I think fishing shacks should have an upgrade that gives them a boat to go out on. Then bigger fish can spawn away from the shore line on some of the larger lakes that would reap greater fish count. Kind of like how the hunter shack has a sensible upgrade.
Why do you need to be in a tier 3 stage to make bricks when you can chisel blocks of stone right away? Manmade bricks have been around for as long as 7000 BC, much earlier than any wagon or even the wheel for that matter.
There should be an effect of water accumulation and runoff so we’d have to plan for heavy rains that can flood. We should be able to raise or lower terrain for this as well just like we can flatten terrain. Any work on digging away dirt should create a product of dirt that we would then need to use if we want to raise terrain somewhere else, or maybe later make sand bags for use in such construction.
The herders don’t do much during the winter except keep stocking the barn with food when it runs low. They should also be raking stalls and producing manure for the composter to pick up.
Speaking of, I noticed that he can pick up 50+ waste from one house and carry it back in his wheel barrow, but when a house has only 4 waste, he still makes a separate trip back and forth for each one. He should be able to go door to door picking up waste until his cargo limit is reached and then take it back.
The option to repair a building seems missing. I’ve seen mention of there being a button to fix it but I can never find it. Even one time, the Mill required 5 of the large tools to repair which is strange because it only needs 1 to build. I then discovered that a workaround for not being able to fix the buildings with required materials is to relocate the building onto itself for no material cost at all (just labor).
The building UI also seems to have a relocate button in the top right but the starting storage wagon uses a wheel icon on the left to move it. Why do we need two different icons to move a building or vehicle?
Can we get a way to hide trees and shrubs that can be moved to allow for construction while choosing where to plot our buildings so we can see where the grid lines up? What about even toggling a grid overlay for the entire map?
The arborist description might need some clarification on how mature a tree has to be before it can be harvested.
Many jobs have seasonal limitations and I am constantly pulling people from farming to go back to the labor force. Can we make it so that any character assigned a job can take on temporary labor force duties when they have no available work and then they can return to their jobs when work is available for them? They shouldn’t need the city Mayor checking up on the miller to see if he has anything to process and reassign him other tasks if he doesn’t. Same for seasonal workers, and any other worker waiting on materials to become available.
Farmers run off and stock shelters when it is time to begin work on the field and this can lead to them being late for work. Can we have a way of assigning which shelters each person lives in so we can place our farmers in shelters located closer to their farms? Maybe also be able to see in the crop rotation graph when they actually need to be there to harvest once planting is started. They should know this anyway and be able to head back to the fields in time to begin.
The farming UI is the only one where you can’t see the individual workers and select them or see what they are doing. You have to open the people UI and use the magnifying glass next to farmers to cycle among them and this can be very awkward.
The people UI needs a toggle to hide unowned buildings. It’s nice to see what is possible in the future, but also very cluttered. If the number of buildings or jobs can be reduced, maybe even the size of the UI window can be reduced to fit as well, making it take up less screen space so you can work around it when you need to access the map at the same time.
Religion is one part of other games that I generally avoid, but if you have to add it, then there should be additional types of enemies, like zealots from other religions, or even witches coming in and causing problems for your people. The Crusades were one such problem for many who did not want to be Catholic. Maybe Peganism could be adopted as a religion in the game too. The same for characters having feelings against religion if they think working with people of various faiths could be a problem.
Oh, that brings up another point. What about worker disputes and fights between characters, especially the drunken ones? Crime isn’t just an outsider trying to break in. Crime is created from within as well, and needs punishment options and maybe even a court system. Oh but I might be bleeding some of that off of another game. Still, people can die of old age or starvation, so why not have populations fill up prison cells while not giving up their residential space reservation. Maybe work places need motivational objects as well to keep their workers in line (happy).
Other weather and geological events may be added. Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, the occasional forest fire… sounding too much like Sim City at this point.
Let us designate people to pick up stuff dropped on the ground and put it in storage. People drop everything to go fight a fire, then drop the water when the fire is out and eventually, all that gets cleaned up, but you might need some more wood and you see piles of it already waiting for somebody to pick them up but they have no incentive to do so most of the time. Bandits dropped gold they stole and I want to pick that up and put it in the vault.
Oh yeah, the vault doesn’t seem to be the default place to put gold anymore once you have one built. It should not be something you store in any other storage building when a vault is much safer for such an important commodity. Maybe weapon storage should be the same way, being stored at a military building once built. An armory of sorts, if you will. Items having better storage quality and protection in a specific place should by default be taken to that place. Even if the best solution is to continue using what is closest and then have laborers move them to better locations (securing the gold, grouping weapons together in the military buildings, etc.).
Laborers ought to have a list of available actions a player can task them with so if there is more than one type of job available for a laborer to do (gather materials, harvest, restock, etc.) that the player can see this list in their UI and select what they should do, or even order the list into a priority stack for individuals or maybe just all laborers if this is easier.
I think the Compost yard could use some more workers sometimes. It takes a while to fill up a stack and covering more ground a distance away could require more help, especially since you want to keep this kind of building away from your populations.
I think I’ve said enough already for one who has only played for 63 hours at this point. I’ll wait until I have more to offer and give you a chance to respond to any of this if you wish to. I helped The Guild 3 through its early access stages with my contributions so I am happy to contribute to this as well.