Drinks require immense work force in V65

[Skali]

I have 30 brewers in a village of 300. Those get supplied by another 30 grain farmers. In addition, I have a few charcoal workers and potters.

In addition to 25% of my workforce, I also import drinks (though those come in rarely). Still, I don't get enough drinks.

What am I doing wrong here? Am I supposed to import everything needed for drink production? Playing as Tilapis

[CptVodka]

I'm having issues with drinks too. I never found a good amount to keep my population at 1 drink/day, so i just cut them off and stockpiled for my army instead.

Something i find odd about it is that the pottery is "somehow" consumed in the taverns along with the drink. I think taverns should produce like 90% of the pottery back after the drink is consumed, letting that 10% be lost due to a drunken crowd :P

Honestly, getting some pottery back would go a long way in my opinion.

[apud.harald]

You dont need to satisfy all desires, and the cost-benefit of religion ( as an example ) is far superior.

[ZirzoR]

And here I am producing drinks just to sell them for profits, what a life.

The problem is that you shouldn't be even thinking about breweries at 300 pop, especially when you're not playing dondorians. (Never import drinks, its not cost effecient at all)

In a 500 pop city, if you want to give every single person a drink per day, it would take a production of 500 drinks per day. (Which would be 4 rations per day, which also makes them super unhealthy and drunk and will affect work rates)

I think its 0.25 drink per day for 1 ration however, they dont chug the entire bottle themselves. 25% would still require 125 drinks production per day. (Which with a race that doesn't have benefits or proper research or nobles is just not going to go well.)

[Tyrael Raven]

I think drinks are just completely and utterly broken right now. Making 12 drinks per day I had my 5 different populations at 25%, 24%, 23%, 22%, and 22% drinks fulfillment.

I added production all the way up to 60 drinks per day and it only got fulfillment to 25%, 25%, 25%, 24%, and 23%

I ultimately got extremely frustrated and reduced all the way to 12 drinks per day because it was an enormous resource drain and not working, and it settled back down to 25/25/24/24/23.

I have no idea what the hell Jake (the dev) did but drinks are just utterly broken and literally CANNOT be satisfied right now by any reasonable means.

Edit: Corrected a percentage to 24% instead of 34%, fat fingered it sorry

[apud.harald]

You dont need drink, Nothing broken about it,
Study the race requirements, and understand the game,

[robtock216]

i think most things require immense workforce in the current 65 build, as i have said on other posts i think a lot of the balancing numbers are off in the current build and judging by the amount of tiny updates each day i would say they are slowly but surely being adjusted.

I don't really buy into this "nothing broken about it" the game has changed so much since day 1 and its constantly changing, so plenty of things have been broken and have been fixed, adjusted or completely re-worked, sometimes the calculations are off and that's not an insult its to be expected, you can't get the hump every time someone posts what they consider a bug or broken thing in a beta branch of the game that's just been released for....well, beta testing and feedback

[ZirzoR]

Originally posted by robtock216:

I don't really buy into this "nothing broken about it" the game has changed so much since day 1 and its constantly changing, so plenty of things have been broken and have been fixed, adjusted or completely re-worked, sometimes the calculations are off and that's not an insult its to be expected, you can't get the hump every time someone posts what they consider a bug or broken thing in a beta branch of the game that's just been released for....well, beta testing and feedback

The thing is, some of us have zero problems with the current balancing, the game is way too easy as it is, I wish they made it harder baseline, Takes me just a few hours to get to 1k pop and just snowball into oblivion. (Trading and Slavery makes the game way too easy to snowball)

So this statement can be taken two ways actually.

1: "Nothing broken about it" could be another word for "Git Gud" (No offense)

2: Or that its simply not broken, people just have to adjust their strategies when playing a new version of the game.

[apud.harald]

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Originally posted by robtock216:

I don't really buy into this "nothing broken about it" the game has changed so much since day 1 and its constantly changing, so plenty of things have been broken and have been fixed, adjusted or completely re-worked, sometimes the calculations are off and that's not an insult its to be expected, you can't get the hump every time someone posts what they consider a bug or broken thing in a beta branch of the game that's just been released for....well, beta testing and feedback

The thing is, some of us have zero problems with the current balancing, the game is way too easy as it is, I wish they made it harder baseline, Takes me just a few hours to get to 1k pop and just snowball into oblivion. (Trading and Slavery makes the game way too easy to snowball)

So this statement can be taken two ways actually.

1: "Nothing broken about it" could be another word for "Git Gud" (No offense)

2: Or that its simply not broken, people just have to adjust their strategies when playing a new version of the game.

Git gud is the correct form. You HAVE to learn what is important and what you can do without. And that changes every major update.

[Valid]

Originally posted by apud.harald:

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

The thing is, some of us have zero problems with the current balancing, the game is way too easy as it is, I wish they made it harder baseline, Takes me just a few hours to get to 1k pop and just snowball into oblivion. (Trading and Slavery makes the game way too easy to snowball)

So this statement can be taken two ways actually.

1: "Nothing broken about it" could be another word for "Git Gud" (No offense)

2: Or that its simply not broken, people just have to adjust their strategies when playing a new version of the game.

Git gud is the correct form. You HAVE to learn what is important and what you can do without. And that changes every major update.

Had nothing to do with git gud, the beta branch is updating multiple times pretty much every day, one of the patch notes was buffing drink production, so I guess the dev took notice and fixed it.

[ZirzoR]

Originally posted by Valid:

Had nothing to do with git gud, the beta branch is updating multiple times pretty much every day, one of the patch notes was buffing drink production, so I guess the dev took notice and fixed it.

Not to burst anyones party balloons, but....

Just because the dev buffed something, doesn't mean it was "unbalanced" he saw a complaint and caved in to the demands, so now he made the game easier, which to me makes the game "unbalanced" the other way around, since I think the game is easy enough as it is, he keeps making the game easier with easy fixes rather then teaching people how to play the game properly.

Which is probably a sign that he's exhausted and probably should take a longer break, he would never have caved in to these demands a year or two ago. (Since he also said in the devlog video that he's pretty fed up with playing the game right now, so I dont blame him.)

But still, excuse me if I disagree.

[Valid]

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Originally posted by Valid:

Had nothing to do with git gud, the beta branch is updating multiple times pretty much every day, one of the patch notes was buffing drink production, so I guess the dev took notice and fixed it.

Not to burst anyones party balloons, but....

Just because the dev buffed something, doesn't mean it was "unbalanced" he saw a complaint and caved in to the demands, so now he made the game easier, which to me makes the game "unbalanced" the other way around, since I think the game is easy enough as it is, he keeps making the game easier with easy fixes rather then teaching people how to play the game properly.

Which is probably a sign that he's exhausted and probably should take a longer break, he would never have caved in to these demands a year or two ago. (Since he also said in the devlog video that he's pretty fed up with playing the game right now, so I dont blame him.)

But still, excuse me if I disagree.

V65 of this is already several multitudes harder than any other version of the game, has nothing to do with caving into demands. Even only a few hundred people in your capitol now can be a huge struggle.

[ZirzoR]

Originally posted by Valid:

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Not to burst anyones party balloons, but....

Just because the dev buffed something, doesn't mean it was "unbalanced" he saw a complaint and caved in to the demands, so now he made the game easier, which to me makes the game "unbalanced" the other way around, since I think the game is easy enough as it is, he keeps making the game easier with easy fixes rather then teaching people how to play the game properly.

Which is probably a sign that he's exhausted and probably should take a longer break, he would never have caved in to these demands a year or two ago. (Since he also said in the devlog video that he's pretty fed up with playing the game right now, so I dont blame him.)

But still, excuse me if I disagree.

V65 of this is already several multitudes harder than any other version of the game, has nothing to do with caving into demands. Even only a few hundred people in your capitol now can be a huge struggle.

"Can be" "Could be" "Would be" These are all assumptions.

I reach 1k+ pop within the first few hours and my people a thriving, I dont even use a nursery at all.

If you're struggling with just a few hundred, you're probably just playing the game wrong.

[apud.harald]

Originally posted by Valid:

Originally posted by apud.harald:

Git gud is the correct form. You HAVE to learn what is important and what you can do without. And that changes every major update.

Had nothing to do with git gud, the beta branch is updating multiple times pretty much every day, one of the patch notes was buffing drink production, so I guess the dev took notice and fixed it.

Fan service !=> fans being right. Therefore I reject your argument on grounds of formal logic.

[robtock216]

exactly my point though, 1k population is nothing, not based on the original brief of the game "an epic city state simulator" when i originally spoke with Jake years ago the aim was for a game that could portray a city with a population of tens of thousands, and armies of thousands with every person in your city or army an individual set of stats, needs and desires, we spoke about artistic freedom in city building, the exact phrasing i believe was "Caesar 3 with more freedom on where and how to build" not building shape X at this location or lose.
Your implying 1k population is endgame, all done stick it back in the box and shelve it - next game please, and sure it currently is but that's not what the game is supposed to be, i watched the same dev vids you guys do, i'm not surprised he is knackered he has been at this years and like he said its taken much longer than he ever anticipated.

Exactly the reason i have nothing but respect for him as a game designer, any feedback is aimed at balancing the game to be more like the original brief we spoke about, if that brief has changed then fine, i mean i'm not happy about it i want a game that is vastly beyond titles like stronghold, total war, Caesar, pharaoh etc, with the building freedom of titles like Anno 1800.

its quite simple however if the balancing is off, if fishermen only produce enough fish to mitigate them starving to death themselves for example, then theirs no way you can ever build your population into the 10s of thousands and obviously that's something that should probably be tweaked.

[Great Lakes Wildebeest]

I think the a drinks per day needs to be adjusted to drinks in a season rather than "Just have more drink" it would be "Drink responsibly" then if you want you can adjust it up to 4 drinks in a season for max happiness since the seasons are about 4 days then the drink a day would make more sense giving max happiness and make it reasonably more manageable.

But on the whole I usually just turn off everyone's alcohol privileges because the army needs it more. Which is what every reasonable person does, almost makes it pointless to even have it in the game if such behavior is ubiquitous across most players so some reasonable balancing does need to take place with it.

in v64 I usually imported drinks for the military around 800 pop so I can deploy the army out the door at will.

on v65ea I just ignore leaving my map till around 1.5k because importing alcohol is not feasible when the only neighbor I can trade with has me boxed into a corner and I can't offer anyone else trade so my prices get inflated as I buy.

All the arguments about "Oh I *(PLAYER PROBABLY BEEN PLAYING FOR A WHILE)* have no issue managing getting a population to 1k in an hour, it should be therefore easy for you *(Player who picked up a game that has no full tutorial)* to do it." are unhelpful. Especially to new players. There is no flushed out wiki with all the little details and guides are made obsolete incredibly fast but they don't disappear just cause the guides info is made incorrect in updates.

If allowing your citizens to drink causes issues to the point that everyone always turns them off then the system IS unbalanced as its not an option anyone would take under any circumstance. I even dabbled with it in a 2k city when the serial killer event caused huge happiness loss to allow the effected citizens (less than 20% of the population drinks) till the event was over, they drained all the non-supply depot alcohol about 4k stored in less than a season, I'd rather have just let them emigrate and shut down the industries they are hired in then have to take that value of loss again.