Hello everyone.
Today I want to tell you a short story of a BIG project.
No that big? Keep patience.
It all started, I think, around August 2022. I decided to build a big labyrinth on (almost) the entire map. And now, after a couple of IRL years and about 350 in-game years, my project is complete. Of course, I didn’t play regularly, coming back for a couple of days for playtests and after patches.
Meets, Labyrinth!
(Damn it even doesn’t feet i one screenshot)
So. First of all, I needed to decide on a strategy.
I needed a relatively flat map, since the leveling tool was poorly optimized, so I chose plains, a additionally, it lacks a large number of water bodies, which could lead to gaps in the uniform structure of the labyrinth. I also chose a pacifist mode, because regular raids would slow down my work, and additional barracks and armory buildings would take up scarce settlement space. The choice of map type also limited me in resources: a small number of water bodies meant a low level of fishing, and the lack of blueberries meant the impossibility of collecting them in a separate plantation. I also chose the pioneer difficulty, which gave me a quick start, and the high density of animals meant a large number of deer providing the settlement with meat.
And I started a new game. Having explored the map, I found that there was only one pond on the map in the upper left corner, which determined the location of the city and one of the boundaries of the labyrinth. I moved the city center (that time it was possible only with clear tool) and began to form the main part of the city. As I said above, my resources were limited, so I focused on trade. I sold beer, cheese, candles and dishes, bought clay, herbs and willow. The main resource for construction - wood I received by regularly planting decorative oaks trees. Effective city planning provided a sufficient increase in gold and at the moment the whole city gives me about 10k gold in annual taxes from 85 buildings (Could be better, but enough). The first quarter consists of manors, the additional - of various buildings.
Then I built the outer walls of the labyrinth and began construction according to the drawings that I prepared on paper. Later I switched to excel. Looking ahead, I will say that I made a critical mistake: in order for the labyrinth to have no voids, it had to be an odd number of cells in size, which is why literally the last cells of the labyrinth had to be placed just to finish.
At first, construction was very slow. If you remember, the AI algorithms at that time were very bad. Walls were built in a random and uneven manner. The same with roads (additional troubles with short roads shifted by 1 cell). Leveling the surface could create impassable areas where settlers got stuck.
One of the patches brought a change in AI and construction went much more productively. Another with the expansion of the settlement level forced me to start building the second quarter, and 0.8.0 and subsequent ones further expanded the number of service buildings. At last, before patch 0.9.7, the game took 30 minutes to load. At the same time, the old map imposes a number of restrictions. I cannot use deep mines (due to the lack of deposits). I have a large number of cemeteries that could be replaced with crypts.
The earliest screenshot
In another angle
From entrance…
… to finish.
One of the playtest patches sent the barn into the Chthonic void, so you can see “wild” cows walking around the labyrinth.
Some autumn screenshots
You’re probably asking how much it costs to upgrade the labyrinth to stone walls? Well…
