Opinions on the economy?

[April]

What's everybody's opinion on how the economy works? Do you like it? What would you change?

I personally love that rare items are more expensive in an isolated economy, and how that can change. I think that mechanic is fantastic, and makes this game fairly unique.

However, that mechanic means there's a lot of things to keep track of as far as movement of goods/money and changing prices. Its just such a big undertaking, and we need reports that are helpful. There is simply no way to see why one family is hemorraging money, or why one is making so much without watching them do stuff all day long.

The user interface isn't up to the task of letting the player react to this kind of supply/demand commerce, and I think that leads to an immediate frustration for a lot of new players trying to learn the game. The devs could even have your family do a seasonal survey and see who spent/gained money, what did they produce/sell/buy/consume, and what was all that worth. Its just such a big mechanic, and right now the best you can do is look at the accounting tab, the prices tab, calculate the value in your head, and then just sort of guess what happened to the stuff and to the money. So in that sense, its not broken, its abstruse.

[Zairya]

Hi April,

I've been playing the game for a few hours (20?) and I'm grumbling at the economy as well. I've tried 3 different approaches for now and none really got me where I wanted to be.
In my opinion for early game at least, foraging families are moneygrubbers. Almost every furniture needs planks and as a reigning family, I can't help farmers or fishers much in acquiring these. Yes, I could buy them from the forager and resell them at a lower cost but that binds workforce I'd rather have elsewhere.
Fishing families are the oposite. They barely hang on in my runs and are often idle for who-knows-what-reason. I tried boosting them by giving them the Inn but they couldn't manage the workload at all >.<
I've also had a lot of "useless" families requesting to stay. Why should a I allow a leatherworker in when I don't even raise pigs yet?
I also don't know what is required for the families to grow. I make sure in my designs to have 1-3 beds empty but the reproduction is rather slow. On the other hand my bro-couple of millers asked to adopt children once a season... also boys.

Currently I'd like a way to "split" families into 2 households and/ or arrange marriages between my families to eg push their spectrum a bit. Why should a fisherman not hunt?
I've also not invested into clergy as it is very unprofitable and taxing in my opinion. If my 3-head-strong fisher family can't manage the Inn, how is a 1-2 sring clergy caste supposed to handle an entire church? Do I even start with the church? Why is paper so gooddamn limited? Paper is made from woodmash! Parchment is made by hide!

[vyraka]

I've stopped playing at the moment because of the economy. It's all roses until you bring a caravan in, and then that sucks the money out of your village and next thing you know everyone needs a handout.

They are working on increase clothing production and the rate of clothing wearing down, but I think it needs more work than that.

However, I haven't really thought of a good solution. The best that I can come up with is being able to adjust priorities under the caravan marketplace that forbids the selling of certain items.

[Mayor McCheese]

So I'm still learning quite a bit myself here, only 50ish hours or so into this game. Here is what I've discovered about the economy. Markets do not really work because families bring too many goods that arent useful such as acorns, every family at the market is trying to sell acorns and uncut wood. This means the fishers for instance arent bringing fish to the market they are bringing wood and acorns. So the option is to have each family run a store at their shops, but that leaves so much time lost to travel to run around to different vendors. So in order to keep an economy up and going for the long term ive switched to stewardry. Build one large and centrally located warehouse and have a member or the royal family run the shop. I pay each family somewhere in the neighborhood of 50silver a season and besides any major construction projects that family might take on, its usually enough for food and supplies with some little excess. At the start of each season i delete my royals selling list and repopulate it while considering my royal taxes. This allows me to really see where the shortcomings of my town are, and it helps control the overspending with the outside caravan, since most familes don't have too much money to blow. But bringing in an outside caravan is still a good way to lose all the coins in your economy, but necessary to get some sheep. (very annoying)

[vyraka]

I am OCD and buy up all the extra goods like acorns, wood, clay, and stone. Typically not rods though as those are left to build the roof. Once I get over 100 acorns or excess wood, I sell it to the caravan. Acorns don't bring in much, but it does give me a few extra coins and clears up the warehouse.

[Zairya]

Sounds like I'm doing something wrong.

vyraka, I see where they're going. My opinion on this is actually, that we lack in goods for trade in general. For example, regional goods like sheep cheese or apples depending on which map preset you use would both enhance the meals of the villagers and bring in some cash. So far, the only thing I found for trade in early game is the gifted clothes.
I got no idea how the caravans work from the tutorial to be honest. I'd like them to interact with the reigning family exclusively. That way I could handle which goods are circulating in my village. I'm also kind of disappointed that my farmers would go up and buy cattle while I can't. Now I'm stuck with 2 male cattle-specimen...
Acorns are basically feed for the animals but again, I want control over what my villagers use to feed them. I also don't understand why a butcher, who is supposed to buy dead animals, needs a feeder?
The diversity in professions is all good but it also clutters the game and there's no spreadsheet to show what goes where...

[Killroy]

For the time being I've stopped my play though till they bring in the next minor patch as the economy feels like a no win situation. Early game its easy to make a stable economy with the three starting families. Two selling food, one selling building material and firewood. As soon as you expand into extra chains or bring in a caravan the whole thing breaks and you're left constantly giving handouts to families to keep them afloat.

I noted in my own post an issue everyone brings up time and again, caravans and the negative impact they have on your village economy. I still believe the simple solution to them is to actually make them fulfill what the tutorial says they do in the game, purchase excess resources from your villagers. An example noted above, everyone has acorns after building their houses or cleaning trees. So since everyone has them and the market price is decreasing, why isn't the caravan buying them all up at cheap prices and thus taking the excess away from my villagers? This in turn would bring that price back up, clean out my villagers inventory from their primary resource production chains, and also put some coin back in my villagers pockets.

Staying on that same topic caravans seem to buy very limited amounts from villagers directly. Take rags for this example. I had a caravan willing to purchase them, and all my villagers had them so they only purchased four total, from my seven families which were selling something north of 30. If I put them in the lords warehouse and sell them, they purchase everything I have so I can't figure out what the issue it. It's not that my villagers aren't selling them as I can click on each market stall and see how many each had up for sale. So my I can only guess the issue lies with the caravan just not spending money.

They might also want to look at what each villager wants to sell. It was questioned in another post, why do families go and purchase food or wood for their own homes, only to turn around and attempt to sell it. This might be an issue with family wealth that family believes it has to little money so they are trying to sell anything they have. But this might be another solution to market stalls being overloaded with the wrong items.

I'd note my last major issue would be animal purchasing. As was said above, if I'm purchasing cows for milk/cheese production why did my farmers buy two males? This might be a simple enough fix, add a rule where a family only buys a male animal if they already have a female in their inventory.

I don't have a solution to all these other problems. More UI might be helpful. I'm not sure about adding additional restrictions settings or rules the lord can control. I like the hands free nature of this game as it make you take a different approach compared to other games in this style. I also don't mind the challenge. Creating a fully functional economy shouldn't be easy. I just think a few thing need polished up or finely tuned and it would work well.

[Zairya]

I think I know why caravans prefer to buy from reigning family and not villagers: Reigning family will have the prices sat to "caravan standard" automatically. Eg clothes for/ from my villagers are ~7s 80c but the caravan price is 7s 1c.
So buying stuff from your villagers and selling it to caravan is a money loss, which is dumb.

"I like the hands free nature of this game [...]"
What do you mean by this, Killroy?
I had the lack of item tracking and that I can't restrict my people a bit in what they offer for sale. Also, I'd prefer a mechanic of "ordering". I'm a souverain for better or worse, so I want to go to my foragers and say: "Yo woodhackers, bring me 100 planks until the end of the month" I can when just "opress" them to do it or lower their taxes for the next month. In medieval times, farmers could be called away during harvest season to collect snails... why can't I request stuff?

[Killroy]

Originally posted by Zairya:

"I like the hands free nature of this game [...]"
What do you mean by this, Killroy?
I had the lack of item tracking and that I can't restrict my people a bit in what they offer for sale. Also, I'd prefer a mechanic of "ordering". I'm a souverain for better or worse, so I want to go to my foragers and say: "Yo woodhackers, bring me 100 planks until the end of the month" I can when just "opress" them to do it or lower their taxes for the next month. In medieval times, farmers could be called away during harvest season to collect snails... why can't I request stuff?

I play a lot of other games similar to this one and the majority do what you are asking for. You can set production limits, you can set orders you can directly control how people work or what they are doing, in short you can micromanage them as much as you want. This game on the order hand you are putting a family in charge of a production chain and letting them work. You have no control over them and as the lord of the town you are expected to meet certain taxes to the king. Yep that's right, you aren't the king or the biggest ruler here, that is made rather clear when you start the game and the king gives you a contract to sign. You are simply a lord of a village and you are expected to do what a lord of a village would be doing in medieval times. Think of it as a middle management position.

So you need to be planning ahead to try and compensate for when a family doesn't meet the requirements you set for them. There is some ability to demand specific resources by changing priorities and then setting a family to stewardry so they only make one item and it only goes to you. But for me that takes away the idea that I'm trying to create a village economy that can self sustain.

If the village is successful it's hands free. I'm not ordering my villagers to do specific things, they should be doing it by themselves and I can focus on other projects like setting up new production chains, bringing in new families or preparing for the next year of taxes. In short I'm not micromanaging every aspect of a family which is allowing me to macro manage the village as a whole.

[Zairya]

I know I'm not the king/queen/whatever. I just don't really like the setting that someone can command me but I can't command the ones below. For example, I didn't plant corn in my 2nd run but the king demanded 5 corn as taxes. How is this the "the king will demand stuff from your warehouse" the tutorial talks about? I do not have corn. Corn grows in autumn. If the tax collector comes before the corn of the new turn is ready, I get negative evaluation...
I'm also unhappy about how pastures work atm. My forages tame wild pigs until I have the desired amount. I don't want them to run around the map (256x256) but to breed the pigs. I'm also missing the clear option to kill slurpus livestock. Maybe you can explain it to me?
I'm experimenting which production branch to expand into after year 1. I can probably just leave it be with farm, fish, forest until I hit year 2022 but that's not really fun...

[vyraka]

I took a break from the game for a week because of the caravan issue. However, I started up a game today and was lucky enough to get a sheep with the starter family. I'm going to see how long I can go without a caravan.

They did a stream on their Discord today - I asked when was the next patch. They said if no problems arise in testing - then perhaps this week. But if problems arise, it will be longer.

I'd really like to see more basic, common goods added to the wares that you get at start up - capes, drawstring boots, tools. Not a huge amount, but enough to satisfy the needs of your starter families as well as your first few families you take from the inn.

It takes a moment to build up enough wool for a tailor, as well as the butcher, tanner, leatherworking route. Oye - and blacksmithing to make tools! You need three families to support a fourth family just to do that.

So basically - you aren't going to have those things initially in the beginning unless you have a caravan, but the caravan doesn't do much for putting money back into the village.

[vyraka]

<<My forages tame wild pigs until I have the desired amount. I don't want them to run around the map (256x256) but to breed the pigs. I'm also missing the clear option to kill slurpus livestock.

No breeding at the moment. Butchers are the best way to get rid of excess pigs. Believe me - they'll buy them even if they don't have enough money for food!

[Zairya]

>.<
That explains why they run around the map all day, Thx vyraka!
I'm a bit uneasy with the butcher as how I see it, they would be idle most of the time...

[Killroy]

Originally posted by Zairya:

I know I'm not the king/queen/whatever. I just don't really like the setting that someone can command me but I can't command the ones below. For example, I didn't plant corn in my 2nd run but the king demanded 5 corn as taxes. How is this the "the king will demand stuff from your warehouse" the tutorial talks about? I do not have corn. Corn grows in autumn. If the tax collector comes before the corn of the new turn is ready, I get negative evaluation...

And there in lies some of the issue starting out. The tutorial makes it sound like if you make it they'll ask for it. But every time I've played they do like you said, ask for things not in your production. This I feel is more of an issue with the tutorial than the game because it brings a challenge. A king in medieval times would ask unreasonable things of people and they'd need to overcome or suffer the outcomes.
I got slammed my second year in my last game with a request for over 200 blueberries in taxes and i hadn't produced one and had no production setup for them. I ended up meeting that blueberry goal by having my lords family stop everything else and run around harvesting blue berries that were growing wild on the map, and then buying all the blue berries I could from caravans and families that had randomly picked them clearing land.

But yeah, this comes back to the tutorial and others mechanics in the game. Either the tutorial needs cleaned up to explain this better or things can be changed. Either way the game is still in EA so they've got time to sort it out.

[Zairya]

If it wasn't EA I wouldn't talk so much. I know, I'm not very helpful at the moment. But what I can say is, the tutorial, for the scoop of the game, is horrible. Writing a tutorial is hard, very hard so I'm not upset or anything. I like EA title.

[doomsought]

I think the game needs two things:

1 it needs to periodically spawn a merchant that only brings money to buy things. Probably just after tax day.

2 a new profession galled the Grocer, the grocer can buy from families without a shop by talking to the family head, and sells to both the villagers and caravans. You can configure what goods they try to stock and how much they keep in reserve when selling to caravans in the priorities menu.