I’ve been playing for a few hours, and having a blast despite some frustrations. I realized last night as I was talking with friends who are also playing that we all have the same general complaints, but we all agree the game is super fun, just would be way better with some changes:
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Less Micro-management: I realize micro-management is a core part of the game, but it can get extremely overwhelming as your town grows. I have to manually assign goods to the trade hall, which makes me miss out on trade opportunities. I have to manually set up storage so that goods go to the proper places, otherwise wheat will go to a storage facility and not a grainery. I have to manually tell people to stop producing a good when we’re all stocked up, and then I have to remember to tell them to start again. I’ve had some cold winters because I stopped firewood production and then couldn’t find the axe chopper to restart production.
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Icons to Identify Buildings: Buildings start to blend together. The game really needs an icon to identify special buildings, or at the least, special buildings need to stand out more. I keep having to search for my trading post and I get it confused with the Candle shop.
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Tutorials: A tutorial would go a LONG way in helping. There’s some great documentation out there, but this game has some complex systems that would really benefit an in-game explanation.
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Management Panels: After I have 5 different farms, it’s really hard to remember which is growing what. A panel that shows all of my farms and what they are growing would be wonderful. Same with other professions. I’d love to open a panel that shows all of my sawmills, or mines, so I can easily see what’s happening without having to search for the building. Some sort of construction queue would be really helpful as well, so I can see at a glance what buildings I have being built and their status.
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More Notifications: There are some really helpful notifications already. I’d love to see these expand to things like when a new tier of building is unlocked, or when a trader comes to visit. Things to help me know what I can focus on next. Something that comes to mind is how Cities Skylines has the fake twitter feed. Perhaps we can have something similar (Obviously tailored for the game’s era)
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Better terraforming: I had a map where the iron mines were in steep mountains. I couldn’t build a mine on the mountain because it was too steep. I had to do at least 5 different flatten land projects before it got to the point where I could build. I’d love for building on slopes to be improved and a better system to make land buildable. It would also be great if you could flatten land around water. I had a situation where I had to build a fishery across the lake from my town, and there was a tiny strip of land I wanted to build a road on, but I couldn’t because I couldn’t flatten the land because the water was in the way. That made me have to instead build a LONG road around the lake.
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Improved tool-tips: More data on items when you hover over them would be helpful. For example, if I hover over meat, it would be really great to see its impact on food supply and how long it takes to spoil The report doesn’t do the job there.
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For that matter, It would be REALLY helpful to know WHY food is spoiling. My town is complaining of starvation, and smoked meats are spoiling. I could not figure out why.
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Inventory management: This goes in line with my suggestion for panels. If I could see a panel that shows my storage facilities and their inventory and easily be able to assign goods to be transferred, that would be INCREDIBLY helpful.
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Visibility on how production/supply is impacted by certain actions: So to explain: I want to see how much production is increased by assigning a new employee to a building. I want to know the base level of production of a building. This will help me decide if my supply problem will be solved by creating a new building or simply assigning new workers. It would also be EXTREMELY helpful to see a visualization of where a certain building’s goods are going. Maybe an icon in the building window that shows the storage facility where the workers are taking the goods.
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UI Fixes: The UI looks great! It has a nice classic feel to it. But there is a lot of room for improvement. For example, the trading window. There is a LOT going on with it. If neither my village nor the trader has an item, why not hide it by default? Scrolling through every possible item to find the one I need can be time-consuming. Hawthorn should not have the same icon as berries. Especially considering you can relocate berries, but you can’t do the same with hawthorn. The farming UI can be a bit inscrutable as well. I didn’t understand that the winter months couldn’t have crops or tasks assigned, and as the game told me I didn’t have room in that year for another crop, I was confused because there was a large chunk left in the bar.
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Improvements to visibility: I’d love to be able to zoom out further. Getting a higher view of the town and wilderness would help with managing things. The ability to shift perspective would be great too, so I can tilt the camera to get a good look at some things. I’d also LOVE a map. I think it would be a fun addition to maybe have a cartographer you can employ who will create a map for you.
This is what I can think of for now. I want to stress that I am having a BLAST with the game. I think it’s so wonderfully crafted and fun, and I feel smart when I am able to solve an issue or figure out a system. With some QOL changes, and a few gameplay tweaks, this could easily become my favorite city builder.