Glass & Sand

[Celebrindan]

Fruit and Berries come in annually in numbers that can easily range into the several thousands of units.

Currently, even a fully staffed (eight workers) Glassmaker cannot keep pace with a single, half-staffed (four workers) Preservist working to preserve even a portion of those kinds of fruit and berry harvests.

The two or three (24 Workers) fully staffed Glassmakers that are needed just to keep up with one or two Preservists and an Apothecary, can easily outstrip a normal map’s capability to produce sand, and still not put a dent in a couple of Arborist’s annual output of fruit.

Sand needs to be ubiquitous around shorelines, just like willow, naturally.

[Boris_Gonagan]

• Or there need to be more Deep Deposits of Sand. Probably a minimum of 2 per map, because even a fully-staffed Deep Deposit Sand Pit cannot keep up with the demand from 2 or more Glassmakers.

Regular Sand Deposits could also be more common on varied terrain: not only around shores, but also low hills and plains.

[Groovy]

i do not bother with mines (after year 50 give or take ) and deep deposits I never waste workers on. Much better to have workers making a high profit item. Then I just buy sand/glassware

[Celebrindan]

There is very little that equals the cost of glassware, so producing twice as much of anything on the hopes of getting a Traveling Merchant that has what you need, is not going to provide you with as much glassware as you need and will fill your storage with things you don’t.

Any opportunity the game sees as a weakness in your build, it will try to exploit.

If it sees that you are not producing glass, the TP will try to starve you of it.

Trying to keep adequate supply of the basic raw materials is the best policy, but the balance of material use vs items produced is not yet achieved with sand, glass and preserved items.

The last time this issue was addressed, they limited the production of the Glassmaker as one of ways to stretch the supply of sand.

It was not the way to balance sand use, as it now starves the Preservists of the goods they need, and sees vast amounts of fruits lost to rot.

Sand on shorelines is as common as water is.

[Celebrindan]

Deep deposits are far too labor intensive for the little material they produce.

[Boris_Gonagan]

As stated, right now the solution is not to rely on Traders, which are almost as unreliable as the Deep Deposits.

And once a certain percentages of the deposits became Deep Deposits, there frequently are not enough regular deposits on a given map to provide. Case in point is my latest map, which is superb in all respects except one: there are only 2 mediocre regular Sand deposits (about 1000 each, which doesn’t last very long) on the map, and 2 Deep Deposits (both as inaccessible as they could make them, on top of a steep-sided mountain that needs extensive terraforming to make them useable). Traders, of course, provide sand in one year out of five so far, which makes all glass making sporadic at best once the regular deposits are depleted.

The good news is that there is no need to change any expensive graphics or basic game mechanics, just tweak the numbers of production and amount of resource/deposit and Production per worker and resource.
I regard it as a balance issue, along with things like resources in hides/tallow/meat per cow, and those are precisely what pre-release play-testing is for.

[Groovy]

@Celebrindan

There is very little that equals the cost of glassware, so producing twice as much of anything on the hopes of getting a Traveling Merchant that has what you need, is not going to provide you with as much glassware as you need and will fill your storage with things you don’t.

If it sees that you are not producing glass, the TP will try to starve you of it.

I am drowning in gold and I have no regular or deep gold mines. There are MANY ways to make more gold via the 50 workers wasted on a deep mine and the support of it and why I just buy glassware.

lets see of the top of my head
1 deep gold is 16
1 deep coal is 16
2 foundry is 16
plus labor to transfer stuff (wagons and by foot)
plus labor to make tools/heavy tools (picks for mining etc)
plus labor to repair all that stuff
plus labor to get the materials to repair all that stuff
and on and on

it is WAY more labor intensive than most realize.

of course swap out foundry for glassware factory and other stuff
if looking at sand and glass etc…

IMHO The best policy is NOT to even bother with basic resources and buy
as much as you can and then use the labor else where to make huge profit.
I have no mines and no factories for most stuff and no support to that stuff saves
me hundreds of workers and no need to repair anything.

I have never had an issue buying glassware. There is always plenty and
I have no glassware factories or sand mines etc… glassware lasts many years,

@Celebrindan

Trying to keep adequate supply of the basic raw materials is the best policy, but the balance of material use vs items produced is not yet achieved with sand, glass and preserved items.

The last time this issue was addressed, they limited the production of the Glassmaker as one of ways to stretch the supply of sand.

If you do not waste time on sand then you do not have to find ways to stretch it out lol

[Groovy]

@Boris_Gonagan

As stated, right now the solution is not to rely on Traders, which are almost as unreliable as the Deep Deposits.

IMHO Currently the best way is to buy everything and fill your storage.
I have so much inventory it goes bad before I even get to use it sometimes.
Glassware I have like 30 years worth at any one time.

you do not have to be at the traders mercy if you plan ahead and stock up. The only way
I can see having trouble with trading is if you only but small amounts and then you keep
running out before next trader comes with what you need. However, There is no reason
to do that. (unless you have no gold but if you do not then you have larger problems)

[Celebrindan]

@Groovy

I have no mines and no factories…

I am at a loss as to what you sell, or make gold from then, to be able to afford being such a spendthrift.

And, what app do you use in order to get a regular supply of needed goods from the TP?

Because I’ve watched as Merchant after Merchant bring nothing of value, and sought only to buy what I needed.

I got real tired of seeing them offer their joke prices for the lumber, and NEVER ONCE offer it for sale.

To the point of it being like having Crate spit in your face.

The unhappiness that results from privation is a tool the game uses to screw the player with under the guise of ‘adding difficulty’.

Setting yourself up for failure is simply not a wise move.

The TP is not reliable, period.

Your experience with it is not the norm, as everyone else here attests.

[Norm_Cameron]

This has certainly been my experience, I rarely use the trader, only to buy cows or weapons. Once you get a gold mine and foundry the money just flows in.

[Boris_Gonagan]

Case in Point:
In my latest game, just as I got to the point where I needed Glassware/Sand, a Trader came by with 400 Sand for sale.
Bought all of it, of course.
As of this morning, 16 GAME-YEARS LATER, not one grain of sand has been offered for sale through the Trading Post.

Nor has a single shard of Glassware.

The 400 Sand ran out long ago, and luckily, since this is NORMAL for the 500+ hours I have been playing this game, I had started terraforming a vertical-sided mountain to get to the only Sand deposit I have found on this map - at the top of the mountain, of course.

My Tier 4 housing, without glassware, would have devolved without access to that deposit, and the 3+ years it took to carve the mountain into a flat top and roadway to the top to get access.

Since then, I have found another regular Sand deposit, at the far corner of the map where it will probably take a second satellite village to provide housing for the workers in it., and a regular stream of carts to get it back to my main Town.

In other words, my only choice is to either ‘rely’ on totally unreliable Traders or go through major construction projects just to get access to a single Resource which is Required to get to Tier 4 Housing and stay there.

My experience has been, through 3 towns to 1000 pop and another 5 - 6 to Tier 4 but lower populations, is that Sand is the scarcest resource on a Lowland Lakes map. Back in 7.5 to 8.2 I regularly got Lowland Lakes maps which had only 1 small Sand deposit or none until you explored the far corners of the map, as far from the notional ‘start position’ as it was possible to be.

Now, I can accept that as just the ‘downside’ of Lowland Lakes - every map should have one except maybe ‘Idyllic’ - but don’t go telling me that I can always use the Trading Post to get around map resource limitations, because that is flatly contradicted by all my experience in this game.

[Celebrindan]

Slowing the Glassmaker’s production levels turns it into a waste of labor, when two fully staffed (twenty Workers) cannot keep pace with one half-staffed Preservist (four Workers), and an Apothecary.

This turns Labor into an unquenchable resource-sink, that must include Mines and Wagons to produce & carry both the Sand and Coal, and the Farmers, Farms, Herders, Barns, Hunters and etc., etc., etc. to feed, clothe, educate and house them all.