing to imagine would be to have bandits that are “stealth” atfer a time, creeping in the woods to approch as close as possible to the city before attacking.

This will be the end of the first part of my suggestions, I’ll make a second post for the rest!
Thank you for reading me up to this point.
Thank you again to Crate and the devs for this beautiful game.
Regards.

[Veil_The_Ancient]

Part two of my suggestions:

About the plant ressources:

• Why are only the blueberries bushs movable? All the other should also be in some capacity (maybe after tier3/4?) no? This would be a cool feature, allowing to create mushrooms caves for example (a new building with requirements and needing some shade for example…).
• It would be cool to be able to make rotations both in terms of employment (when the gatherer is done with the blueberries and everything to gather in its zone, they can become a laborer) and in terms of zones (when one is exhausted, the gatherer can switch to another). Maybe it would be an interesting feature to add as an upagrade at tier3/4.
• I find it odd that mountains that are clearly big rocks cannot be harvested for stone. It is quite frustrating when all the stones around the city are exhausted and there is a huge mountain near the city just calling you^^.
• I don’t know if it would be possible or not but merchants could sell seeds for different crops depending on the biome the game is taking place in. And having an interface to know and see globally what crops asks for what kind of soil would be great to easily make associations.
• Maybe having a way to dispatch the compost without having to look for the compost yards and click on them and go the fields would save a lot of time. Also a way to automate that would be great.
• Maybe having a way to know in what state the crops are in would be helpful: planting/maturing/harvesting, while knowing what part of the harvest have been harvested also (to confirm when to remove farmers and pool them to labor).
• Less of plant thing but you can build barriers under the trees of an arborist but you cannot (re)build trees that have been cut down (end of life) when a barrier is there. Making this operation reversible would be more realistic^^.

About the walls:

• Create a wall for mountain/lake sides to ensure bandits cannot pass around and ensure you’re secruing the city. It was very embarrassing when in maps like alpines lakes, bandits can just get around your walls…
• After an attack, maybe have a way to asks to builders to prioritize wall repairs would be very helpful.
• To make the wall management more realistic, it would be nice to have a high level wall type on which the soldiers can get to fire on attackers (maybe a two square wide wall). Also having tower directly on the walls instead of behind/before them would also be more realistic and enhance player experience.

Ideas for new things to implement:

• Since the villagers don’t always have a road to go to their objective, they’re walking on soft soil. It could be imagined that their paths would let traces, creating a path (a little bit like death stranding maybe). This path would increase walking speed by a factor between 0% and the one of an actual road. This would add a little map evolution along the game.
• Could it be imagined a way to decide what proportion of their activity a villager (working at the forge for example) dedicate to actually working and supplying? That we could let chariots/wagon transfer the goods and supply the buildings, making more efficient and realistic.
• I had an interesting idea: after a certain amount of time, a bandit camp could appear on the map, with bandits roaming the map and attacking unserveilled roads and convoys, trying to steal cattles that are outside the city walls for example. This would increase frequency of attacks but also make the map matter a little more during the game. Because now, once you’ve explored the map and gotten rid of all wolves, the map is a bit…still and silent for lack of better words.
• Maybe new ecological events could be added, like sandstorms, big droughts/floods, maybe even landslides (due to earthquakesp^^? yes I’m being a bit sadistic). Events that last more than a year and impact harvests might also be interesting to implement. I really like the lightning bolts hitting buildings!!
• Also, in arid highlands, I had a weird event, when a building took fire and the villagers didn’t care. It then spread and 5-10 houses burnt in the end, while I didn’t have a thing to do. Having an order to give to assign villagers to extinguish the fire would be nice to prevent that helpless sensation (and my suggestion about the water being transferred from full wells to dry wells an arid highlands could help with that kind of situations).
• Depthen the education system would be very interesting to me, by adding another level of education fro example. And by making the education level of the villagers have an impact on their productivity (for example a highly educated worker could produce crossbows a bit faster). Highly educated people could be needed for some specific tasks/jobs like growing mushrooms, moving/growing certain plants… And also, to build an upgraded theater, it might be required to have some educated builders as the building is bigger and the architecture is a lot more complex. Same for tier4 towncenters etc.
• As arborist exists, it could be interesting to expand them to other plants/trees and have a mode help proliferate them. An arborist built in the middle of sumac shrubs would make proliferate and that way you would have a better harvesting potential after 2-3 years of proliferation.
• The starting storage chariot is a very nice touch, could be it be possible to produce some more latter in the game to have mobile storages? Maybe with a cap of number (like one of these chariots every 100/200 people in the town).
• A nice touch to add would be that rats shouldn’t proliferate in storages that don’t store food. I had a storage facility full of arrows that rats…
• Speaking of arrows, normally arrows for bows are not compatible with crossbows (I practiced both during about 10 years, these are not the same and it would very dangerous to put a bow arrow into a crossbow, the pressure at release would make the bow arrow snap inside the crossbow). Creating a second category of ammo would make the game more realistic (while not being too complicated I think). Also arrows could be upgraded with an upgraded fletcher building (and a tier4 towncenter?), becoming more efficient against plates armors for example. This is something that happened during medieval times with arrowheads being upgraded to better penetrate thick metal sheets. And in the game, a plate armored bandit wouldn’t be so serene while receiving about 100s of arrows^^ (fun to watch but a bit unrealistic).

Ideas for new buildings/designs:

• An explorer building with armed people dedicated to explore the map would be interesting. I have multiple instances when a villager go to explore a zone and encounter wildlife, die and someone try to come to pick the body up and die also… Maybe the hunters could be the ones assigned at first for exploration? When they’re idle maybe?
• Wheelbarrow manufacters could replace basket shops where willow cannot be found.
• Honey could used at tier4 to produce pastries, in an upgraded bakery?
• Like hunters can used traps, maybe fishermans could use nets?
• Barns could host a lot more than cattle. Even though cattle was extremely expensive back in the days (and i liked that is was reflected in the game), peasants could also breed chickens for eggs, sheeps for wool (another nice ressource to add in really cold places?) and horses to help for transportation of people and ressources but also for cavalry. Barn could be modified to be upgraded from tier1 to tier4 (1 = chickens, 2 = sheeps, 3 = cattles, 4 = horses).
• Speaking of horses, maybe a knight building at tier 4 would be interesting.

About building updrages:

• The building upgrade system have impeding the use and control of a building when it’s upgrading. It would be nice to have buildings that are actually shutdown for upgrades (making it a more strategical choice) while other buildings remain active during updrages. And these last ones should remain controllable (zone of effect for hunting cabines for example but also people working in the building).
• It might be interesting to have enhanced version of building at tier4 that can host more people and have two zones (like a hunting cabines with two hunters and two hunting zones).
• Also the updrages lack a key functinnality for me: the possibility to queue them up. Right now, we can launch the upgrade at the moment we have the ressources but we can launch multiple upgrades while not having the ressources to complete all of them at once. So the “queue up” system already exists.

Here is the end of the part 2 of my feed back post^^.
Thank you for reading me.
See you in part 3.

[Veil_The_Ancient]

Let’s go for part 3 of my feedback. I’ll talk more about UI/bugs/trade.

UI upgrades:

• Map management is a bit dificult. A minimap would be key, having a quick way to travel from one point to another in the map would also help (scroll speed, markers…). Allowing to zoom out more would also be very helpful. Finally, a control panel with all the discovered ressources on the map would help to find where to go to find another deposit. This panel would also display the position of the deposits and how much the deposit is worth.
• A multiple selection tool would be great. I once had to cancel manually and one by one all the trees I planted and it was long and got me out of the game experience.
• On the reports available on what have been going on in the city, the number of bandits never seem to be correct (I have been attacked by 120 bandits a year and the report says 30…). Also the time scale is not modifiable (or I didn’t find the option), for example I cannot see the growth of my population from year 0 to the end, only on the 5 last years or something like that.
• Filters for desirability and entertainment would be cool, to see the area of action of a theater/a pole for example. Would help to plan beautification.
• Selecting a villager and giving them a task proved to be quite difficult, particularly if the task location is outside my screen. For example, selecting a hunter to give him the order to kill a dear in my fields is very challenging if I need to move my screen since it deselects the villager.
• A filter to see what houses are supplied with, what they are lacking, what they are waiting for could be a nice help too, to answer those needs. Same to know what proportion of the soldiers are equiped with bow or crossbows, light or heavy armors etc.
• Also, we don’t have any information about which tasks are beeing done by the builders/laborers and how their time is divided between basic needs, travevl times etc.
• A way to know if the houses are still storing night soil and in what quantity would be appreciated, we have no way to know if the collectors we have already built are enough or not.
• In the control panel for employment, it would be cool to have a way to both control the maximum number of employees and the current number of employees. Right now, I need to go to the tower to add a second guard in it for example and after that, I can play with the number of guards globally. But beeing able to do it on this panel would majorily relief the macro-management needed during a game.

Bugs encountered:

• Most bugs I’ve seen are hunting related. Dear wouldn’t appear even though the widget would say to yield is 5 dear on a zone. Dear would stay highlighted after I moved to something else. Some hunter cabins would say that no dear was close when 5 were clearly seen on the screen.
• I’ve seen gates rotate during my games, on road that are not straight.
• In a effort of planning and proper layout, I’ve laid down some buildings but prevent their actual construction by decreasing builder count to 0, to delay it. Later I relaunched the construction but the building would never be finished. I had to recycle the building and lay it down again for it to be built.

Trade:

• In the trade center, it would nice to have the possibility to locally switch max values on sliders for goods to put inside the trade center between the max value (500) and lthe max value of this good I own. It is sometimes hard to find the 20 unit mark on the slider when it goes from 0 to 500 and I only want to deposit 20 units in the trade center on the 40 I have. Entering directly the number doesn’t work with game, if I enter 20, the value is never confirmed, even if I press “enter” on my keyboard for example.
• The trade center control lack one option: to prioritize the supply of the trade center to bring goods to sell over getting what you just bought out of the trade center. You can only make it by buying and stocking inside the trade center and only dispatching later, when the merchants have left.
• It would be nice to have the possibility to have wagons supplying the trade center for big quantities.
• Some merchants make no sense. When playing on arid highlands, why would a merchant come willing to sell me sand when it’s one of the ressources I absolutely don’t lack? For example, it would be cool to be able to transmit messages to merchants through your trade center to “call” merchants that have better profiles for your city. Because a traveling merchant’s life is depending on their ability to hit the good city for the stock they have, otherwise they lose time and money, putting their life and business at great risk.

Here is the end of the bulk of my feedback!
Thank you again to the devs and Crate for this fantastic game!
See you on another frontier!
-V

[Veil_The_Ancient]

And here is a summary:
I think the plans on which the games can improve a lot are

• the map management (minimap) and use (bandit camp etc) because rn the part of the map where the city is not have little impact of the game.
• IA of villargers could be improved to prevent completely unrealistic behaviors.
• The tocsin need to more impactfull.
• Some things might gain to become more realistic overall (different house format, more animals to breed and more wildlife, crops being modified by the biome etc.)
• Tier 4 is a bit empty but it feels like it is intentional for now.

My wish would be to create a plugin to turn this game in a little more fantastic game, with maybe dragons, a little magic (witches encountered in swamps for example) and churches/paladins to fight magical beings or druids/shamans to work with them. This would add another layer to the gameplay while only being an option.

Overall the game is very very good, the hours already spent on it (and on this feedback) are well worth it!

[azz]

• In the trade center, it would nice to have the possibility to locally switch max values on sliders for goods to put inside the trade center between the max value (500) and lthe max value of this good I own. It is sometimes hard to find the 20 unit mark on the slider when it goes from 0 to 500 and I only want to deposit 20 units in the trade center on the 40 I have. Entering directly the number doesn’t work with game, if I enter 20, the value is never confirmed, even if I press “enter” on my keyboard for example.
• The trade center control lack one option: to prioritize the supply of the trade center to bring goods to sell over getting what you just bought out of the trade center. You can only make it by buying and stocking inside the trade center and only dispatching later, when the merchants have left.

To add a further level of control, I would like to be able to keep 20 items in storage, and have the rest available for trade.

[system]

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