Library and tech

[robtock216]

I started a new save to play the new patch, its all very good apart from the tech tree, that's quite horrible currently.
So most things are now locked behind research, so i built a huge library with 1.7k knowledge limit and started accumulating knowledge, i wanted to unlock weapons which costs 400 knowledge, my limit starts ticking up steadily and i go off and do other things while i wait, i come back and its on 215 so i go away even longer, i come back ages later and its on 217...
I go away ages again, come back and its on 214.."wtf" i think...
Turns out knowledge "degrades" and needs maintaining, but i have 20 scribes set to full time work and cant even maintain half of what i need to unlock one of the first techs, i'm guessing i need paper too for the library, maybe that helps maintains points longer...

But for paper i need tools, which i cant get because tools are locked behind 400 point research in the tree i cant get points for because i don't have paper, you can see the issue, i think this needs re-balancing desperately

[Gamatron]

Before 300 population you don't need to bother with research or trade. After that, you do need to trade and research to progress, which has always been the intention. A 1.7k library will give you a maximum 425 knowledge without paper, if it's efficiently furnished. You can either use that technology to boost your export to afford you to import weapons, or unlock the weapon smith.

[robtock216]

Yer, sorry i really don't like the current system for research loss i understand the desire for ongoing costs but it could be implemented in mitigated returns on knowledge gain not research loss its absurd.
If a 1.7k library which is by far the biggest building in my village isn't enough then that's clearly un balanced? i mean you don't drop the library of Alexandria into the middle of a 300 population village...
i got up to 350 population which of course triggers the need for law buildings and research, research you need paper, guard posts need weapons both are locked behind 400 research its too much too early on i basically went into a melt down of trying to access coal and ore which required satellite villages to the other side of the map which just angers all your people travelling the distance, that led me to be unable to bring in immigrants which meant i ended up around 80 workers short over the next few years, this led to food shortages despite setting priorities for farming.
Next in a desperate attempt to get happiness up to bring in immigrants i built a load of lights all over my city as this was indicated as low on the happiness bar, built one in front of my paper mill doorway which disabled it, of course i didn't notice this until much later when my entire research tree un-researched itself, which of course further slashed food income and pretty much everything else, ended up with a population dropping to near 200 and no way back.

Previously i had a city of thousands fighting Krul with hundreds of troops, even a huge palace and top end kitted out royal guard division just to hang around the palace, this patch though ugggh nose diving after 300 pop.

Oh and another definite issue is the auto hire function is good, but absolutely not on warehouses, i don't know if its quiet all year so the AI sacks everyone down to 2 employees on mine, then when harvest comes it doesn't hire anyone to pick it up so it just sits in the fields rotting while people complain they are starving.
I notices this too late as well, had to set it to off and hire 20 employees myself by which time it was too late, the pitchforks were already at the palace gates.

[Gamatron]

17 scribes is not the library of Alexandria. That library will come later. There is plenty to do with small libraries, many techs are 25 each. You really need paper though, and perhaps it's a mistake to have it cost tools, although it can be imported. I get that old players are taken aback by the new mechanics, but the goal has always been to make the game hard to perfect and an actual effort to reach 1000 and a huge effort to reach 10 000. It will not be about repetitive room copy and pasting as it once was, there will be challenges. Many have reached 3000-4000 in this patch, so it's not impossible. It's just less of sandbox and more of a game and it will continue on that route, although maybe with future difficulty settings.

Auto employ is optional, but I'll leave it off by default for warehouses in the next patch.

[robtock216]

Hi, me again :)

So i started another game and built my way up to 1.5k population, had a pretty nice map on a river with coal and stone mine next to each other so that was definitely a bonus, i never noticed the exorbitant amount of coal bath houses get through, 3.2k a year for my 60 tub bath house according to the building panel.
I made the same mistake however eventually going for the ore on the far side of the map, i had been exporting fish, furniture, stone and coal to pay for paper and ore but the ore price was ridiculous and it was taking huge amounts of all my exports to pay for like 100 ore a year ( i noticed you said about adjusting prices on another thread +1 to that)
so yer i decided i was in a comfortable position had about 150 spare workers so i built a small outpost at the ore site with dorm house, tavern, kitchen, warehouse and toilets and started mining my own ore, it went well for a while however same issue, i was trying to use haulers to move the ore back to my city and it worked but again, the workers insist on travelling back and forth for things and then get really angry about the distance to access services, this leads to a nose diving situation, population dropped to 1100 odd, no one wanted to immigrate so all the missing workers led to food loss, (also not helped by the fact i didn't realise for a long time my noble for farms had died) there really needs to be a pop up or something when this happens it led to a massive loss in food, i suddenly noticed my days of food left had plummeted to 5 when it was sitting around 20 for years.

also, you will no doubt say it isn't a bug but when you get to the point where your struggling to keep people fed it seems like nothing you do brings you back, i was importing veg and fruit for ages, set up a 100 worker bakery as grain was all i had left - also may want to tweak the wood use on that to 0.5 a loaf or something, 1 wood and 1 grain seems too much and i couldn't physically move enough wood from one side of my city fast enough to keep the bakery running i just had a load of workers pissing about with mountains of grain and nothing to do.
anyway, i digress, the bug - in Banished WAIT! don't hit me because i mentioned another game....there was a bug for ages, i actually don't know if it ever got fixed because i stopped playing but basically if you cut it fine through winter with food it didn't matter what you brought in it all just got magically eaten up, this seemed to happen here, i had a bakery churning out 2.6k loaves a year according to the building panel, plus my other bakeries across the city i'm guessing another 2k odd, plus around 5k veg and fruit not enough to support the 1.1k population.
Fish, don't get me started on fish i had two wharfs employing just shy of 100 workers between them making most of my cash selling excess fish every year, suddenly i get close on running out of food and they cant produce enough to feed the population, exporting dropped to nothing
I thought only dondorians ate fish? says cretonians are vegetarian, or is that a preference and they eat anything when starving? trust me i'm a chef i'm an expert in part time vegetarians.

Of course this brings me back to my original reason for this thread, tech, i had 3 libraries with paper working away but as always once your population starts dropping you lose workers, and sure enough techs start going.
Out of interest when your kitchen un researches itself, which kept happening does this stop it working? it seems to be working its certainly chewing through a ridiculous amount of food but maybe that's where the food bug-not-a-bug comes from?
i know i cant build them until i unlock it again, maybe there is more of a problem created by unlocking and locking it constantly as i said before i really think you should scrap the re locking thing and make libraries a mitigated return on knowledge generation the more techs you unlock, until eventually yes your library is working at max just to maintain any knowledge generation - so build another.

Anyway i think that's it for today in my latest episode of ruined burning cities, i may start another game at some point but i have a pounding headache from dealing with event planning for events that likely won't happen because the world is ending - its a bit like a real life songs of syx tbh, failing economy, closed borders and huge inexplicable amounts of food getting consumed.

Cup of tea i think, toodlepip!

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by robtock216:

Hi, me again :)

So i started another game and built my way up to 1.5k population, had a pretty nice map on a river with coal and stone mine next to each other so that was definitely a bonus, i never noticed the exorbitant amount of coal bath houses get through, 3.2k a year for my 60 tub bath house according to the building panel.
I made the same mistake however eventually going for the ore on the far side of the map, i had been exporting fish, furniture, stone and coal to pay for paper and ore but the ore price was ridiculous and it was taking huge amounts of all my exports to pay for like 100 ore a year ( i noticed you said about adjusting prices on another thread +1 to that)
so yer i decided i was in a comfortable position had about 150 spare workers so i built a small outpost at the ore site with dorm house, tavern, kitchen, warehouse and toilets and started mining my own ore, it went well for a while however same issue, i was trying to use haulers to move the ore back to my city and it worked but again, the workers insist on travelling back and forth for things and then get really angry about the distance to access services, this leads to a nose diving situation, population dropped to 1100 odd, no one wanted to immigrate so all the missing workers led to food loss, (also not helped by the fact i didn't realise for a long time my noble for farms had died) there really needs to be a pop up or something when this happens it led to a massive loss in food, i suddenly noticed my days of food left had plummeted to 5 when it was sitting around 20 for years.

also, you will no doubt say it isn't a bug but when you get to the point where your struggling to keep people fed it seems like nothing you do brings you back, i was importing veg and fruit for ages, set up a 100 worker bakery as grain was all i had left - also may want to tweak the wood use on that to 0.5 a loaf or something, 1 wood and 1 grain seems too much and i couldn't physically move enough wood from one side of my city fast enough to keep the bakery running i just had a load of workers pissing about with mountains of grain and nothing to do.
anyway, i digress, the bug - in Banished WAIT! don't hit me because i mentioned another game....there was a bug for ages, i actually don't know if it ever got fixed because i stopped playing but basically if you cut it fine through winter with food it didn't matter what you brought in it all just got magically eaten up, this seemed to happen here, i had a bakery churning out 2.6k loaves a year according to the building panel, plus my other bakeries across the city i'm guessing another 2k odd, plus around 5k veg and fruit not enough to support the 1.1k population.
Fish, don't get me started on fish i had two wharfs employing just shy of 100 workers between them making most of my cash selling excess fish every year, suddenly i get close on running out of food and they cant produce enough to feed the population, exporting dropped to nothing
I thought only dondorians ate fish? says cretonians are vegetarian, or is that a preference and they eat anything when starving? trust me i'm a chef i'm an expert in part time vegetarians.

Of course this brings me back to my original reason for this thread, tech, i had 3 libraries with paper working away but as always once your population starts dropping you lose workers, and sure enough techs start going.
Out of interest when your kitchen un researches itself, which kept happening does this stop it working? it seems to be working its certainly chewing through a ridiculous amount of food but maybe that's where the food bug-not-a-bug comes from?
i know i cant build them until i unlock it again, maybe there is more of a problem created by unlocking and locking it constantly as i said before i really think you should scrap the re locking thing and make libraries a mitigated return on knowledge generation the more techs you unlock, until eventually yes your library is working at max just to maintain any knowledge generation - so build another.

Anyway i think that's it for today in my latest episode of ruined burning cities, i may start another game at some point but i have a pounding headache from dealing with event planning for events that likely won't happen because the world is ending - its a bit like a real life songs of syx tbh, failing economy, closed borders and huge inexplicable amounts of food getting consumed.

Cup of tea i think, toodlepip!

Sorry, but I love your story. Sounds like interesting things going on, possibly bugs, but mostly lack of information. (Like you need to start prioritizing industries when you start plummeting like that, did you get to that?)

I would love to have a look at the save to see if there's anything off with food production. they're in the launcher -> info. You can send it to [e-mail]

Rooms don't stop working when tech is forgotten. And I'm considering now what to do with unlockable rooms. Maybe it doesn't make sense to have rooms locked that you need in the beginning of the game. Instead I'm thinking of drastically increasing their produce with technology. I stand firm on the knowledge degrade system though. If it weren't for it, your city wouldn't have collapsed like a domino thing (possible bugs aside). And while it probably does sting, without it you'd simply would have built your way to boredom. At least that's my opinion, some might like to do that, but I'm looking for the exact experience that you describe. Could possibly tweak it with settings and such later on.

Good news is that I plan on adding a profile with permanent unlocks, so that now that you've reached 1000-2000, you will not have to start from scratch again. Unlocks will be stuff like X amount of permanent knowledge, X% of happiness, X metal at start, etc.

[Alocrin]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

Originally posted by robtock216:

Hi, me again :)

So i started another game and built my way up to 1.5k population, had a pretty nice map on a river with coal and stone mine next to each other so that was definitely a bonus, i never noticed the exorbitant amount of coal bath houses get through, 3.2k a year for my 60 tub bath house according to the building panel.
I made the same mistake however eventually going for the ore on the far side of the map, i had been exporting fish, furniture, stone and coal to pay for paper and ore but the ore price was ridiculous and it was taking huge amounts of all my exports to pay for like 100 ore a year ( i noticed you said about adjusting prices on another thread +1 to that)
so yer i decided i was in a comfortable position had about 150 spare workers so i built a small outpost at the ore site with dorm house, tavern, kitchen, warehouse and toilets and started mining my own ore, it went well for a while however same issue, i was trying to use haulers to move the ore back to my city and it worked but again, the workers insist on travelling back and forth for things and then get really angry about the distance to access services, this leads to a nose diving situation, population dropped to 1100 odd, no one wanted to immigrate so all the missing workers led to food loss, (also not helped by the fact i didn't realise for a long time my noble for farms had died) there really needs to be a pop up or something when this happens it led to a massive loss in food, i suddenly noticed my days of food left had plummeted to 5 when it was sitting around 20 for years.

also, you will no doubt say it isn't a bug but when you get to the point where your struggling to keep people fed it seems like nothing you do brings you back, i was importing veg and fruit for ages, set up a 100 worker bakery as grain was all i had left - also may want to tweak the wood use on that to 0.5 a loaf or something, 1 wood and 1 grain seems too much and i couldn't physically move enough wood from one side of my city fast enough to keep the bakery running i just had a load of workers pissing about with mountains of grain and nothing to do.
anyway, i digress, the bug - in Banished WAIT! don't hit me because i mentioned another game....there was a bug for ages, i actually don't know if it ever got fixed because i stopped playing but basically if you cut it fine through winter with food it didn't matter what you brought in it all just got magically eaten up, this seemed to happen here, i had a bakery churning out 2.6k loaves a year according to the building panel, plus my other bakeries across the city i'm guessing another 2k odd, plus around 5k veg and fruit not enough to support the 1.1k population.
Fish, don't get me started on fish i had two wharfs employing just shy of 100 workers between them making most of my cash selling excess fish every year, suddenly i get close on running out of food and they cant produce enough to feed the population, exporting dropped to nothing
I thought only dondorians ate fish? says cretonians are vegetarian, or is that a preference and they eat anything when starving? trust me i'm a chef i'm an expert in part time vegetarians.

Of course this brings me back to my original reason for this thread, tech, i had 3 libraries with paper working away but as always once your population starts dropping you lose workers, and sure enough techs start going.
Out of interest when your kitchen un researches itself, which kept happening does this stop it working? it seems to be working its certainly chewing through a ridiculous amount of food but maybe that's where the food bug-not-a-bug comes from?
i know i cant build them until i unlock it again, maybe there is more of a problem created by unlocking and locking it constantly as i said before i really think you should scrap the re locking thing and make libraries a mitigated return on knowledge generation the more techs you unlock, until eventually yes your library is working at max just to maintain any knowledge generation - so build another.

Anyway i think that's it for today in my latest episode of ruined burning cities, i may start another game at some point but i have a pounding headache from dealing with event planning for events that likely won't happen because the world is ending - its a bit like a real life songs of syx tbh, failing economy, closed borders and huge inexplicable amounts of food getting consumed.

Cup of tea i think, toodlepip!

Sorry, but I love your story. Sounds like interesting things going on, possibly bugs, but mostly lack of information. (Like you need to start prioritizing industries when you start plummeting like that, did you get to that?)

I would love to have a look at the save to see if there's anything off with food production. they're in the launcher -> info. You can send it to [e-mail]

Rooms don't stop working when tech is forgotten. And I'm considering now what to do with unlockable rooms. Maybe it doesn't make sense to have rooms locked that you need in the beginning of the game. Instead I'm thinking of drastically increasing their produce with technology. I stand firm on the knowledge degrade system though. If it weren't for it, your city wouldn't have collapsed like a domino thing (possible bugs aside). And while it probably does sting, without it you'd simply would have built your way to boredom. At least that's my opinion, some might like to do that, but I'm looking for the exact experience that you describe. Could possibly tweak it with settings and such later on.

Good news is that I plan on adding a profile with permanent unlocks, so that now that you've reached 1000-2000, you will not have to start from scratch again. Unlocks will be stuff like X amount of permanent knowledge, X% of happiness, X metal at start, etc.

I agree with the design and degrading knowledge 100%

[robtock216]

Hello,

Unfortunately the save is long gone, i saved over it when creating my new game but its something to remember for the future.
I do prioritise industries of course but it doesn't really matter when your so many people down, speaking of which it turns out i made a new discovery, BUTTONS! buttons for retirement age and food rations namely - this is interesting and solves some of my issues with happiness and thus attracting more people, it also causes more issues namely in the amount of food were getting through i mean i told you its insane before and that's before i even found out i could increase food rations.
I saw bars for retirement etc in happiness but assumed like slavery it wasn't implemented yet, EA etc.

Look, i'm quite old school i have played many games from pretty much every genre and strategy management builders have always been my favourite, i'm talking classics like Caesar, total war before it became the mess of a franchise it is now.

What you have here is a gem, and the potential of (as others have said too) the game we have always wanted, the gaming industry is pretty crap now, you have the big names who churn out shooter franchises copy and pasted from the previous entry one after the other worth billions, and you have little start ups here who sell you an unfinished game then leg it out the door and never return, you currently haven't yet legged it and that could be something very special, your active, you engage with the community and you don't cry and throw your toys out the pram when someone compares your game to another game on the market (as i did with Banished) which is really a big thumbs up from me.

Honestly i wonder if your selling yourself short, you talk about wanting the experience to be losing your city to a collection of mismanagement and domino effect, i think that's quite dry, there's nothing fun about losing all the work you put in because of a system design you didn't know about around 1-1.5k population, this game is clearly meant to be huge cities of tens of thousands.
I love the dark atmosphere of the game, almost dark age despot thing you have going on, i love the customisation of buildings, what i always disliked about city builders is everything ends up looking the same, firehouse - houses - guard post - market copy and paste across the whole city its boring and your game has the potential to not be that at all.

What i want to see (and you may disagree entirely, its your game and ill FO) but i want a poor district, i want a docklands, i want a fortress with all my military installations, i want a rich district with marble bath houses, theatres, my great big FO palace, exotic belly dancers dressed in skimpy amounts of silk - preferably red
I noticed in another thread that someone mentioned for example that you can currently install a fake square lake and maximise your fish production, i don't want this, i want it to look natural and i don't expect my city to fall apart at 1k population because i don't want to build square blocks for maximum computer efficiency.
I like that the warehouse for example covers the whole map, i get that they would prioritise stuff closer but if they are stood around with nothing to do go fetch that wood from the other side of the map, its your B****** job
the same for all production buildings, this isn't Zeus and it isn't the 90s don't tell me my market isn't working because the warehouse is 12 squares away when the limit is 10.

I want actual huge invasions, as well as local bandit threats early on, i want archers on them damn walls, i want to grin Cersei lannister style from my balcony as a horde of leather clad foreigners prepare to siege my stunning city and take on my amazing professional army, and yes maybe ill end up surprised, maybe watch as they smash through my gates, decimate my army, burn my rich district and storm my palace, maybe ill be bundled down into the cellars by my creepy right hand only to meet my end on the staircase - i'm waffling again.

It needs to be free flow, i shouldn't be penalised because i don't want to build squares and i get it that's hard to achieve, a balance between freedom and being too easy, settings are good but imo that usually means fake stats, in total war for example you play easy setting and your troops steam roll everything, you play heroic and those same troops bounce off iron walls of peasants - its not more challenging, the AI isn't clever it hasn't outsmarted you its just fake stats, i cant remember the last time i lost a game and thought "fair play pc" actually i can - supreme commander, i had been playing this particular 8 player game for ages, i had spent ages shelling the final AI's island with my 100 strong navy of battleships, destroyers and cruisers, just broken through there shields when it turns out they had built a prototype bomber on a small out of the way island which proceeded to drop a nuke on my commander, i just sat back in my chair as nuclear fire took hold and thought "fair play PC"

Now maybe you have played it, maybe you have no idea what i'm talking about but my point is that was a fantastic game, i'm not suggesting it was self aware but it was programmed so well that it had answers to hundreds of different scenario's and reaction, or fluke or whatever it had outsmarted me - no cheating AI with magic resources or boosted stats just damn good writing.

So top down, dodgy graphics and farting noises or not, this could give me that feeling again.

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by robtock216:

Hello,

Unfortunately the save is long gone, i saved over it when creating my new game but its something to remember for the future.
I do prioritise industries of course but it doesn't really matter when your so many people down, speaking of which it turns out i made a new discovery, BUTTONS! buttons for retirement age and food rations namely - this is interesting and solves some of my issues with happiness and thus attracting more people, it also causes more issues namely in the amount of food were getting through i mean i told you its insane before and that's before i even found out i could increase food rations.
I saw bars for retirement etc in happiness but assumed like slavery it wasn't implemented yet, EA etc.

Look, i'm quite old school i have played many games from pretty much every genre and strategy management builders have always been my favourite, i'm talking classics like Caesar, total war before it became the mess of a franchise it is now.

What you have here is a gem, and the potential of (as others have said too) the game we have always wanted, the gaming industry is pretty crap now, you have the big names who churn out shooter franchises copy and pasted from the previous entry one after the other worth billions, and you have little start ups here who sell you an unfinished game then leg it out the door and never return, you currently haven't yet legged it and that could be something very special, your active, you engage with the community and you don't cry and throw your toys out the pram when someone compares your game to another game on the market (as i did with Banished) which is really a big thumbs up from me.

Honestly i wonder if your selling yourself short, you talk about wanting the experience to be losing your city to a collection of mismanagement and domino effect, i think that's quite dry, there's nothing fun about losing all the work you put in because of a system design you didn't know about around 1-1.5k population, this game is clearly meant to be huge cities of tens of thousands.
I love the dark atmosphere of the game, almost dark age despot thing you have going on, i love the customisation of buildings, what i always disliked about city builders is everything ends up looking the same, firehouse - houses - guard post - market copy and paste across the whole city its boring and your game has the potential to not be that at all.

What i want to see (and you may disagree entirely, its your game and ill FO) but i want a poor district, i want a docklands, i want a fortress with all my military installations, i want a rich district with marble bath houses, theatres, my great big FO palace, exotic belly dancers dressed in skimpy amounts of silk - preferably red
I noticed in another thread that someone mentioned for example that you can currently install a fake square lake and maximise your fish production, i don't want this, i want it to look natural and i don't expect my city to fall apart at 1k population because i don't want to build square blocks for maximum computer efficiency.
I like that the warehouse for example covers the whole map, i get that they would prioritise stuff closer but if they are stood around with nothing to do go fetch that wood from the other side of the map, its your B****** job
the same for all production buildings, this isn't Zeus and it isn't the 90s don't tell me my market isn't working because the warehouse is 12 squares away when the limit is 10.

I want actual huge invasions, as well as local bandit threats early on, i want archers on them damn walls, i want to grin Cersei lannister style from my balcony as a horde of leather clad foreigners prepare to siege my stunning city and take on my amazing professional army, and yes maybe ill end up surprised, maybe watch as they smash through my gates, decimate my army, burn my rich district and storm my palace, maybe ill be bundled down into the cellars by my creepy right hand only to meet my end on the staircase - i'm waffling again.

It needs to be free flow, i shouldn't be penalised because i don't want to build squares and i get it that's hard to achieve, a balance between freedom and being too easy, settings are good but imo that usually means fake stats, in total war for example you play easy setting and your troops steam roll everything, you play heroic and those same troops bounce off iron walls of peasants - its not more challenging, the AI isn't clever it hasn't outsmarted you its just fake stats, i cant remember the last time i lost a game and thought "fair play pc" actually i can - supreme commander, i had been playing this particular 8 player game for ages, i had spent ages shelling the final AI's island with my 100 strong navy of battleships, destroyers and cruisers, just broken through there shields when it turns out they had built a prototype bomber on a small out of the way island which proceeded to drop a nuke on my commander, i just sat back in my chair as nuclear fire took hold and thought "fair play PC"

Now maybe you have played it, maybe you have no idea what i'm talking about but my point is that was a fantastic game, i'm not suggesting it was self aware but it was programmed so well that it had answers to hundreds of different scenario's and reaction, or fluke or whatever it had outsmarted me - no cheating AI with magic resources or boosted stats just damn good writing.

So top down, dodgy graphics and farting noises or not, this could give me that feeling again.

Wowawiwa! We're 100% synced in what we want. This is, if anything, Caesar I mixed with RTW and Dungeon Keeper 1. It's not DF, which many people think. Similarities are to me only the level of ambition. And yes! No cities will ever look the same. I too want districts, same as in the real world, and it's coming! I want it to be interesting, surprising and funny to follow a single carpenter through his life. I'm also trying to reward organic looking cities, but I don't want it to be a deal breaker, because some like perfect symmetry. Exploits will be found and eliminated.

What I meant with the domino effect, is that I want stories. Stories of success and of failures, of cause and effect. By logical, clear features that is, not from bugs. But I really liked your story. I want to hear more stories of how empires fall in the future.

I haven't played supreme commander, but I can understand the feeling. I've played a lot of TW, and while they're fun at the beginning, they always end with me just turning it off near the end with a slight distaste and a feeling of being cheated. That is what I'm trying to achieve, a game that climaxes at the end, not the beginning, and it will be damned hard to get there.

I'm very happy you wrote me, made me feel someone truly sees the vision. I'll try not to disappoint, although it might take awhile...

[robtock216]

I'm loving it iv'e always been a huge Rome fan, as is probably evident from my Avatar.
I'm glad i could help and thanks for actually caring about what your audience think.

[Corvinusx]

I like how hard this game is but I think that having to unlocking buildings I think it to much. I like the regresion of knowledge. I think it gives a knew aspect to games. But PLEASE dont make us unlock buildings like tools, weapons, and a kitchen. I think those are to basic to have to unlock. I think the idea of having to unlock upgrades for the buildings or something. IDK. But you are doing great work on this game.

[Corvinusx]

Originally posted by robtock216:

Hello,

Unfortunately the save is long gone, i saved over it when creating my new game but its something to remember for the future.
I do prioritise industries of course but it doesn't really matter when your so many people down, speaking of which it turns out i made a new discovery, BUTTONS! buttons for retirement age and food rations namely - this is interesting and solves some of my issues with happiness and thus attracting more people, it also causes more issues namely in the amount of food were getting through i mean i told you its insane before and that's before i even found out i could increase food rations.
I saw bars for retirement etc in happiness but assumed like slavery it wasn't implemented yet, EA etc.

Look, i'm quite old school i have played many games from pretty much every genre and strategy management builders have always been my favourite, i'm talking classics like Caesar, total war before it became the mess of a franchise it is now.

What you have here is a gem, and the potential of (as others have said too) the game we have always wanted, the gaming industry is pretty crap now, you have the big names who churn out shooter franchises copy and pasted from the previous entry one after the other worth billions, and you have little start ups here who sell you an unfinished game then leg it out the door and never return, you currently haven't yet legged it and that could be something very special, your active, you engage with the community and you don't cry and throw your toys out the pram when someone compares your game to another game on the market (as i did with Banished) which is really a big thumbs up from me.

Honestly i wonder if your selling yourself short, you talk about wanting the experience to be losing your city to a collection of mismanagement and domino effect, i think that's quite dry, there's nothing fun about losing all the work you put in because of a system design you didn't know about around 1-1.5k population, this game is clearly meant to be huge cities of tens of thousands.
I love the dark atmosphere of the game, almost dark age despot thing you have going on, i love the customisation of buildings, what i always disliked about city builders is everything ends up looking the same, firehouse - houses - guard post - market copy and paste across the whole city its boring and your game has the potential to not be that at all.

What i want to see (and you may disagree entirely, its your game and ill FO) but i want a poor district, i want a docklands, i want a fortress with all my military installations, i want a rich district with marble bath houses, theatres, my great big FO palace, exotic belly dancers dressed in skimpy amounts of silk - preferably red
I noticed in another thread that someone mentioned for example that you can currently install a fake square lake and maximise your fish production, i don't want this, i want it to look natural and i don't expect my city to fall apart at 1k population because i don't want to build square blocks for maximum computer efficiency.
I like that the warehouse for example covers the whole map, i get that they would prioritise stuff closer but if they are stood around with nothing to do go fetch that wood from the other side of the map, its your B****** job
the same for all production buildings, this isn't Zeus and it isn't the 90s don't tell me my market isn't working because the warehouse is 12 squares away when the limit is 10.

I want actual huge invasions, as well as local bandit threats early on, i want archers on them damn walls, i want to grin Cersei lannister style from my balcony as a horde of leather clad foreigners prepare to siege my stunning city and take on my amazing professional army, and yes maybe ill end up surprised, maybe watch as they smash through my gates, decimate my army, burn my rich district and storm my palace, maybe ill be bundled down into the cellars by my creepy right hand only to meet my end on the staircase - i'm waffling again.

It needs to be free flow, i shouldn't be penalised because i don't want to build squares and i get it that's hard to achieve, a balance between freedom and being too easy, settings are good but imo that usually means fake stats, in total war for example you play easy setting and your troops steam roll everything, you play heroic and those same troops bounce off iron walls of peasants - its not more challenging, the AI isn't clever it hasn't outsmarted you its just fake stats, i cant remember the last time i lost a game and thought "fair play pc" actually i can - supreme commander, i had been playing this particular 8 player game for ages, i had spent ages shelling the final AI's island with my 100 strong navy of battleships, destroyers and cruisers, just broken through there shields when it turns out they had built a prototype bomber on a small out of the way island which proceeded to drop a nuke on my commander, i just sat back in my chair as nuclear fire took hold and thought "fair play PC"

Now maybe you have played it, maybe you have no idea what i'm talking about but my point is that was a fantastic game, i'm not suggesting it was self aware but it was programmed so well that it had answers to hundreds of different scenario's and reaction, or fluke or whatever it had outsmarted me - no cheating AI with magic resources or boosted stats just damn good writing.

So top down, dodgy graphics and farting noises or not, this could give me that feeling again.

You nailed it right on the head. I want smart AI and just better stats. I do no have your words but I understand everything you said and am on the same page 100%. I really want this game to be epic.

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by Corvinusx:

I like how hard this game is but I think that having to unlocking buildings I think it to much. I like the regresion of knowledge. I think it gives a knew aspect to games. But PLEASE dont make us unlock buildings like tools, weapons, and a kitchen. I think those are to basic to have to unlock. I think the idea of having to unlock upgrades for the buildings or something. IDK. But you are doing great work on this game.

I agree, I'll balance it a bit. Lots of new buildings coming next update.

[Corvinusx]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

Originally posted by Corvinusx:

I like how hard this game is but I think that having to unlocking buildings I think it to much. I like the regresion of knowledge. I think it gives a knew aspect to games. But PLEASE dont make us unlock buildings like tools, weapons, and a kitchen. I think those are to basic to have to unlock. I think the idea of having to unlock upgrades for the buildings or something. IDK. But you are doing great work on this game.

I agree, I'll balance it a bit. Lots of new buildings coming next update.

That is great and I can not wait to play it. I also am really confused by the trading system. I just dont get it at all. I know you need the 2 buildings but if you want to buy somthing you have to put it to accept in the trade depot. I get that but if I am not watching it will it then auto sell if I do not put it back to not accept so they will then put it in my warehouse? I saw a video on it but it is not the same set up as in the video. Maybe I am missing somthing. I would love to trade just dont want to sit there and make sure it doesnt sell the stuff I just bought. I hope I am explaining it so you understand. But thanks for reading these it is nice ot see as dev listen and responed. You are dong an epic job.

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by Corvinusx:

Originally posted by Gamatron:

I agree, I'll balance it a bit. Lots of new buildings coming next update.

That is great and I can not wait to play it. I also am really confused by the trading system. I just dont get it at all. I know you need the 2 buildings but if you want to buy somthing you have to put it to accept in the trade depot. I get that but if I am not watching it will it then auto sell if I do not put it back to not accept so they will then put it in my warehouse? I saw a video on it but it is not the same set up as in the video. Maybe I am missing somthing. I would love to trade just dont want to sit there and make sure it doesnt sell the stuff I just bought. I hope I am explaining it so you understand. But thanks for reading these it is nice ot see as dev listen and responed. You are dong an epic job.

I see. It's very possible to import and sell the same goods. I thought it would be fun, as there are sometimes opportunities to earn a buck from it and act as a middle man.

In the trade panel you can dictate settings that apply to all of your trade rooms, regardless of what resources they're set to. If you just want to import, slide the import slider to max and the export slider to min.

[smalldog]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

17 scribes is not the library of Alexandria. That library will come later. There is plenty to do with small libraries, many techs are 25 each. You really need paper though, and perhaps it's a mistake to have it cost tools, although it can be imported. I get that old players are taken aback by the new mechanics, but the goal has always been to make the game hard to perfect and an actual effort to reach 1000 and a huge effort to reach 10 000. It will not be about repetitive room copy and pasting as it once was, there will be challenges. Many have reached 3000-4000 in this patch, so it's not impossible. It's just less of sandbox and more of a game and it will continue on that route, although maybe with future difficulty settings.

Auto employ is optional, but I'll leave it off by default for warehouses in the next patch.

I played the demo for a week, then bought it (beyond worth it, dude... i had to uninstall it because I have to do schoolwork and i CANNOT stop playing this thing lol) and I just gotta say that the changes you've made are absolutely the right changes. I hit 200 in a few hours in the demo, it took three tries over two days to hit 200 again on the current patch, and for all the right reasons. I just talked my friend's ear off tonight about how fun it is to keep track of like 10 different but connected industrial pipelines while balancing food, resource extraction, industry, military, tech and amenities, and every change you made contributes to that. The only thing I would say, and I imagine this is the end goal, is to give players multiple, very different ways to succeed. At the moment it feels like the best strategy is to refresh your starting map until it has ore because otherwise it's a constant uphill battle just to get metal, and you're constantly reliant on trade almost from the very start.

and another quick issue since you mentioned auto employ, I'd love either a pop-up when I complete a room/extraction area or anything, or for auto employ to start at a much lower number than half the max (i think that's what it is, might be totally wrong). I don't like when I'm planning out my next moves and suddenly I look up and somehow have -56 unemployed and all my workshops are running at half the staff because the mine i just finished covered a wide area and could technically employ 500 workers, and auto employ asks for 250, which is roughly a quarter of my population.

and (sorry :x) what determines workload and, therefore, auto employ's target number, especially in workshops/libraries? Like, does it incorporate input material stockpile amounts and/or input material increase rate? like if i'm cranking out enough wood for 20 carpenters, and have a stockpile with 5 days' worth of wood, does auto employ treat that differently than if I'm cranking out half that much wood with a stockpile half that size?

Sorry this comment got away from me, but uhhh shouldn't have designed such a damn good game if you didn't want people asking questions about the absolute minutiae of its mechanics