Version 1.0 General Gameplay Feedback

Apologies if any of this has been suggested and rejected during the early access process, I generally avoid playing early access versions so I don’t burn out and end up not playing the final release.

General:

  • Add some sort of measuring marker for planning out spaces
    • I keep (ab)using fields for this by placing them to mark where I want to build things later on
  • Add an easy way to extract a map seed from the menu after starting a game
    • Having to take a screenshot and write the seed down is a nuisance
  • Using “billing cycle” for buildings with operating costs feels out of place in a medieval game
    • Feels like ye olde MBAs have arrived to squeeze every last drop of shareholder value gold out of the theatre
  • Add an option to jump to buildings on worker tab screen like you can jump to workers
  • Terrain flattening is confusing and awkward
    • It often seems to do the opposite of what I’m trying to achieve and I usually end up having multiple overlapping work areas to get the best out of it

Buildings:

  • Add a search function in buildings menu
  • Simplify the ‘relocate building location’ text to ‘relocate building’
    • Having location at end of the sentence is redundant
  • Add an option to select a specific type of small garden etc.
    • Sometimes I want to put down two or more of the same garden and having to repeatedly reselect the garden in the buildings menu is decidedly not fun
    • This should be added to any decoration with multiple randomised options
  • Allow tab/shift+tab to cycle between min/max quantity boxes on all storage buildings
  • Allow making graveyards larger using the mechanic for enlarging fields
  • Add a bulk move buildings option
    • I often find I want to move a house and the garden(s) I have built around it and moving them individually is very click intensive and a nuisance
  • Clicking on wells should display which buildings are inside their radii
    • Needing to open the building menu and use the well building tool for this is a pain
    • This should also be added entertainment venues
  • Allow cycling between destroyed buildings with arrow buttons similar to fields or watchtowers
    • This is a chore because the notification is in the top left and the buildings generally aren’t
  • Add a way for items accidentally stored in markets to be returned to where they came from when storage is disabled in the market
    • This applies to coal particularly as I’ve lost count of how many times this has screwed up my foundries and blacksmiths
  • Allow upgrading of fences and gates
    • Having to knock down existing fences and gates and rebuild them is a chore
  • Add default min/max storage values for each building
    • I often just disable things I don’t want to store and divide capacity evenly between logs and stone etc, so setting a single value that can be overridden would be good improvement
  • Warehouses and storage depots seem to have issues with leaning over
    • I rarely have a warehouse that isn’t the leaning Tower Warehouse of Pisa and the terrain flattening tool usually makes it worse
  • The arborist building’s fertility display should be made consistent with how the Forester camp displays fertility
    • It is displayed when placing the building, but not when selecting the work area

Trading Post:

  • Add a search function
  • Allow pinning things you need to buy/sell regularly to top of list
  • Add stocking thresholds i.e. items should only be stocked when there are more than x in the settlement’s storage

Hunting and animal attacks:

  • Add a select all hunters option for fending off bears and hunting boar
    • Having to manually hunt boars makes it feel pointless unless you’re desperate for food
    • RTS mechanics are fun and rewarding but they are also quite frustrating with how hunters work currently
  • Allow villagers flee towards temporary shelters
    • Watching the villagers fling themselves into the path of the nearest bear when there’s a perfectly good hut in the opposite direction is very frustrating
  • Add periodic random bear/wolf den spawns to reduce attacks for a while similar to raiders
    • This would add a reason to have hunters later on in the game and make the map feel a bit more alive after all the static spawns are destroyed

Tech tree:

  • Needing to invest four points in Woodlore and Trailblazing just to give hunters a reasonable chance of not getting mauled by bears on Vanquisher isn’t fun
  • Foothold traps upgrade comes too late to be useful
    • Already unlocked cattle and other animals by the time it is available
  • Deep Wells upgrades feel like a waste of points
    • I’ve never needed to use them, not even on an Arid highlands run, and by the time I started to have issues with wells refilling I could afford to plant virtually unlimited trees
  • Civic Inspections comes too late to be useful
    • I’ve also never had a fire that’s gotten out of control or spread to more than three buildings

Military:

  • Archers seem to run into melee combat when they have ammunition left
  • Battering rams are too vulnerable to archers given that they use a design specifically for protection from arrows
    • Rams are easily destroyed by a unit of 12 crossbow equipped archers

Farming:

  • Adding a notification for when a field is no longer infected would be useful
  • Environment fertility factor for fields is a bit confusing in terms of how it is applied
    • Adding a tooltip explaining how it affects fertility mathematically would be helpful
  • Add a button to disable fields similar to buildings with an operating cost
    • Would allow infected fields to fallow without needing to micromanage crop rotations
    • Would allow for grazing in a field to improve fertility without micromanaging the assigned farmers
  • Stopping production of tallow shouldn’t prevent production of meat and hides
  • Increase the maximum initial field size to 15x15 from 12x12
    • This would match the cattle grazing (fertilisation) area
    • Having to build and expand smaller fields just adds friction later on in the game

Watchtowers:

  • Add an incentive (positive or negative) to keep watchtowers active
    • Guards could gain limited veterancy or towers could have reduced/no view distance when not manned
    • I build and immediately disable towers away from the settlement in the late game to help prepare for raids because of the view distance and how buildings interact with raider spawns
      • This is clearly an exploit and not how they were intended to be used
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