Hi and congratulations on the game.
It is really a great game with a ton of details. WOW
after playing 30 hours here are some comments that I think may help.
Hope they are useful.
The biggest weakness of the game is people who need to travel long distances to find stuff for their shelters or something like that. I guess it’s better to add a new feature that a person can change their shelter. everyone should change their shelter and choose a new home near their workplace. [ the travel time especially in 2 cities near each other is a point of failure. (Just like TROPICO 6.0) ]
Raids can be warned a few minutes before they happen. [Stronghold 1.0]
The graphic in the map is great but the worst in the icons/graphics of buildings. you cannot find the proper building by it’s picture or graphic on the menu or on the map at all. Why are they all similar to each other? [stronghold1 & 2 is a good example of neat and perfect designing].
Categories need to regroup too.
walls and defense are very expensive and hard to control. Actually, there is no proper control over people. after setting the alarm of the main hall it can be like [WC3-ORCS] that the people get to the defense towers and shoot arrows as many as they are.
transportation. this one is serious. with a useful WAGON SHOP you should be able to send goods to the near other city’s storage. or help people to transport to their destinations asap with that.
people shouldn’t go too far for a low-need good like a candle. they must get these only in their city area [specific area/distance definition needed]
A useful Minimap could be a step to success.
working on the military section is a need too and can be a power point for the game. it is very basic.
Trade is the best part of the game you can gain gold and stuff. make it more important, like more merchants and longer stays and more trade centers.
it can be good if a year really takes longer than this. for example 3 - 5 times the current speed. and if it is the winter must be more interesting.
the Farm Idea is great but it is a little in the hard mode. make it easier to gain products from the farm.
You can build small settlements out by remote resources. Put down a few houses, a well, market, compost yard and your workers will be closer to their workplaces.
Exactly.
I’ve tried to build the new city with vital infrastructures to avoid this.
Even I tried to expel all workers and made 250 free labours، and then hired them all to see if the AI engine would choose the nearest ones. But unfortunately the result was disappointing.
Almost all of them were near the red bar (travel time at any workshop as a bar).
You know if you have not enough employees to hire a panel will pop up to let you choose a worker freely. This will end guy’s previous job. At that panel you will able to see the travel time and it can be really a solution, Although it is a little time assuming.
I haven’t really had this problem, most of the time my workers end up in the correct houses. In your screenshots, seems like you are running out of some essentials - with low food/firewood, I imagine every villager is running around trying to stock their shelter whenever food/firewood becomes available - can you show what everyone is doing (F3)?
You can set up an early warning ring of unmanned towers (IMO it’s weird that I can turn off the tower and still get full vision, but it works). You generally have enough warning time if you lay out your city with the weapons/armor in one place that anyone you recruit as a guard/soldier can gear up in time. Still, I wouldn’t say no to more warning time.
I would agree that there should be a better way to locate existing buildings, mousing over the building should highlight existing ones, and/or have a button to cycle through each building.
If you want more guards, put up more towers and then disable them via the Toggle Building Production button (avoids upkeep). When a raid happens, you can enable them and citizens will become guards. Walls are indeed expensive, but make it very difficult for non-siege engines to actually deal damage. I would agree that better control over citizens would be very useful. I often want my remote workers (e.g foragers or miners) to retreat during a raid, and instead I have to micro them and make sure they don’t start running back to their workplace in the middle of the raid.
What about the military needs work? Are you talking about the controls? Unit types? Lack of stats?
How would increasing the number of merchants/duration of stay make that much of a difference? Aside from increasing the amount of arbitrage trading (which I think should not really be a thing), what else would merchants really provide?
How would increasing the length of the year make the gameplay better? Is it just that the events like a heat wave or drought become more impactful? Longer times between farm harvests (would spoilage time increase to compensate)?
Is hard mode = vanquisher difficulty? Or just a map with low fertility? Vanquisher does not affect how much farms produce. On most maps, I settle near a place with a decent amount of 75%+ Environment Fertility Factor land, which allows me to produce enough food with decent rotations. The game does tend to overemploy farmers - seems like the game employs roughly 1 farmer per 15 tiles when 1 per 25 is closer to reality. If you don’t manage the farmer count, you will end up wasting a lot of labor on farmers that are idle more often than not.
Thank you dear Pushover for your detailed comments.
Well I think I tested it at peaceful and comfort time.
But you are right. This situation leads the city to a mess. I should test it again.
(Funny accident: when I expelled all of my workers I was looking for people to rest in their houses for a while and everything was there but suddenly something weird happened. Almost 50 people got sick with different diseases in lack of soap in just few months. Why? )
Ok . Must try.
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Exactly. Sometimes I need to tell the guards to come down from the tower and attack to enemy in another place.
You know. Maybe it’s a wrong standpoint . I guess these kind of games are survival and are different from RTS games. But it can be more developed. Like training archers, Knights , siege … ( Attack to another city on steam online maybe ?)
Well, more merchants mean more trades. I can buy low price goods and sell them later at higher price. I am doing this now and it’s really fun.
It’s a challenging question… . You right. It needs more time to think about all aspects.
My point was about avoiding the frustrating managing time that you are always configuring things to make the city works right BTW.
You know in [rise of nations] we have farms too.
Look how easy are they. Actually I prefer this one. But it could be easy at start and after few years need to fertilizing and removing weeds appear. And about employees you are right.
Actually building a compost yard to an enclave of houses on the edge of the map does not make that worker clean from those houses. In many games where I had an outpost far from capital the composters were running across whole map. So annoying.
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