I don’t typically go in for “easy mode,” so I spent 20+ hours across 6 unique games (all “Trailblazer”) in arid highlands, plains, and alpine valley. Not once ever in any of them did I find willow, even after reading about it, seeing what the icon is supposed to look like, and exploring around the perimeter of every body of water I found.
Last night, I started my 7th game and my first in lowland lakes. Willow is EVERYWHERE. It’s not even just by water, there’s random patches of it in the fields and in the woods.
But with a city of about 100 villagers, roads extended out in 4 cardinal directions, and a few rounds of exploring the fog of war at the boundary of my vision, I still have not seen one single hunting spot. No deer, no boar, no wolves. One bear attacked some villagers once, I don’t know where it came from. I have 100 pescatarian barefoot villagers.
Please tune the resources across the different types of maps a little bit in subsequent updates. It’s good that some things are more rare and harder to find than others. It’s bad when they seem to be completely absent from any realistic style of gameplay aside from uncovering the whole map to find one instance of it. It’s bad when players give up on entire aspects of the game because the resources just don’t seem to be implemented properly.
update: I’m trying to start a game on arid highlands but have yet to land a map that has even ONE clay deposit visible anywhere at the beginning before I place my town hall
rare would be having to travel far for it and/or use it sparingly, this is rendering the entire map type kind of unplayable unless you want to commit to buying any clay you need from traders, which will cause your town to stagnate while you wait for RNG to bless you
On my huge map (alpine - vanguard), I had clay close to my town … but had to go very far to find other clay deposits. In the end I have 5 or 6 on the whole map. I traded for clay … I have lots of iron, gold and coal …
I find it nice to not have everything at hand … or at all.
For instance, no medicine roots to be found and still have to find a trader selling those (some buy … probably needs a bit of tweaking with the randomness).
Might as well be non-existent, as I’ve rolled tons of Arid Highlands maps and have never found any clay visible at start, a single willow node, no medicinal roots ever and very rarely herbs (and then usually underwater and inaccessible).
Arid Highlands being the hardest map is fine and I love playing the hardest settings, but its pretty much unplayable past a rather early point due to the lack of specific key resources, aside from that even there you could certainly find a few mushrooms, nuts and the other resources which do not really exist there currently.
This is my point. this morning when I posted this I spent about a half hour rolling arid highland maps and eventually just gave up and exited to desktop. Part of the fun of this game would be, for me at least, playing through cities on each of the different kinds of maps.
But not having the resources at all is like, well why invest time building something here when it means I’ll just not use the basket weaver, or will have to buy all my leather, or will have to wait for a merchant that has clay to even get into t2 stuff. You have to shut off parts of the game to play certain maps and I’d rather play the whole game.
I saw someone suggest that the game is intended as a trade simulator, which I think sounds like a cool idea but if that was the case then surely it would make sense to be able to develop trade agreements with the regular merchants. Like the traders have particular resources that they trade it would help if you could set in the trade centre the goods you want to buy and sell and the game would generate some traders with those resources rather than ol’ Scorv or Anta the Expensive. It could perhaps be an upgrade perk for the trade centre then it would help in the late game while still leaving RNG struggle for the early game.
I think this is the issue right here — it shouldn’t be “pure randomness” RNG but instead some kind of “stacked deck” RNG. A trader traveling out into an area where there is no natural willow to be had will surely stock in willow to be traded (but charge a high price for it). Seems like traders coming to biomes that are known to be missing a certain resource should almost always sell those resources, at a premium.
I really appreciate your contribution on this, I think that’s an interesting perspective on the game and I reasonable suggestion.
I find the trading extremely tedious. No notification when a trader arrives is one thing. The other is having to move the goods from storehouses to the trading post before they can be sold. I often schedule goods to be moved then get lost managing something else (adjusting crops, moving gathering areas, planning new roads, all the things I love about this game) and the trader leaves before I make it back around to actually sell the goods. Let alone buy the cows or heavy tools I intended to get with the gold.
If trade is such a major component, I hope it will receive a good deal of focus in subsequent updates.
I think as well that the fact that traders may offer higher or lower prices is underutilized. I don’t actually know that it totally is random, but if it could be tied to anything (regional availability/abundance, seasonality, etc.) then it would suddenly become an interesting process to “play the market” stocking things at favorable prices and reselling them for more to subsequent merchants.
But in order for that to be worth it, mining and producing gold at the foundry should probably be tuned down. It produces extraordinary amounts of gold.
A popup notification that the trade will be leaving in a few days would be probably helpful, or even a “loading bar” somewhere in the main UI to show how long traders are still around.
If they intended it as a trade simulator it would have made sense to make it like a stock market where you can put offers and bids. For examle you might bid to buy 50 weat at a certain price. If a merchant arrives which offers that price or lower, the trade would execute. In the same way you could put an offer to sell at a minium price and if a mercant arrives which wants to but at this price or higher, the trade would execute.
You would then have to look at the price charts to determine what prices to put. Too far off and you lose money, to narrow and trades risk not executing.
Same here. I waited for 10 years to get a second and third cow so i could start growing my herd. Omg! And when the trader with cows finally arrived the trade post had no gold and the wrong stock. Needed to fix that. Sold stuff for 1000 gold. Bandits attacked directly. I managed to snag the cows right before the trader left.
Another time i decided to buy willow for all my money because i have no willow source on the map and you never know how many years it will take until he comes again.