Recipes are still missing balance... or??

[Veny]

I think. If game wants me to invest into advanced building and recipes, there must be some benefit to it.
One simple example (but there are many more):

Potage: This meals costs 2 cabbage, 3 meat and 1 bowl. And provides 30 food and 10 water.

Raw resources would give 20 food instead, but they would save you bowls. And you would not need a cook.
OR you could roast meat instead, For same time you would need to cook one potage you could cook 3 meats giving you 18 food. Plus 14 food from cabage, that is 32 food, no need for bowl at all. Yes, it does not give any water but getting 10 water from Well is very quick.

In the end, pretty much no reason to use this recipe. It requires to be unlocked, it needs kitchen, some workers, and does not give more than simple recipes (i would say in the end it gives less).

Same can be said about some breads, pies, and also beverages.
Building workshop and inn to turn 5 apples (15 food, 10 water total) into juice that gives 3 food and 20 water using 3 (!!) workers? Why would i want that? I will rather use one worker - farmer - to harvest apples and let people eat them unprocessed.

Am i missing something? For everything else (tools, weapons, clothing, gear) benefits of advanced items are clear and cannot be denied but food feel pretty much unrewarding (except for some recipes like fried meat and fish, flatbread, porridge, gruel etc.) with some being obviously absurd like flatbread vs. its onion version where basic one gives 45 food, while onion version gives 50 food BUT you have to spend two onions (8 food total). So yea, no brainer... bake basic version, eat raw onions, 53 food total.

Or am i missing something guys? :D

[Milinia]

You're missing the monetary value of cooking certain foods in this. It's not all about eating, it's about money making too. I can't give any examples right now (can't access my game right now) but you get what I mean.

[Veny]

Originally posted by Milinia:

You're missing the monetary value of cooking certain foods in this. It's not all about eating, it's about money making too. I can't give any examples right now (can't access my game right now) but you get what I mean.

I know that these products are expensive but main purpose of food is to be eaten. I never had any problem earning money, there are tons of ways to get it but using kitchen or inn to make money if my village is hungry, that does not really make sense. Epecially since in endgame, you are basically swimming in money no matter what game difficulty you chose.

[Veny]

I am still thinking about it. I am playing on hardest difficulty now - 1000% food, wood and water consumption and also 1000% taxes. This setting really make even the tiniest balance flaw shine.
While with taxes i have no problem at all (and never had), and Wood can be partially solved using insulation and woodcutters provide decent amount of it, i am unable to get enough food and water.
The fact that the earliest recipes (f.e. bucket of water, roasted meat) are the most efficient are... odd. Same with the fact that raw vegetable is better than cooked one. There are even some cases where processing stuff leads to much lower gain of food and water than original resource had. And once you realize you need a workforce to produce this messy product... why would anyone do that in the first place?

Yes, advanced products sell at higher price. Problem is, game is not about money... at all. You can get money from dozens of sources, but why? Should i make fruit pies to sell them and for money i got i buy some cheap meat that my people can eat?

Price and food/water value should not be mutually exclusive, there is no reason for that.
Why should i spend bucket of water and tons of wheat and hops to produce (very slowly!) some beer that is expensive, but for consumption pretty much useless.

On easiest difficulties, it may be not that obvious, but these recipes do not pay off. And changing my settings is not a solution.

There should be some benefit in processing things. It should either work much faster or final product should be more valuable. 2 people on max level making 20 beers per day is a joke. Well can produce 20 buckets per day with 1 worker which means half the workforce, 8 times the water production, well is cheaper to build than tavern, it has lower tax. Well needs just buckets while beer need 4 different resources (!).

From the perspective of water production, well is at least twice as efficient and it costs like 10% of resources Tavern needs.
And from the perspective of money, i could sell wheat and hops instead, save money and resources needed to run a tavern and use my workers for producing stuff that offer better profit.

[NickTwist]

The different food items gives your game variety. I have a city with 162 population and 130 building -I use 3 kitchens to feed my population. You produce stuff to make other stuff to eat -feed your population and sell when you have vendors. It is part of the experience of this game. If yo want to just feed your population grilled meat, then you dont need a kitchen or a crafter to make plates of a lumberjack to make planks for the plates. Only have a farm for flax but that only grows once a year. Kind of makes the game boring IMHO.

[Veny]

Originally posted by NickTwist:

The different food items gives your game variety. I have a city with 162 population and 130 building -I use 3 kitchens to feed my population. You produce stuff to make other stuff to eat -feed your population and sell when you have vendors. It is part of the experience of this game. If yo want to just feed your population grilled meat, then you dont need a kitchen or a crafter to make plates of a lumberjack to make planks for the plates. Only have a farm for flax but that only grows once a year. Kind of makes the game boring IMHO.

No, the lack of balance takes variety from the game. There is no variety, maybe on easy difficulty where you can do whatever you want and still prosper but once your difficulty settings go higher, it becomes really obvious.

Look, with my current village, i would need 12 wells with 12 people total to produce enough water for my village. OR i can build 200 taverns with 400 people to produce beer that would be enough to cover the need for water.
See how absurd the math is? For people who want to face some challenge, there is no variety in this game. They are forced to use certain recipes, otherwise they will fail.
And i am not even counting the costs for farmers who grow hops, wheat, breed pigs and turn manure into fertilizer.

Naturally, in games things are that more advanced recipes come with high costs but also high rewards.
Sure, i can eat raw meat for 2 food. Or i can spend some resources and cook it and then eat it for 6 food (3 times more).
Well, other recipes are not that generous - they are much slower to produce and their gain is much lower (often there is no gain whatsoever).

I am not aganst variety, quite opposite. Improving value of foods would not take away variety, quite the opposite. What i want is to balance things so you could choose whether to sell them or actually use them (instead of having tons of items with huge monetary value but zero practical use).
I am not calling for any nerfs. Keep late game stuff expensive, sure. Their costs reflect increased expenses needed for their production. All i want is the same for their "stats".

Slowly brewing 25 water, dozen of wheat and hops, into beer that provides 40 water? That is nonsense. Make beer give 200 water and maybe then it will provide the adequate value that would also be reflected by its cost.

As i said, if you play on easy difficulty, you cannot truly understand what happens in the game. Easy difficulties really give you freedom to do anything you want and all flaws are pretty much invisible.
But once you increase the difficulty, every link in the chain (worker) will become more expensive, thus revealing how early and simple recipes are cheap and efficient, while late recipes have no other purpose than selling.

[NickTwist]

Originally posted by Veny:

Originally posted by NickTwist:

The different food items gives your game variety. I have a city with 162 population and 130 building -I use 3 kitchens to feed my population. You produce stuff to make other stuff to eat -feed your population and sell when you have vendors. It is part of the experience of this game. If yo want to just feed your population grilled meat, then you dont need a kitchen or a crafter to make plates of a lumberjack to make planks for the plates. Only have a farm for flax but that only grows once a year. Kind of makes the game boring IMHO.

No, the lack of balance takes variety from the game. There is no variety, maybe on easy difficulty where you can do whatever you want and still prosper but once your difficulty settings go higher, it becomes really obvious.

Look, with my current village, i would need 12 wells with 12 people total to produce enough water for my village. OR i can build 200 taverns with 400 people to produce beer that would be enough to cover the need for water.
See how absurd the math is? For people who want to face some challenge, there is no variety in this game. They are forced to use certain recipes, otherwise they will fail.
And i am not even counting the costs for farmers who grow hops, wheat, breed pigs and turn manure into fertilizer.

Naturally, in games things are that more advanced recipes come with high costs but also high rewards.
Sure, i can eat raw meat for 2 food. Or i can spend some resources and cook it and then eat it for 6 food (3 times more).
Well, other recipes are not that generous - they are much slower to produce and their gain is much lower (often there is no gain whatsoever).

I am not aganst variety, quite opposite. Improving value of foods would not take away variety, quite the opposite. What i want is to balance things so you could choose whether to sell them or actually use them (instead of having tons of items with huge monetary value but zero practical use).
I am not calling for any nerfs. Keep late game stuff expensive, sure. Their costs reflect increased expenses needed for their production. All i want is the same for their "stats".

Slowly brewing 25 water, dozen of wheat and hops, into beer that provides 40 water? That is nonsense. Make beer give 200 water and maybe then it will provide the adequate value that would also be reflected by its cost.

As i said, if you play on easy difficulty, you cannot truly understand what happens in the game. Easy difficulties really give you freedom to do anything you want and all flaws are pretty much invisible.
But once you increase the difficulty, every link in the chain (worker) will become more expensive, thus revealing how early and simple recipes are cheap and efficient, while late recipes have no other purpose than selling.

I have a city with 162 population. I have only two wells and craftsmans making buckets and waterskins. I play on the game defaults level. I have a ton of water. I have 4 taverns making all sorts of wines and beer - huge amount of fruit trees every where. I don't understand why your having these problems. Also - I have 1500+ hours into this game so I know what I am doing.

[Veny]

Since my villagers consume 10 times more food/wood/water than yours... yea, that may be the problem and it is pretty easy to understand. Yes, i chose the hardest difficulty and yes, i expected game to be difficult. But instead of being difficult, it just showed me that the production chain is lacking balance. It may work with default settings (and it works on some harder ones) but with the hardest one.

With villagers being so expensive, long production chains are becoming extremely expensive and inefficient. Instead of being a step forward, they cost more and give nothing back.

As i mentioned, some recipes are less than the sum of all their parts. It is easy to understand that this is no motivation to use these recipes and you can argute with "variety" and "higher costs" as you like but that does not deny the fact that advanced recipes often create items with dubious value.

IF the game was about money, it would be just fine. But since you there are other needs to fulfill AND since money are pretty much useless in game (unless you want to build huge orchard, but even lack of seedlings will be bigger problem than lack of money)... yea, recipes could use a buff... period.

Look at this recipe: Mead costs 12 honeycomb and 1 bucket of water (plus one mead bottle). These resources alone would give you 24 food and 49 water. Processing it into a mead would give you 3 food and 30 water. Does it make any sense to you?

[hubbemattsson]

Fun that you take mead as an exampel.... So, like in real life then. Pretty much.

No wonder why I prefer water instead of bear.

[Veny]

Originally posted by hubbemattsson:

Fun that you take mead as an exampel.... So, like in real life then. Pretty much.

No wonder why I prefer water instead of bear.

I think most would choose water cuz bear is dangerous and... kinda hard to drink i guess...

[PsYcHo_O]

I agree, I was pretty bummed when I noticed this as well. I play on default settings, so I don't need to be efficient, but I still don't like to invest in "useless" upgrades, like cooked meals. Just feeding your villagers water and cabbages/meat is the way to go if you want to be efficient.

Maybe treat food as a luxury, like it actually was back in the day. People don't need pies to survive, but they are pretty nice to have, if you are rich enough afford them. It's also pretty realistic to consume additional resources to process food. Vegetable stew is not more nutritious than the raw vegetables you put into it, it's actually the opposite, because you destroy things like vitamins in the cooking process.

[TheRealMuehle]

Originally posted by PsYcHo_O:

People don't need pies to survive

Marie Antoinette would have a different view

[Veny]

Originally posted by PsYcHo_O:

It's also pretty realistic to consume additional resources to process food. Vegetable stew is not more nutritious than the raw vegetables you put into it, it's actually the opposite, because you destroy things like vitamins in the cooking process.

It depends. Some vegetable is better when cooked. Actually, raw vegetable will often give you less vitamines. Tho i agree that f.e. to make a juice you will need tons of fruit and you will lose plenty of edible parts.
But from economical point of view, game should reward you for using advanced recipes. Other than money, of course.
Fun fact: When you mill wheat grain in a windmill, you will end up with more weight than before. Clearly laws of physics does not work for flour :D

[hubbemattsson]

Thats becuse you , sadly, get so much extras. For some wierd reason.

[UglyBird]

Originally posted by TheRealMuehle:

Originally posted by PsYcHo_O:

People don't need pies to survive

Marie Antoinette would have a different view

You only need to keep your head on your shoulders.

[UglyBird]

Originally posted by Veny:

Originally posted by PsYcHo_O:

It's also pretty realistic to consume additional resources to process food. Vegetable stew is not more nutritious than the raw vegetables you put into it, it's actually the opposite, because you destroy things like vitamins in the cooking process.

It depends. Some vegetable is better when cooked. Actually, raw vegetable will often give you less vitamines. Tho i agree that f.e. to make a juice you will need tons of fruit and you will lose plenty of edible parts.
But from economical point of view, game should reward you for using advanced recipes. Other than money, of course.
Fun fact: When you mill wheat grain in a windmill, you will end up with more weight than before. Clearly laws of physics does not work for flour :D

Raw vegetables will always give you more vitamins than cooked as heat destroys vitamins.