I recently started playing FF and fell in love with it. I played almost 60 hours straight in the first week. However, the game loses its charm a bit over time, and I’d like to share some tips, if possible, to make it less boring after a while.
First of all, I observed the movements of some villagers, and it’s very confusing how to optimize their time. I’m not talking about making them work longer, but optimizing their tasks!
For example, I can’t speed up my city’s construction because the sources of Ore and Gold are too far away.
If I build a wagon shop (intuitively), I expect it to make my “logistics” easier and faster. However, that’s not what happens.
Another point: resource production lacks information:
- Compared to previous years, how much more or less did I produce?
- How long do I need to wait to produce anything?
I don’t get any feedback on the progress of production (Age of Empires, for example, has a kind of chart that tracks everything so you know when it will be finished).
Another lack of intuition is:
What exactly do “laborers” and “builders” do?
When monitoring each villager, their movements aren’t linear.
For example: in a typical day, I’d expect someone to work in the morning, have lunch, work in the afternoon, and return home at night.
But in practice, the one who’s supposed to build walks around, carries materials, stares at the scenery, and wanders back and forth… Then someone else brings materials, and the one who started building doesn’t finish it.
This is confusing. If we stack the mobs’ activities, it seems like actions overlap, and any available mob takes on the top priority task. However, this is inefficient. If the goal is to give the mob “reflection periods,” it would make more sense to intersperse this activity within their task stack.
The overall feeling is a lack of control.
Another thing: it’s frustrating to have a 50-year-old city and still not be able to store 50 units of iron for export. The production of iron and honey is an example of unintuitive production.
For instance, in real life, I should be able to produce more honey the closer the bees are to an orchard or flowering trees. But here, I need a farmer to harvest the honey? That just doesn’t make sense.
Iron production, especially, is extremely slow. This makes the game feel “boring.” I built an army, had 2 iron mines and 3 foundries, yet I still couldn’t produce enough iron to craft weapons.
Once again, resource management feels unintuitive. I don’t want to have to read Tolkien’s works to play a game after working 12 hours in a day.
One last thing: the game could really use a tech tree to help players see what’s missing and how to unlock it. This would speed up learning in an intuitive way.
I’m Brazilian, and to everyone who made it here, thank you for your attention. I absolutely love this game—please don’t take my critiques as hate. I’ve been waiting a long time to play a game like this. I’m a huge fan of this genre, and I deeply appreciate everyone involved in the project. God bless you all! 