Iāve used my ratcatchers across a larger area by manually moving their work area. Basically, every week or two, I move it in lower-density rat areas and keep one static in specific high-density rat areas. Itās a bit of whack-a-mole and high maintenance/boring gameplay, but it usually works for me.
I was using the āmove the areaā method of economizing on Rat Catchers before the latest test series (0.8.1.2 and 8.1.3) of the game, but Iāve noticed lately that it does not work as well.
As the game progresses, it seems like any building not covered by the work area of a Rat Catcher gets a rat infestation almost immediately. Yesterday I watched while 4 residences in a row all had rat infestation graphics pop up within seconds after I moved the rat catcherās work area away from them.
This may be because the residences in question (and most of them in the village now) are Upgraded and so have more villagers living in them than earlier in the game. In fact, since I have noticed this phenomena in my last two games, I assume that has something to do with it, because in both games, as residences were Upgraded and population/resource amounts in storage increased, the rat infestations got more common and more persistent.
This means, I suspect, that we will be required to āUpgradeā Rat Catchers later in the game as population densities increase to keep up with the rat problem. Since there is no Upgrade for the individual Rat Catcher shacks, that means supplying more Rat Catcher shacks and catchers to the village, once you have the Gold income to sustain more Rat Catchers.
I agree, the small radius and cost of the ratcatcher is just too much. Regardless if you move it around. Iām sure the intention is to not have such a boring and tedious mechanic. Iād much rather focus on expanding and building.
The Humankind 4x historical game gave you the option of using Ferrets or Cats to clean up your cities. That would give us the chance of much more entertaining graphics of cats or ferrets chasing rodents through the streets and save us a lot of annoying micro-rat-management.
DarkenedSpear: Another question, are things like pets or animal companions a thing that could happen, either in the gameās current state or in the future?
Zantai: I think it would be pretty cool to have dogs and cats running around town. Itās not currently a feature. And that might be something to consider in the future though. Maybe, weāll see.
Medierra: WHAT?! you totally shot down my cat system
Zantai: I did totally shoot down your cat system, but that was a mistake. I did tell you that. I was wrong. I was wrong to shoot down the cat system.
Just a note.
In the game Civilization 6, trhe early-game Scout unit is accompanied by several dogs. Over a year ago, a Modder changed the graphic to a bunch of Cats trotting along with the Scout. The Mod has been so popular that it was incorporated into the regular game. You can now choose to toggle in Cats or Dogs at your pleasure.
Cats is popular. Never underestimate the attraction of Cats in a game.
I didnāt purchase this game to play rat catcher. It is so frustrating to have to spend a significant amount of time moving their perimeters just to try and keep the rats reasonably under control. I had nearly 50% of my population die from plague with 8 catchers to cover a population of only 281 people. After that, no one immigrated for 3 years of game time. I nearly gave up completely.
One rat catcher should be able to cover the entire town and should do so autonomously. I shouldnāt have to move it manually around the town. Iād pay more gold per month if it did this. As it is now, it costs too much and takes valuable time away from expanding.
yeah the rat catcher should be removed because it doesnāt add FUN to the game
and instead adds frustration. It is one of those idea that sounds good on paper
but in game is just not needed.
I suspect Rats were added to interact with Plague because, hey, everybody knows that the Medievalish period was all about Black Plague and Rats.
So Iām not surprised or particularly upset that rats and rat catchers are in the game.
BUT
The implementation leaves something to be desired. IF the only point of rats is that they infest residences, storage areas and markets, then the same mechanic used for the Composter should have been used for the Ratcatcher: he goes a certain distance down the road to the infestation, removes it, moves on. No meticulous adjusting of āareasā to get everything within ārangeā of the Ratcatcher - micro-Rat-management at its worst.
Iād like to jump on this one in agreeance that the rat catcher has to change somehow. Iāve spread to over 600 population and either have to A) have like 12 rat catchers to get coverage of my residential and storage areas (and add more as I expand), or B) constantly be moving around the target
Option A is way too expensive. The monthly cost for my rat catchers is more than the cost for my guards! Itās actually quite ridiculous. There are plenty of services that donāt have a monthly cost (literally almost every job in the settlement) so why would the rat catcher have a monthly cost?
Option B just straight up makes the game less fun to play. It turns it into a rat management sim
I do, however, like and support the idea of having rat catchers - it would certainly be needed in a community like this. As such, I have a couple ideas of what could make it better:
āSame coverage area, but no monthly cost. This would allow my to place however many I need to have full coverage without worrying about going broke to do it.
āInstead of a monthly gold cost, perhaps the rat catcher could consume a small amount of raw goods to craft a new consumable ārat trapsā
or
āMake the coverage area large enough for a medium-large size community, but have the option to add more employees. When rats are more scarce you could employ one person. If theyāre getting out of hand, you could maybe have 3 or 4. If the coverage area were large enough to only need one rat catcher building Iād be a lot more okay with it costing $5-10/month as a service
They simply need a larger area of coverage, and maybe a little bit of improved āskillsā in their job. They are cost prohibitive so the whack a mole option is what we have until they increase the coverage radius.
It is so simple to earn more money in the current state of the game. Simply build as many rat catchers as you need. I have 8 in my town of 1000 ppl. I donāt care to pay 80 goild per month - if you care you have to do the micro.
We have so much gold please donāt make everything easymode.
A lot of what you said depends highly on each individual game though. For example, I was doing pretty okay with money ~500 population (not great, but a few thousand gold-ish), but one season of bad crops, several too-strong raids, several years of bad luck with traders, and not enough workers to adequately collect raw resources or smelt gold ingots and defend my town at the same time - and I now no longer have the ability to sustain my rat catchers much less my theatre, healer, guard towers, or soldiers in barracks. Once things get difficult, they can snowball out of hand quickly
Maybe you are playing pacifist mode? Or maybe Iām just an idiot. But legit once I got below a few hundred gold my game started going downhill reallllly quickly. I literally went completely broke for more than a year, and once I lost the ability to pay for the theatre things snowballed as people started moving out due to decreased desirability
I have since made a small recovery and am feeling generally stable now well over 600 population, but a few in-game years ago that monthly fee for the rat catchers was quite literally all the difference between a monthly income and a monthly deficit
Regardless of all that, I still didnāt sign up to play āMedieval Rat Catcher Simā, nor do I think itās remotely appropriate to pay a rat catcher $10/month while simultaneously not paying almost everybody else in town for performing their jobs. Itās inconsistent at best. Monthly costs make somewhat sense for the town theatre, healer, guard towers, barracksā¦but rat catcher??? Nahhh
Itās not a major thing, but something that a minor tweak or two could easily make more playable
Agreed on a lot of the points made here. Iām at the point where playing whack-a-mole with the rat catchers isnāt remotely fun, but do agree that they should remain given the period. The minute I get some decent coverage with my rat catchers, they start depleating my gold, then Iām forced to eliminate some and the spiral of population destruction starts.
Donāt have too many soldiers. I have 32 for normal Raids and if a strong one arrives and i want to kill them - i employ 70 more soldiers (got 5 Barracks) and get rid of them after the difficult raid. I can live with mikro every 10 years.
Get T4 at every market place. You earn more money if you have only high tier houses and not that many T1/T2 (build a school everywhere you have a marketplace)
If money is in bad need: Always have 500 logs and planks in stock. You can plant a oak for 5g and you get 11 logs or 22 planks out of a single one.
Buy spices as soon as you have T4 houses and keep your spices in the trading post and only place 20-40 in town storage (depends on how many T4 houses you have). You can take more and keep an eye on it to check for spoilage.
build only 1 theater to get T4. The rest or the ppl can have festival poles for their entertainment.
If you are wasting gold for cool things - enjoy the cool stuff or delay it until you have more gold.
Yes sometimes you donāt have a lot of money during desasters, but that is the challenging part. (or fun in my view)
(personal opinion) If the rat catcher costs 0 and the rest stays the same it gets a bit boring. If you have enough gold, soldiers, rat catchers, towers and weapons at any time of the game it gets boring. The bears should be stronger again, because we have these cheap soldiers a lot of towers and way too good protection against all the low dmg wildlife.
I have build my last city at Alpine Highlands (or whatever it is called) because i wanted more chill and less thinking. If you donāt enjoy having less gold, fertility and resources, please try another map - it is fun. Arid Highlands on Vanquisher should stay fun but āstruggelyā.
I should have saves for at least 3 towns at 1k on a arid highland map āvanquisher modeā since 0.7.6. The gameplay changed a lot since then.
Keep playing and you will get your city to 1k. Itās way easier on any other map type - and its great!
Iāve never given much thought to the rat catcher. It seemed to me that You dont really need them much until you get to the point that you can afford them, or should be able to. I have a city of 940 and I have 9 ratcatchers deployed so that every residence and storage facility has one within range. Im pretty sure I never even saw rat infestation until Tier 3 or so. Then again, I play on the easiest settings (not pacifist, but everything else), so maybe its more of an issue at higher difficulty settings.
I think it is the best job of that time, they are very well paid, they work without pressure, at their own pace and I think they will leave some rats alive every time (so they donāt run out of work of course) jejeje
Your suggestions for getting gold are cute - they basically only apply to those who have already grown to 1000 and T4. Letās be honest, if youāve gotten your population that far and already upgraded to T4 you are already not having trouble with gold or other resources
Fortunately, if players like you find the game to be too easy as you have repeated several times, there are harder levels of difficulty in both the gameplay and map creation. You are pleading with the devs not to make everything easy, but thatās literally why some players play games like this. Players like you always have the option of playing with more difficult settings. Not everyone plays a game like this because they like a challenge. This is why the devs created different difficulty levels, and even a pacifist mode to begin with. Itās not like Iām asking for infinite money, or freebies. But Iām playing on easy mode on an Idyllic map seed - it shouldnāt be that easy to lose several thousand gold over the course of only a couple years, all while struggling for both resources and labor pool. More importantly, if you do get into a slightly tough spot like I outlined in my previous post, things go from bad to way way way worse very quickly once you start not being able to afford your monthly upkeep on even one single thing. This clearly indicates the balance is at least slightly off
Back to the rat catchers specifically, I just donāt understand why that job specifically has a monetary monthly upkeep. Nobody probably wants to work in the tannery or soap shop either, but if you assign them, they do it. Why are some jobs paid, where most are not? Iād much rather have the rat catchers simply consume some resources for baiting the rats instead of paying them so much if we have to have that many to maintain coverage. Not everyone wants to build their town in the most highly efficient, tightly packed grid - your 8 rat catchers covering your entire population is a feat in and of itself (and probably the same reason why your tax collection is so efficient too). I have at least 12 rat catchers now already with my population of now over 700. By the time I reach 1000 Iāll probably require 15. This example alone shows why paying for the rat catchers is kind of silly - players should not be punished for having different ideas of how their town gets laid out
