Posted September 02, 2017
Here I post some things that disturbed me, some friends and maybe others. I also posts some solutions that came into my mind, but these are only my suggestions.
My main points are:
1.) "Information display"
2.) Food produktion / transport
3.) Stockpiles
4.) Wall
5.) Army / Fighting - System
6.) Some Bugs
7.) End
1.) "Information display"
The biggest issue the game has is the lack of information it displays. Because of that it is very hard for new players to get into the game. It got a bit better, but there are still many things missing.
1.1) One thing is the output of foresters/quarries/mines. You show how much they can produce, but not how much they really produce. Because of that the player has no information about it. It is currently impossible to see, if they work at 100% or not. That means that you have no chance of finding errors.
A solution would be to display the real output per season of foresters/etc. . With it, you can find errors very fast and easy and it would improve the gameplay greatly I thing.
1.2) When you found the error (currently only possible when there shows up the red box with querry-stockpile full, But usually you look at them, when your stone is empty, so you don't see the red box. Only after a minute or so it shows again. That means, that you often 'miss' the red box and so you have no clue why nothing is working properly), it is not easy to tell why it don't work properly. Only after some time you will find out that it is mostly a full stockpile (the building). But currently you can't see if a stockpile is full or not. I also think that the stockpile also don't look full, when it is. I often had querries with the red-box-alert one tile next to a 2x2 stockpile (with 10/10 workers) that looked only 3/4 full.
An easy solution would be to show the storrage space of a stockpile.
1.3) Output/Input of other buildings would also greatly help to build better castles easier. Especially the old 'charcoal maker' discription was misleading (It said: "When it has less than 3 charcoal in store it will produce 2 charcoal for 1 piece of wood."). According to this, you only need 1 'charcoal maker'. The new description is better, but you still dont know how often it produces. Currently it is just 'try and adjust'. Players are unable to find out, if you need one forester for 2 'charcoal makers' or 1, or 3, or something else. The same thing is with bakers.
An easy solution would be to show the output/season. That worked very well in banished too :) (Last Season/This Season)
2.) Food production / transport
Especially the food transport logic is poorly. With the new version it got a bit better, but it is still bad. When a farmer of a farm 2 tiles away from the empty granary can't bring in the food fast enough, something is really whack (I had this very often in the last 104 version)
2.1) Farms - lost to exposure
There are a lot of bugs and bad implementation about it. First, the harvest don't work flawless. And the best thing is, when a dragon burns a field, while they should harvest. I don't know if it is already fixed, but last time all the farmers extinguish the flames and most of the harvest was lost to exposure. And some times the "lost to exposure" don't work (the food vanishes, but the farmers can pick up the 'air' and have then magically food in there hands). There is also a transport-related issue, i will explain in one of the next points.
I didn't found a very good solution here. Maybe my mill suggestion or maybe tweaking with the times or fires.
2.2) The Mill (Suggestion)
The mill, like it is now, is not optimal. The farms itself don't work flawless at the moment. The mill makes it even worse sometimes. When a farm produces 20+ food, the farmers have a hard time bringing the harvest in in time. Depending on your layout and your granary (distant, load), the mill can also have zero bonus (because all the extra food is lost to exposure).
Suggestion: Make the mill a 'tiny storrage'. When the farms are ready to harvest and they have a mill nearby, they will bring the food to the mill. The mill 'grind the food' and brings it to the next granary. In the game it only works as a tiny storrage, so it shouldn't be to hard to implement, but it would make everything runs smooth. A mill would be then a still expensive, but also good investment. It would improve food production and smoothen the harvest.
2.3) Orchard
At the moment the food production is pretty similar. Making the Orchard better would only change the problem to the other side. You could add a new gameplay - mechanic, but that would be to much work.
A good (and I think easy) way to improve it would be diversity. You could make the Orchard a 'combination-building' The Orchard could produce food and wood. This way the "Income / Worker" would be high, but the "Food / Worker" and the "Wood / Worker" value would be less then that from a forester/farmer.
2.4) Storrage
The storrage system do only work for small citys at the moment. But after about 5h the system beginns to break. The system works now so, that the farmers will store the food to the nearest granary and the 'market-guys' take food from the nearest granary. After about 5h-10h you will have at least 5 granaries. When you produce a surplus, it will pile up at the granary, which is farthest away (because the market will take food from the closest granaries). When you have more then 450 food at the next harvest, the granary will be full. That means, that the farmers can't store there food there and this leads to a total loss of the harvest around that granary. (And the farthest away granary is also the first, the vikings attack usually)
This makes it nearly impossible to save some food. If you try it, you will get heavy losses to exposure. This also makes the game unplayable for bigger map sizes.
As a solution I would recommend a transport system overhaul. This would also make the game ready for bigger map sizes. One kind of possible overhaul I explain later in this post in "3.) Stockpiles"
3.) Stockpiles
Some improvements, which would be easy to implement, I already postet. Some further improvements would be a complete transport system overhaul, which would consist of 2 parts.
The first part would be 2 new buildings. A large granary and a large stockpile.
The second part would be a real transport system. In stockpiles you can place a 'request and provider threshold' The 'large granary' is typically in the center and when you have workers left, they will transport the food from the 'small granary' and 'granary' to the 'big granary'. So, the food will be save and you can save some food (see storage-exposure problem).
The best would also be to detach the workers from individual stockpiles/granaries and add them to a big 'laborer pool'. This way, the cities/kingdoms would be more dynamic and not so stiff. At the moment, The number of 'Idle workers' jumps to fast. It is a real pain to try to use all your workers efficient. A good example is building walls. when you build 5 walls you need 5*7=35 builders. When they are finished, you have 35 idle workers. So you have to constantly do something, that you dont have idle workers. And when you are missing workers it gets even worse. You will start to have blacksmiths with 4/5 workers, but they need 5/5 or they dont work. Because of this all (and some other things) it is a bit a pain in the ass to manage your workers.
Creating a 'laborer pool' would smoothen it greatly. You have a recommended laborer-number (a stockpile adds 10 to this number, a granary 2, etc), but all your idle workers will become laborer. If you have 50/50 laborer everthing will work (if you have enough stockpiles etc). If you have 70/50 laborer, they will have so much time, that they can start to make some less priority runs (like move food from an outer granary to a 'big granary' in the center). When you start building many buildings, you will drop to 30/50, but this will be no problem (when you dont stay there to long). You should have stored enough food in the 'big granary' and enough coal/iron in the stockpile next to the blacksmiths, etc. . Only when you stay at 30/50 for a longer time, you start to have troubles.
This 'laborer pool' will make everything much easier. No 4/5 blacksmiths. No empty ballista towers. No turning stockpiles off, when vikings attack. No idling workers. No mikromanagement and turning buildings on and off the whole time. It would a big and maybe also difficult change in the game mechanic, but it would be really great.
And this would also make the game ready for bigger maps :)
My main points are:
1.) "Information display"
2.) Food produktion / transport
3.) Stockpiles
4.) Wall
5.) Army / Fighting - System
6.) Some Bugs
7.) End
1.) "Information display"
The biggest issue the game has is the lack of information it displays. Because of that it is very hard for new players to get into the game. It got a bit better, but there are still many things missing.
1.1) One thing is the output of foresters/quarries/mines. You show how much they can produce, but not how much they really produce. Because of that the player has no information about it. It is currently impossible to see, if they work at 100% or not. That means that you have no chance of finding errors.
A solution would be to display the real output per season of foresters/etc. . With it, you can find errors very fast and easy and it would improve the gameplay greatly I thing.
1.2) When you found the error (currently only possible when there shows up the red box with querry-stockpile full, But usually you look at them, when your stone is empty, so you don't see the red box. Only after a minute or so it shows again. That means, that you often 'miss' the red box and so you have no clue why nothing is working properly), it is not easy to tell why it don't work properly. Only after some time you will find out that it is mostly a full stockpile (the building). But currently you can't see if a stockpile is full or not. I also think that the stockpile also don't look full, when it is. I often had querries with the red-box-alert one tile next to a 2x2 stockpile (with 10/10 workers) that looked only 3/4 full.
An easy solution would be to show the storrage space of a stockpile.
1.3) Output/Input of other buildings would also greatly help to build better castles easier. Especially the old 'charcoal maker' discription was misleading (It said: "When it has less than 3 charcoal in store it will produce 2 charcoal for 1 piece of wood."). According to this, you only need 1 'charcoal maker'. The new description is better, but you still dont know how often it produces. Currently it is just 'try and adjust'. Players are unable to find out, if you need one forester for 2 'charcoal makers' or 1, or 3, or something else. The same thing is with bakers.
An easy solution would be to show the output/season. That worked very well in banished too :) (Last Season/This Season)
2.) Food production / transport
Especially the food transport logic is poorly. With the new version it got a bit better, but it is still bad. When a farmer of a farm 2 tiles away from the empty granary can't bring in the food fast enough, something is really whack (I had this very often in the last 104 version)
2.1) Farms - lost to exposure
There are a lot of bugs and bad implementation about it. First, the harvest don't work flawless. And the best thing is, when a dragon burns a field, while they should harvest. I don't know if it is already fixed, but last time all the farmers extinguish the flames and most of the harvest was lost to exposure. And some times the "lost to exposure" don't work (the food vanishes, but the farmers can pick up the 'air' and have then magically food in there hands). There is also a transport-related issue, i will explain in one of the next points.
I didn't found a very good solution here. Maybe my mill suggestion or maybe tweaking with the times or fires.
2.2) The Mill (Suggestion)
The mill, like it is now, is not optimal. The farms itself don't work flawless at the moment. The mill makes it even worse sometimes. When a farm produces 20+ food, the farmers have a hard time bringing the harvest in in time. Depending on your layout and your granary (distant, load), the mill can also have zero bonus (because all the extra food is lost to exposure).
Suggestion: Make the mill a 'tiny storrage'. When the farms are ready to harvest and they have a mill nearby, they will bring the food to the mill. The mill 'grind the food' and brings it to the next granary. In the game it only works as a tiny storrage, so it shouldn't be to hard to implement, but it would make everything runs smooth. A mill would be then a still expensive, but also good investment. It would improve food production and smoothen the harvest.
2.3) Orchard
At the moment the food production is pretty similar. Making the Orchard better would only change the problem to the other side. You could add a new gameplay - mechanic, but that would be to much work.
A good (and I think easy) way to improve it would be diversity. You could make the Orchard a 'combination-building' The Orchard could produce food and wood. This way the "Income / Worker" would be high, but the "Food / Worker" and the "Wood / Worker" value would be less then that from a forester/farmer.
2.4) Storrage
The storrage system do only work for small citys at the moment. But after about 5h the system beginns to break. The system works now so, that the farmers will store the food to the nearest granary and the 'market-guys' take food from the nearest granary. After about 5h-10h you will have at least 5 granaries. When you produce a surplus, it will pile up at the granary, which is farthest away (because the market will take food from the closest granaries). When you have more then 450 food at the next harvest, the granary will be full. That means, that the farmers can't store there food there and this leads to a total loss of the harvest around that granary. (And the farthest away granary is also the first, the vikings attack usually)
This makes it nearly impossible to save some food. If you try it, you will get heavy losses to exposure. This also makes the game unplayable for bigger map sizes.
As a solution I would recommend a transport system overhaul. This would also make the game ready for bigger map sizes. One kind of possible overhaul I explain later in this post in "3.) Stockpiles"
3.) Stockpiles
Some improvements, which would be easy to implement, I already postet. Some further improvements would be a complete transport system overhaul, which would consist of 2 parts.
The first part would be 2 new buildings. A large granary and a large stockpile.
The second part would be a real transport system. In stockpiles you can place a 'request and provider threshold' The 'large granary' is typically in the center and when you have workers left, they will transport the food from the 'small granary' and 'granary' to the 'big granary'. So, the food will be save and you can save some food (see storage-exposure problem).
The best would also be to detach the workers from individual stockpiles/granaries and add them to a big 'laborer pool'. This way, the cities/kingdoms would be more dynamic and not so stiff. At the moment, The number of 'Idle workers' jumps to fast. It is a real pain to try to use all your workers efficient. A good example is building walls. when you build 5 walls you need 5*7=35 builders. When they are finished, you have 35 idle workers. So you have to constantly do something, that you dont have idle workers. And when you are missing workers it gets even worse. You will start to have blacksmiths with 4/5 workers, but they need 5/5 or they dont work. Because of this all (and some other things) it is a bit a pain in the ass to manage your workers.
Creating a 'laborer pool' would smoothen it greatly. You have a recommended laborer-number (a stockpile adds 10 to this number, a granary 2, etc), but all your idle workers will become laborer. If you have 50/50 laborer everthing will work (if you have enough stockpiles etc). If you have 70/50 laborer, they will have so much time, that they can start to make some less priority runs (like move food from an outer granary to a 'big granary' in the center). When you start building many buildings, you will drop to 30/50, but this will be no problem (when you dont stay there to long). You should have stored enough food in the 'big granary' and enough coal/iron in the stockpile next to the blacksmiths, etc. . Only when you stay at 30/50 for a longer time, you start to have troubles.
This 'laborer pool' will make everything much easier. No 4/5 blacksmiths. No empty ballista towers. No turning stockpiles off, when vikings attack. No idling workers. No mikromanagement and turning buildings on and off the whole time. It would a big and maybe also difficult change in the game mechanic, but it would be really great.
And this would also make the game ready for bigger maps :)
Post edited September 02, 2017 by Atharja