First and foremost: this game is awesome!! great job dev team! I love this game!!!
I could probably write a book about all the things I’ve learned along the way playing this game, but I don’t want this to be a tutorial. So I’ll try to keep this to things that I think need some tweaking to make the game more enjoyable/make sense.
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traders - my biggest beef with this game is traders. 2 show up a year, at the same time. they never buy anything you have to sell. Cattle are expensive (as they should be), but if you can’ afford them when they do have them for sale (which is rarely), you have to wait for about 2-3 years for the next opportunity to buy them. That’s too long of a wait. Traders should show up like 1 in the spring, 1 in the fall, not both in the summer. They should buy more things you are selling, even if they only pay pennies. Please make it so they buy smoked meats. I don’t care if the trade ratio is 100 for 1 gold. Also, and I’ll talk about this more later, have them buy fruit. so much goes to waste it’s insane. The list of things they buy vs they sell is very lopsided. They need to “trade” more goods. Maybe make a slider that allows direct trade of items instead of trading for gold back and forth all the time. This would allow trade even if you don’t have gold.
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self-sufficiency - put some of every needed resource on the map, even in small quantities (except for gold or coal). You NEED clay. you need sand (for farming and preserves), you need iron for everything. some peeps (me included) don’t like having to deal with inept, robber baron traders to get the resources we need to make our town grow. Put a little of everything needed on every map, and add some coal and gold as goodies for some maps randomly. you can eventually make your own coal so no need for it to be on the map (but it’s nice).
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fruit - Orchards - ever have 900 fruit go to waste in one year from one orchard? I have. Before the preserves shop, it’s really not worth it to even have an orchard. Either move it to T3 to build or find a way to deal with all the fruit that is being produced. I know it’s a 3 year ramp up to start harvesting but that goes by pretty quickly. sell it in the market, or better yet, be able to trade it!! make pies in the bakery or something other than have it sit in crateloads in the root cellar and then rot.
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jump to next building button - where is my #9 hunting shack? I have no idea - all I can do is click on 1 and see it’s circle, then the next, then the next, etc. make a button to jump to the next one in the line. I can’t tell you how handy that would be for each food source hut and storage unit. It’s a must have feature.
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temporary shelter range indicator - are my workers close enough to make it home so that they don’t need a temporary shelter? I’ll never know. Who stays in there, the miners I have working off in the boonies or the labor camp flunkies out chopping wood all day? I don’t know. When do they stay in the shelter, when do they go home? Who knows? There needs to be a lot more information given concerning these temporary shelters. Most importantly, let us know if workers are close enough to home to not need one or if they are far enough away to warrant building one. That would be a great start.
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Disease crops - too much, too soon, too long. could there be a warning system for when this is about to happen? Like, if I have a fully manned farm, are they just ignoring the warning signs until it’s too late? “Hey Joe, look at the mold on this carrot.” “Bah, it’s fine, just leave it.” Next thing you know, all your crops are toast. Make it so if you spend a whole year, or maybe two years of just farmers tending the field (not growing crops) it fixes the fields so you can plant again, instead of waiting out 5 years of nothing hoping that it will be usable again. If you invest the manpower to fix the field, it should be fixed.
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More tiers for the town hall - tier 2 is fast, 3 takes a while. lot’s of players unlock all the new buildings on T2 and then crush their workforce building them all right away. Maybe add another tier level to the townhall and divvy up some of the buildings in the process. I suggest moving the orchard to a later tier, closer to the preservation building release.
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moveable resources - there is a mod for this, but it would be better unmodded - just like blueberries, move other bushes - hawthorne, greens, etc. If you have to lose some of the yield as a price to pay for the move, so be it. Maybe with that ability, you could reduce the size of the gatherer circle? Or make another class of hut - gardener hut, which only works for resources that have been moved. Also, include in that hut the decorations gardens, which might not produce much, but could work great for apiaries. bottom line - make all the natural resources moveable like the blueberry bushes are. Why do one resource and not the others?
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prioritize harvesting in bulk - why are my workers getting trees from way over yonder when I want the trees right next to my houses cleared now? it’s a lot to deselect a swath and then reselect a new area, when half the time the workers just keep on gathering the old area anyway. make a harvest selection prioritizes somehow. maybe a right click and drag makes that are the priority. It would be helpful.
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house for sale! get your dilapidated trailer park rental dirt cheap! please give a reason (and a way to fix it) for why houses suddenly lose desirability. especially when the house next to it is somehow a townhouse, and for no reason, the one right next to it is now deemed unworthy for an unknown reason. the reason why and how to fix that problem should be information the player is given immediately or even before that happens.
OK, i’ll stop at 10. this is not criticizing this game, just some ideas to maybe help. I love this game. I want it to be better. I can see playing this game for years to come, maybe with some cool expansions (like archipelago’s) or something. Thanks for reading!