I’m at about 70 hours into the game so far. Have loved games in this genre for ages (Caesar, Factorio, ONI, Knights and merchants from the 90s). Here’s some quality of life improvements that I think would be great.
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Livestock are all born at the same time. This creates a massive spike in meat production that can’t be handled by smokers, unless you seriously overbuild their capacity. Also, since livestock birth rates are linked to the number of herders, it’s easy to increase the number of herders near the beginning of the year, and then turn them back down as soon as the livestock are born.
I propose that livestock should be born spread randomly (or evenly) throughout the year. This prevents both, the spikiness of meat production, and removes the ability to boost the number of herders for short periods for massive productivity gains. -
Another one related to barns / livestock. When decreasing the number of herders via the professions window, the decrease is spread unevenly across barns, and feels inconsistent. In the case of barns, I think herders should decrease proportionately / evenly across barns. i.e. If I decrease the herders for a 20+20+10 barn from 50 to 40, they should go down to 17+17+8. I don’t think this is an issue for most buildings (especially since production prioritizes 1 building if there are multiple), but mines do feel similarly inconsistent.
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Lookout tower costs. Lookout towers have a monthly cost that can only be toggled if the building is turned off. However, this seems inconsistent when a lookout tower with no guards in it has a monthly cost, and the one that is turned off works the same way, but does not have a monthly cost. Either both should cost money, or neither should.
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Hotkeys. Need way more hotkeys.
4a. There needs to be one for the annual production window, and a way to traverse all tabs in that window via the keyboard.
4b. There should be a hotkey that allows building of whatever building is currently selected. i.e. we don’t need a dedicated shelter hotkey, but if I click on a shelter and press a hotkey, a shelter construction on the grid should pop up. -
Until the town becomes fairly large (500+), I feel the need to turn off farmers and foragers every winter, and turn them back on right before the new year for efficiency. Eithers idling farmers and foragers should automatically turn into laborers during the winter, or there should be new (lower productivity) tasks for them to do, so that they don’t need to be switched twice every year. Another option may be to link happiness to idleness. Being idle for a couple of months every year (on average across all villagers) should be required for 100% happiness.
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On the medium difficulty, raids seem to be consistent that they only show up once every 3 years or so. This lets me remove most guards as soon as a raid is done, then assign them back at the beginning of the 3rd year after the current one. I think raids need to be a bit more random (but nobody likes raids every year on lower difficulties), and / or there needs to be a cost to hire guards, like there is for soldiers.
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This one may be more philosophical / game design. I would like to see the annual gold gain / lost broken down further into expenses, traded and source of taxes. The devs may not want to provide the player an annual breakdown of luxury taxes, so I can understand that. It does feel weird that this information is available on a monthly basis on the top right in the UI, but not tracked in the long term.
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Just a comment. I feel like I should spend less of my time micromanaging professions because there are significant efficiency gains from changing them frequently (farmers, foragers and guards). Flexibiility is great and really important, but the efficiency gains from switching professions feels too high at the moment. An additional mechanism, such as idleness, proficiency gained over time in profession, or cost to switch for some professions would be nice.
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I’ve seen this one mentioned fairly often, but preserves feel worthless. Glass is a luxury, and there is a drop in it’s value by turning it into preserves, with no real incentive to do it. I’m sure there’s an overhaul coming, because there’s barely any uses of sand at the moment, and an overabundance of glass, but preserves should count as a luxury in addition to food.