Attack Trader

[espritcrafter]

How does attacking the trader work? Are there permanent penalties?

[Dadbod 9000, Sirer of Sons]

They don’t come back as fast and potentially some traders won’t come visit you (I think). You also have a few villagers killed. It’s definitely a well balanced mechanic imo— and I recommend using it (although in very specific circumstances ).

[doomleika]

You get to keep around half-one third of their stock at cost of your villagers(3-4).
That trader will cease to exist for the settlement(well, you killed them!) they reappear after other settlement.
Higher tier traders will not come/come at way later.
You gain 50% penalty on trader arrival time
You gain +2 impatience(and +0.15 for each man you lost).
Those effects stack(for this settlement).

So, if you attack trader, for now on trader arrives in 20 min interval than your regular 10min, and eventually you can kill them all.

Attacking isn't really advised unless you are in mid-high prestige difficulties, or you are back to the wall that you have nothing to lose anyway. Or...you are going to use the "deserted caravan" corner stone anyway, might as well get some free ♥♥♥♥ in the mean time.

[SlickRounder]

Originally posted by doomleika:

Attacking isn't really advised unless you are in mid-high prestige difficulties, or you are back to the wall that you have nothing to lose anyway. Or...you are going to use the "deserted caravan" corner stone anyway, might as well get some free ♥♥♥♥ in the mean time.

Almost right, except that at the top of Prestige, namely Prestige 20, it's advisable to NEVER attack villagers. Lost/Killed villagers grant an additional impatience penalty on Prestige 20, on top of the impatience gained from attacking villagers. I only once attacked a trader on my unbeaten streak to Prestige 20, and that was purely to test it out (the results were horrid).

A couple weeks ago there was a daily with the positive modifier of not losing any villagers when Traders are attacked. Luckily i got offered Deserted Caravan as well that year 2 or 3, so when that showed up i decided the time was ripe. It ended up being fruitful (albeit the 3 extra impatience made things a bit dicey) granting a boatload of tools and the like, and then it Segway nicely into the now buffed Deserted Caravan (traders seemingly weren't going to be visiting anymore anyways after the attack, could be since it was a high level trader). So the only time I'd advise attacking traders is with that modifier, atleast on Prestige 20, since otherwise the cost will almost always outweigh the benefit.

[PHOBIE]

So it's "almost right", because "mid-high prestige" should mean Prestige 20, which the post before you exempted because then would have applied what you say applies?

Or because they mention using "deserted caravan" while you prefer using "deserted caravan" which to you means something different?

It's weird to claim something is wrong and then offer evidence it's entirely right.

[SlickRounder]

I don't see how "high prestige" wouldn't cover Prestige 20 as well. And on prestige 20, attacking Traders (with the exception that I listed, namely the rare Daily with a positive modifier that makes attacking Traders less onerous) is particularly inadvisable. So wanted to just clarify that as an top prestige 20 player, hence "Almost Right" which is basically "mostly right" (possibly should have used that term instead).

Regarding Deserted Caravan they are correct (so in line with the "mostly right" wording that I coulda used). I highlighted an example illustrating how they were correct on that.

[PHOBIE]

I see. "Mid-High" means Mid to High to you, not a range between mid and high exempted the highest.

Sometimes the elegant "I would like to add" can avoid a debate who is more right than the other.

As a side effect I have read all those posts much more often than warranted, seeing I've uninstalled because I just can't get over the staggering amount of forced manual fine-tuning, interface obscurity, and general inability of villagers to solve their own problems, which seems to be what this publisher is infamous for. YMMV.

[SlickRounder]

Well regardless of which prestige level on "mid to high", attacking traders is not advisable. It's just particularly foolish on Prestige 20 with the extra impatience from lost/killed villagers.

"Sometimes the elegant "I would like to add" can avoid a debate who is more right than the other."

There isn't really a debate on who is right. I'm sorry. If a more knowledgeable and stronger Prestige player exists in this game, I haven't heard of them, and they certainly haven't advocated for attacking traders on prestige 20 as a viable strategy. I am an authoritative voice. So it would have been negligent of me to not correct something that was objectively off. This may seem egotistical, I don't really care, I just didn't want the incoming steam players to think it was a good idea to attack traders on high prestige, cause it's not.

"Staggering amount of forced manual fine-tuning, interface obscurity, and general inability of villagers to solve their own problems"

Yeh there is alot of micromanagement needed to play optimally. I'm cool with it since there is a pause function (only dailies i skip are the dreaded "no pause" modifier, that would be obnoxious as hell). Interface in my opinion has been getting better with each update. Ultimately It's personal preference, but i find some other similar games to be more convoluted or off-putting. Not certain what you mean by villagers solving their own problems. Perhaps at a later point down the line as the game becomes more polished you can revisit it. I stay away from strategy games without combat (i.e things like Battle Brothers, Age of Wonders and the like), but this one has been solid and the dev team seems very receptive to community input and constantly improving things.

[PHOBIE]

What I gather is attacking trader is simply a lose-more option to back oneself into a corner and cement defeat. Maybe the idea is to give people the freedom of choice to exercise an inflated ego, or give them an idea about the bill. Like the nuke button on a president's desk, one could choose to ponder or not.

[Dadbod 9000, Sirer of Sons]

Originally posted by PHOBIE:

What I gather is attacking trader is simply a lose-more option to back oneself into a corner and cement defeat. Maybe the idea is to give people the freedom of choice to exercise an inflated ego, or give them an idea about the bill. Like the nuke button on a president's desk, one could choose to ponder or not.

It’s helped me win on a few bad card picks or get a rare building blueprint when I was short on cash

[doomleika]

Originally posted by PHOBIE:

So it's "almost right", because "mid-high prestige" should mean Prestige 20, which the post before you exempted because then would have applied what you say applies?
.

By Mid-high I mean Prestige level around 10~18 this is where your good value halfed and your amber/goods have significant less value and sometimes it's not worth taking the trade at all.

Originally posted by PHOBIE:

Maybe the idea is to give people the freedom of choice to exercise an inflated ego, or give them an idea about the bill. Like the nuke button on a president's desk, one could choose to ponder or not.

Traders are useful to offset a series of bad rolls/events that stall your progress, which is always bad in AtS since you are racing against time(Increasing hostility per year, depleting food, impatience, grow pop which demands more) and game is naturally force you to move one way or another.

Killing trader at times are very profitable as they might have the blueprint you need(I almost always kill trader if they have contraband). This game need a lot momentum like having your building material set/fuel/complex food/service/trade goods/man power. One you have one you start speed into resolution win or wipe all the danger with sheer force of metal bars/tool production. As you goal is reaching that blue 18 point reputation than play the settlement forever.

[PHOBIE]

I see, thanks for the explanation. I never felt the momentum got rolling to the point the micromanagement was any less, or hopping from unlock to unlock just to get another unlock felt any better. So all the planning you guys lay out there is only possible for me with an immense amount of forgiveness towards the UI.

Story, idea, and the aristocratic background are all very promising, but the core gameplay seems just run-of-the-mill city builder lacking most of the QOL inventions done over the past 20 years. There isn't a shift-click to buy 5, alt-click to buy ten, dividing stacks, right-click to sell, no buy all or sell all button, it's like time has stopped somewhere around the year 2000 for this developer. But also the trading interface looks ripped off from Pirates! or its successors and that one has a buy all/sell all option, so might as well do it right.

There is no visual feedback what you get for attacking trader (all of his wares?), no proper feedback which shops are related to a resource on the ground, you don't even see how many people are occupying a shop unless you open it up, and aiming at a building is terribly inaccurate. Trader doesn't have a "match offer" option, and no automation, recurring auto-buy, auto-sell, it's like Banished game and its trading posts was never invented, let's send player back to the stone age.

Buildings are too hard to tell apart, and villagers prefer to sit idle in a shop that cannot produce, rather than doing literally anything else that would make them valuable. Too many things take too many clicks.

I feel the grand movement and decisions the game tries to achieve don't come together into a rewarding gameplay-cycle. Stringing the beads together to make a rewarding experience possible is something I am impressed you guys can achieve, I found it too much hassle and too reliant on players' willingness to do menial clicking jobs.

It's maybe not the right topic for this, but if you offer so much detail, you might as well have my impressions in return. Seeing management and automation remains a giant problem for a number of games by this publisher, I wonder why they focus so much on something they don't seem to be able to pull off.

[doomleika]

You can hold `alt` to see who goes where in a glance, give it a shot in the key bindings, some of the hotkeys are nice.