There are plenty of fantasy-based games out there already: leave me one historical-looking game, please!
There are lots of candidates for historical High Tier ‘capstone’ buildings, many of which have already been proposed/posted on: Guild Halls, City Halls/Rathouses, great timber and stone Warehouses and specialized Markets.
Higher Tier defenses, including higher and stronger walls with ramparts, hoardings, higher and bigger towers, etc. - combine those with expanded Barracks and make a realistic castle instead of a copy of Disney/Ludwig II’s 19th century romantic fantasy pastiche.
Brick roads of any kind inside the city would be fine, but brick roads outside of cities seem to have only appeared in the late 19th century, and I believe that they’ve only found about 3 - 4 examples of Yellow Brick roads that could have inspired the author of Oz throughout the eastern USA. On the other hand, bridges of stone or wood, elevated roads over marshes and low spots - those would really enhance the movement of ‘goods and services’ around the map.
They could very easily add ‘advanced gardens’ as desirability ornaments in the cities: with, say, Roses in beds, hedges or trellises or Peonies (the most popular flowers among the Song Chinese nobility) or fruit trees like cherry blossoms as decorative trees - lots of ways to ‘brighten up’ the city without turning it into a badly-drawn cartoon.
You think the game is realistic? LMAO This is game is so far from real I already consider it a fantasy game but with boring graphics. I could list 50 things off the top of my head right now that make this game not realistic. If you want real you are playing the wrong game.
I’m on year 1281 and you really think the houses should still look exactly the same still? in all those years they never figured out how to build awesome castles? This game should have 10 tiers and tech/graphic trees for all tastes. You wanna keep it looking how it is fine you do that but give the option to spice it up for me who is on year 1281 and my city has learned to use magic. lol
I guess you never saw the move Excalibur? it made the knights armor awesome yet real at the same time as an example. It made the castles shiny silver but real at the same time. I see no problem doing that here. real does not have to mean 50 shades of brown lol
Should have said ‘realistic-looking’ as in a castle versus the romantic fantasy that is Neuschwanstein, rest of the time I talked about ‘historical-looking’ not ‘realistic’, which I know better than to expect in any commercial game.
Only saw part of the movie Excaliber, because I was laughing too hard to really see most of it: a fantasy movie based on a fantastic legend that couldn’t even be internally consistent with the legend it was based on.
But it does highlight my main objection to a fantasy graphic look for the game: consistency. The game is attempting, however dimly, to tell a sort of reality-based story about remarkably egalitarian settlers trying to start up a medievalish settlement. With all the imperfections, that’s still consistent in that the problems they face are all (again, imperfectly) based on a popular view of medieval reality: typhoid, plague, starvation, frostbite, hungry wolves, cowardly hunters-type reality, not soaring castles built with steam-powered hoists, shiny plate-armored knights and yellow brick roads fantastical. That would be a different game entirely, different from the start, not jammed on top of this one.
yeah I’m not talking about it looking like a cartoon. I meant as in my example a Disney castle (at Disney world) It is still realistic but is has some flavor and color also. Another example is that many who see what the great pyramids actually looked like think it is is not realistic but they really did have smooth white casing that the Romans removed. It looked EPIC compared to the way it looks now but most games with the pyramids do not show it correctly. They use how it looks now.
Excalibur I was not saying the whole movie. I chose the armor example for a reason. Totally realistic but awesome at the same time. Of course no one used pure gold armor or chrome plated armor but damn it looked good! It is the same thing with this game. Who says I can’t paint my house red? why does it have to be brown?
and like I said 1281 years have gone by and there is every reason to think the architecture would change in the time frame. At the very least colorful paints would be invented lol This is why I feel tiers should open up more than just a bigger version of stuff. Maybe the next levels use marble instead of basic grey stone. and the 2.1 million gold ingots I have some can be melted down to put gold trim on buildings etc… or spent to build a bridge and ships and a port. and the ships would have colorful banners. (yeah I’m getting tired of looking at grey and brown lol)
Gilded armor was a reality (sorry, couldn’t resist using the word) in the time the game sort of represents, but it was strictly for appearance, parades, court functions. Nobody would risk it on a battlefield!
Colorful buildings, now you’re talking! I was stationed in Aschaffenburg, Germany for several years in the US Army, and the two oldest buildings in town (other than the cathedral, which dated back to Charlemagne’s son) were half-timbered like FF’s Large Houses, and the woodwork on both was painted a bright blue, the stucco in between white-washed - and these were the original colors of the buildings from the Middle Ages! No reason we can’t have an option to ‘pretty up’ the homes, maybe as a Tier 3 and above ‘bonus’. In addition to bright colors, Flower boxes at least in the front/street-side of homes was fairly normal - a lot could be done to add both attractiveness and ‘individuality’ to the residences.
For that matter, although it might take more revision than can be done between now and Initial Release, I would love to see ‘housing’ coupled with commercial buildings - no reason an Upper Tier Cobblers Shop couldn’t be a two story half-timbered building with a street-front shop on the ground floor and residence on the second - likewise the Pottery, Candle Shop, etc. The problem I could see is that some of the ‘shops’ (Tannery, Soap Shop) degrade Desirability, so would not do well mingled in with other housing. I do hope they look into it, maybe for a DLC, because the norm in cities since classical Athens and Rome was to live behind or above your shop in the cities, and have streets of the same or similar shops - Street of the Metalworkers, Street of the Leather-workers, etc. Would love to be able to duplicate that, complete with the appropriate big, ornate Guild Hall at one end of the street . . .
I was stationed in Baumholder Germany in the black Forest for 3 years then the gulf (i was in the first gulf war) I know well the German architecture lol When I was in Japan same thing. Both Japan and China used (still use) way more color.
Anyway, as with most things (music , art and games etc…) it is very subjective as to what is considered realistic. To me this game is not at all realistic and why I want more colorful/whimsical options but sure still leave the dreary boring stuff in there for others.
Colorful buildings, now you’re talking! I was stationed in Aschaffenburg, Germany for several
years in the US Army, and the two oldest buildings in town (other than the cathedral, which
dated back to Charlemagne’s son) were half-timbered like FF’s Large Houses, and the
woodwork on both was painted a bright blue, the stucco in between white-washed - and these
were the original colors of the buildings from the Middle Ages!
Now you are talking! lol
At the very least add exactly the kind of stuff you just mentioned. Living above the shop is WAY more common/realistic than how this game is having a house far away that takes weeks to walk to lol I also want less cookie cutter stuff. See this is MY town and if I want to gather the people into the town square and tell them from now on no more brown and grey then well that is what we will do. lol
This is about options. Just because I want access to Disney type castles doesn’t mean others have to use them. That is kinda how town builders games IMHO should work. If my town is forced to look like everyone else’s well meh to that. There is a reason I haven’t played the game in like 5 days. It is now boring too me. Tier 4 was a let down. Yeah I know EA but it is what it is and that is WHY i posted in hopes devs might look into it.
well the armor in the movie was 1/4 the weight of real armor and that is what I meant.
In the movie sir lancelot was doing back-flips in full armor lol They used mostly 18 gauge
stainless steel sheet metal and spot wielders to make the armor for the movie.
The answer to the fantasy/“realistic” castle might be to provide Castle Elements and let you assemble as you wish. There could be some fantasy elements tucked in there, some as-close-as-we-can-come realistic, a bunch in between. You takes yer pick and they could run a side contest on Really Good-Looking in-game castles assembled from components.
Individualizing the (especially Upper Tier) towns would seem like an Obvious design decision to me. If it is a Town-Building exercise, which it would appear primarily to be, then they need to provide a bunch of elements from which the gamer can pick and choose to apply: variations on streets, residences, decorative features.
For instance, why not a big, ornate City Gate (the “High Gate”) which is available in several variations of decoration. Why not a simple skin retone, so that all the brick in your game becomes yellow, or light tan, or a deeper red - because that’s the color of clay in the area (the Franconian region around Aschaffenburg is notorious for its rose-colored stucco and tile, because a lot of the base rock in the area is sandstone, and the clays from it are very red in tone - it makes the older buildings in the towns very distinctive)
While this might not be a favored idea for players (and a perfect example of “be careful what you wish for”), if I were looking at all these ideas from a business standpoint, I’d capitalize on that and offer some design packs for extra $$ that allowed the players to add those additional building styles from various regions in the period. When it came to color, I’d offer an in-game purchase of paint or dye that would allow the player to apply it to ‘each’ house (offered in an in-game store that would be cheap, but potentially cost a LOT based on how many buildings the player wanted to color), or maybe their troop’s armor, maybe offer different standards (heraldic flags) so players could personalize their towns, all being things one could purchase.
As a player, I might not like being nickel/dimed to get my town to look the way I want it, but it would definitely make sense in today’s P2P environment.
My “pattern” for suggested DLCs with extra elements is Anno 1800, which regularly releases “Cosmetic” DLCs for $5 or so with collections of mostly graphic additions to the game. For instance, the latest was an “Old Town” pack which reskinned a bunch of their residences into old-style half-timbered buildings (like FF’s Large Houses) and added Medieval-style walls and gates complete with ramparts and wooden covered walkways on top (“hoardings”). This allows gamers to build a ‘history’ into their 19th century Anno cities with an older Medieval center and perhaps bits of old walls here and there. People have already run with this, building complete Medieval cities and city centers surrounded by skyscrapers and coal-fired Power Plants!
I don’t see why post-release Farthest Frontier couldn’t do the same:
Water DLC with functional changes like rivers, waterwheel mills, bridges and wooden causeways over swampy, marshy, or waterway areas - and Moats and Canals!
Individual Houses DLC with flower boxes, different-colored woodwork and choosable tile, slate, or thatched roofing, ‘incidentals’ like Outhouses, vegetable gardens, rose hedges, etc.
Arms Armata DLC - the militant one, with, perhaps, a choice of Spearmen with shields instead of clubs as an Upgrade for ‘crude weapons’, Longbows instead of Crossbows (faster firing, same range and effect, but requires Advanced Fletcher and Arborist, because the Yew bows had to be grown rather than simply cut out of an existing tree) and Hunters who can and will hunt down Wolves, Boars and Bears.
Just thoughts, but I think it gives an idea of what could be done . . .
Por mi parte (como siempre), pido de “regalo de navidad” que la opción superfácil (pionero) nos deje disfrutar del juego sin quebraderos de cabeza. Disfrutando de la belleza del juego.Para mi es imposible llegar al nivel 3, el oro desaparece, para hacer lingotes necesitas llegar a ese nivel. Nunca tengo oro para comprar artículos. Por favor, a los que nos cuesta jugar a estos juegos ponédnoslo más fácil con esa opción, cada vez que juego con parche nuevo, es más complicado la sección pionero. Felices fiestas a todxs!
seems like 0.8.1 playtest update is coming … next year, right?
whenever it will come, i would like to see it more stable, so i dont mind to wait few weeks more
