please balance production chains

[oeltje]

I have reached 5000 building tech and therefore got my first Mine. I made 5 people work there and they currently produce ~75 Tin and ~85 copper per day. I have three smithys and 6 people working there. All they do is make bronze tools from tin/copper ore and the required wood stuff. Alltogether, those 6 smiths consume ~30 Tin and copper ore per day. In other words: if I wanted my NPCs to have a viable production chain, I'd have to build roughly 8-9 smithys per fully occupied Mine. Thats ridiculous.
In addition to that: the smithys are simply slow. For any other production building (to be exact: kitchen, workshop, tailor as I dont know about the tavern yet and stores for selling could need a little boost, too), one building is enough to produce enough for the needs of the settlement. Only if I want to sell stuff, I have to raise production by doing it myself. However, one smithy with two smiths can't even produce enough metal tools for all the other workers in the settlement.
So please, raise the production speed of smiths by alot. Like triple it or even more...

imo, the end result should be, that any production chain starting from gathering over production and ending in selling the products should roughly fit. the smiths are by far those who cripple the chain the most currently. my two cooks can even feed the whole settlement and still create enough waste-food to be sold by a vendor. Its only the smiths who are completely unable to craft enough. (the one tailor I have and the one herbalist are roughly enough to occuply a vendor together, which is fine as they'll eventually get help by a second producer when those buildings level up)

[Wizard of Woz]

Imagine that smithing taking longer than other things, just like real life. You should just be glad they produce as much as they do.

[Cocco]

Then take a look at the difference in HP Iron - Bronce points.
Then you will realise that 2 - 4 blacksmiths are enough for iron tools.

[Captain Oveur]

Why not just take the extra production material and manually create more stuff yourself? Heck, don’t do any production with the material and just flat out sell it somewhere. I do agree that it can be better balanced. Just a one percent change in production can go from 0.5 underproducing to 0.6 overproducing (that’s just an average. Actual values can change as much as 5-6 full item/day or as little as 0.12). This likely has more to do with my worker skill levels though (6 skill for my smith but my two miners are 2 and 3 respectively).

[Cocco]

Because in my opinion the game is only fun when the overproduction is moderate. If you earn double the taxes, you'll have a lot of money over the years.

[UglyBird]

Originally posted by Cocco:

Then take a look at the difference in HP Iron - Bronce points.
Then you will realise that 2 - 4 blacksmiths are enough for iron tools.

I have only 2 smithies, 1 making iron tools and the other making iron bars, I sell iron tools like there is no tomorrow.
I now decreased the % for every tool making and manage to supply demand + sell some.
It is quite easy to control production, don't forget that as your workers gain skill, they produce more and over time you need to reduce production.
Over time you create more demand which will create more supply and when you reach max population, this will level out.

[Cocco]

That's right, a reasonable calculation goes up when Skill 10 is reached.

[AfLIcTeD]

It's not just smithies. All production buildings are way slower than the ones providing the raw materials. Logs, clay, minerals, meat, and everything else, all of it can be gathered like 5 times faster than it can be crafted by your villagers.

[oeltje]

so you are telling me its only bronze thats to slow to be viable? should we all skip bronze then? why is it in the game if it doesn't work? Sure, I can craft everything myself and activate the button, that crafting takes no time. But thats not the point. MD is a management sim. The main point of the game is to manage your people who should do the work. If they cannot, then the main point of the game is failed. Again: smithies are not just slower with bronze than the miners. They are slower than tool-consumption. I need 6 smiths to just have enough bronze tools for my workers. While 2 cooks easily produce enough food for everyone plus something to sell. That balance is crap.

[Wizard of Woz]

Originally posted by oeltje:

so you are telling me its only bronze thats to slow to be viable? should we all skip bronze then? why is it in the game if it doesn't work? Sure, I can craft everything myself and activate the button, that crafting takes no time. But thats not the point. MD is a management sim. The main point of the game is to manage your people who should do the work. If they cannot, then the main point of the game is failed. Again: smithies are not just slower with bronze than the miners. They are slower than tool-consumption. I need 6 smiths to just have enough bronze tools for my workers. While 2 cooks easily produce enough food for everyone plus something to sell. That balance is crap.

🎻

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by oeltje:

so you are telling me its only bronze thats to slow to be viable? should we all skip bronze then? why is it in the game if it doesn't work? Sure, I can craft everything myself and activate the button, that crafting takes no time. But thats not the point. MD is a management sim. The main point of the game is to manage your people who should do the work. If they cannot, then the main point of the game is failed. Again: smithies are not just slower with bronze than the miners. They are slower than tool-consumption. I need 6 smiths to just have enough bronze tools for my workers. While 2 cooks easily produce enough food for everyone plus something to sell. That balance is crap.

Yeah, it's an odd one for sure. It thew me too at first.

Assuming reasonably and equally skilled miners/smiths, then you should find that a couple of smiths can smelt copper ore and make copper tools just fine.

I never tried having the smiths make iron tools, but I assume the same is the case (although perhaps a bit slower)? The reason I never bothered making iron tools with the smiths is because I can do that myself quickly, and they're currently busy helping me out making copper knives.

But bronze? Forget it, lol. The last time I checked this simply wasn't viable, primarily because the additional steps of smelting tin ore, and then making bronze ore, slowed the process down too severely. I couldn't supply the stalls fast enough.

However, there is more to this than meets the eye. The profit from bronze tools is huge, and if I recall correctly, far higher than iron.

So I eventually came to a compromise, which I'll detail below:

[Objective: make 1m coins.]

I have 2 extractors (4 miners), a mine (6 miners), 2 smithies (4 smiths), and 9 stallholders. All relevant skills are maxed (level 10), mood is very high, and I think I've got +15% output bonus from a diplomacy skill.

The extractors do various things (clay, stone, etc), but they produce about 180 copper ore a day. This isn't enough to supply the smiths, who need about 230 copper ore a day to make copper knives. All the smiths do is smelt copper ore, and make copper knives (about 57 knives a day).

Some of the copper knives are sold on a single stall. Some are left over, and I trawl/drain the vendors with them (and other things) each season for about 25k coins.

My mine has to produce 50 copper just to meet the demand from the smiths. On top of that, the mine has to produce another 70 copper ore and 70 tin ore to make enough materials for me to (manually) produce 35 bronze knives a day. These 35 bronze knives drive another 4 stalls.

The mine does actually produce a bit more copper than that so that I can (manually) make another 10 copper knives or so each day. I don't remember exactly how many, but it's not very much. Otherwise I tend to run short on copper knives.

The remaining output of the mine is iron. Apart from iron tools (which I make myself) that are durable and therefore last quite a while, all the iron ingots (that I smelt myself) are turned into iron arrows.

I do not sell these iron arrows via the 4 remaining stalls unless I'm desperate.

Instead, I have 2 level 10 herbalists gathering an insane amount of nightshade (or whatever) in order to make poison. The problem with this ingredient is that it's only available in summer, so you have to gaffle enough to last you all year. From memory it's enough to make about 25 poison each day, but don't quote me on that - I'd have to check.

Then I (manually) poison those arrows and sell them via the remaining 4 stalls. The value of an iron arrow is something like 27 coins, and the value of a poisoned iron arrow is something like 50 coins, so poisoning the arrows yields enough to drive 4 stalls instead of 2 stalls, as would be the case with untreated iron arrows.

This entire process yields about 10k or 11k coins a day from the 9 stalls (1 selling copper knives, 4 selling bronze knives, 4 selling poisoned iron arrows), and about 25k each season from (manually) selling copper knives and spare materials. Since I'm running 3-day seasons, that's about 56k coins every season (before tax).

My village is almost entirely autonomous. I don't have to do any farming, hunting, gathering, or anything like that. So I spend all day in my house just looking out the window, or trolling my horse. At 6pm, when the workers knock off, I go to the forge and:

1) Smelt all copper, tin and iron ore, and make as many bronze ingots as possible.

2) Make about 35 bronze knives.

3) Use any left over copper to make about 10 copper knives.

4) Make as many iron arrows as the iron ingots will allow.

5) Poison as many of those arrows as possible (at the herbalist).

6) All copper knives, bronze knives, poisoned iron arrows, and any remaining iron arrows, go back into resource storage (so the stallholders can sell whatever they need).

7) At the start of each season I grab all the copper knives and whatever else is around (booze, feathers, etc), and drain the vendors (in Oxbow) of all their cash.

What are my personal feelings about this?

It's ok. It gives me something to do, now there is nothing else to do. But yeah, as you say, the smiths are virtually useless in a bronze-oriented scenario. All they're currently doing is making (most of) the copper knives I need.

[Objective: village autonomy.]

After I make 1m coins and get the achievement, I won't need cash. At this point I'll destroy the stalls and repurpose the smiths to simply making iron tools for the village. I'm fairly certain they'll be able to cope with that. I probably won't need one of the extractor buildings, and I certainly won't need the entire mine's output.

So yeah, smithies suck for making cash, and bronze tools. Although I think they'll be able to do what they need to do in the long run, which is making enough iron tools to supply village demand.

You could look at the balance in the following terms:

1) Stone Age: Life is hard.

2) Copper Age: Semi-autonomous, some manual processing, freeing you up a bit to do other things (like building).

3) Early Bronze Age (Pre-Mine): Gaffling a bit of tin helps with your own tools' durability.

4) Late Bronze Age (Post-Mine): Large amounts of tin enable you to manually make more durable tools for your entire village, although it's time-consuming.

5) Iron Age (Smithy III): Full autonomy with smithies manufacturing iron tools for the entire village.

From this perspective, it makes a bit more sense?

Bronze is an odd one though, no doubt about it.