Race Balance + Blueprint Bloat

[Ravenkana]

I've played fourteen hours and I love the game for the most part, but I have two major issues that are bugging me.

First is race balance. Maybe it's my playstyle and the fact that I'm only on Pioneer, but the races feel really out of whack. Beavers are the best followed fairly closely by Humans. There's a fairly big gap between Humans and Lizards with another big gap for Harpies. I hate Harpies.

Beavers are useful in a lot of different roles- they're the best woodcutters (which you're always going to be using on every map), they're great carpenters, they get bonus resolve for engineering (mines are an essential blueprint and rainmills are a cornerstone in food production), and their starting resolve is robust. Their only downside is the difficulty in getting reputation from them- which is something I don't care about until the late, late game.

Humans are also really good. They have the highest base resolve, they're the best farmers, and they're great for brewing. They share needs with every other race, so you can always boost their resolve along with someone else in the mid game.

Lizards aren't nearly so good as the other two, but they still have their uses. Their low resolve really sucks, but they make up for it by being resilient- it's difficult to have a situation in the early game where the lizards are leaving. Jerky is easy to produce, as long as you have meat on the map, and their specialization is great for a lot of buildings and synergizes well with their preference for hot workplaces. A Lizard firekeeper is also clutch if you need just one resolve to stabilize your situation.

Harpies are just... no. Yeah, they and lizards take shorter breaks, and, sure, they're great for reputation gain. But the problem is that you'll be burning through resources just to keep them around early game. Their specializations are also too niche- unless you have a map with a lot of herbalist nodes AND a herbalist camp, they're just an albatross around your neck for the entirety of the early game. On top of that, they're the ONLY race that consumes cosmetics AND they require brawling and education, both of which are much more annoying to raise than leisure. The single biggest boon is having a Harpy Firekeeper for the extra hauling.

I have to stress that all the races are playable and it's not too difficult to win on Pioneer, but the difference in my stress levels between having a run with Humans, Beavers, and Etc. versus Harpies, Lizards, and Etc. is palpable. Humans and Beavers are where all the races should be, but aren't. To fix that, I would recommend either making it so you always have all four races OR giving each race a bonus blueprint to make them more useful.

Even if the map doesn't work out for it, if Lizards brought trappers and Harpies brought herbalists, you'd at least be thinning out the pool for the blueprints you want. On maps where those resources are abundant, you'd be able to get a lot of use out of both races. Give Beavers lumbermills and Humans breweries to keep things even- both buildings are more mid game constructions when the real stress comes from the early game.

Speaking of Blueprints, blueprint bloat is the single biggest issue of the game. I dread leveling up since it adds more and more blueprints I don't want to deal with while trying to get the things I want or need. I had one town where I was teetering on starvation the entire map because the game REFUSED to give me a herbalist. Every time I cut into a new glade, it was nothing but more berries and herbs. Then, there's another town where I got rainmills and bakeries fairly early, so I invested in grain production. Surely farms were just around the corner, right? Nope- no farms all game and there were no grain nodes on the map. I also had the reverse situation where I was rolling in grain with taverns, breweries, and bakeries all ready to go- but no provisioner or rainmill.

Again, I won all three of those towns, but I wasn't having fun. I was feeling annoyed and stressed as I sank amber into rerolls that did nothing for me. The utter lack of control in blueprints makes it a hairtearing situation when you have everything in a resource production chain ready to go- except for one crucial component. More blueprints should be essential and there should be more ways to find them on the map. I'd even go so far as to argue that all the gathering hubs should be unlocked by default.

Great game, I really love it, but you can definitely smell the EA roughness. I can't really complain about much else besides this, except the high costs for unlocks at the hub. Keep up the nice work.

[InfiniteHorizon]

Have you noticed their different effects as flame-keepers?

Lizards give everyone a bonus to resolve.
Harpies give everyone +5 carrying capacity.

(Beavers are kinda OP, but I always have either a harpy or a lizard on fire-duty for this reason)

[Panic! At The Costco™]

Part of the issue is the way unlocks work a lot of the stuff the favours harpies tends to show up later. Their playstyle is different but pretty rewarding with the right setup.

I feel you on blueprint bloat though, even with rerolls it can be hard to get something you need even if several buildings will address that need.

[CATGIRL]

I'm just a newbie but whenever I get reputation it seems like it's because the lizard people and the harpies. I rarely rarely ever get rep from Humans or Beavers

[Mesarthim]

I recently bought the game and I played a few games alread so I"m pretty early but I feel like the game is moving forward a lot faster than the player.

You start already with 3 blueprints... But you don't know yet what you will need.
Before chosing anything, you need to have goals and you don't come by them easily, you need time to pass.

And sometimes you're tempted to chose something just randomly because you hope the next technology unlock will be eventually be the right one.

Farming and mining is the biggest problem because you never know if you will get any of those ressources in the glades. (my current game doesn't have any fertile soil it seems)

Right now, I can't play with Lizards, they're a pain in my ***, they want jobs related to hunting and anything related to meat but I rarely encounter anything really needing them.
When I put them in anything else, they often leave or die because of their resolve.

[Olleus]

I agree that the camp/gathering buildings are poorly balanced; the devs should take a page out of their crafting/production blueprints which are much better designed. The key difference is that every crafted resource can be obtained multiple ways: you have multiple blueprints that can make the same good, and you almost always have some choice in which goods you use to manufacture it. This is makes the production chains super flexible and is at the heart of the why the game is so replayable. Camps are the exact opposite: most resources can only be gathered by exactly one type of camp.

There are two obvious possible solutions to this. Either 1: Increase the number of camps and make them gather different combination of resources, such that each resource can be gathered by at least two different camp. Or 2: add a "base" camp that can gather every resource at low efficiency and is an essential blueprint, and make every other camp non-essential (but available at load out, or add an extra blueprint roll at the start).

More radically, the blueprint RNG could be made biased in the player's favour. The more of a resource node you've discovered, the more likely it should be that you'll see the blueprint to gather it. Similarly for production buildings, if I'm sitting on a pile of flour, make a bakery more likely to be rolled. Or if I have a mine and tons of copper ore, make a smelter come up more often. Also the converse, make it less likely for the player to see the temple blueprint if they have no scrolls or incense, or the blueprints to even make either of those. Blueprint rolls could also be biased towards the races that you have the most of in the settlement.

None of these effects need be so strong as to be deterministic; but part of the uniqueness of Against The Storm is that you don't make every resource in every settlement, and instead you pick a synergistic few that fit the current situation. The RNG should offer the player some uncertainty as to how to do that, but not make it downright impossible.

[doomleika]

Harpy/Lizard threshold is 15(base 5) Human and beaver threshold is 30(base 15/10), you need whopping +15/+20 resolve to have them gaining resolve for you.

The only one that are very annoying to keep around is harpies, but they are very good at mid game repu farming and some of the 10% proc.

Lizards have low resolve but unless you go for pickle goods, you can always find a food/fuel building they are happy with(+5 resolve), Grill and Smokehouse are double proc(+5 resolve AND +10% proc). Plus they are best favor juggling target.

This is why at higher difficulty people favors Lizard/Harpies more, 18 repu requirement means you needs either have tool production up very quick or you need good amount of resolve to play the long game. Beavers gets less and less love there. and Humans, well they are everyone's favorite punch bag.

[heh]

You don't care about rep from resolve early though. Early, you're just building your economy until you roll the service buildings, and then you buy out everything the merchant has to offer every time he drops by and everyone shoots to 40+ resolve and you get all the rep from them in a couple of minutes. e.g., https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885068895

But I have changed my opinion on the lizards. Their resilience means that they never break during storms, which makes them better than I thought. They can go to -10 and still not break in the duration of one. Although that may change at prestige 15 with double duration storms.

[Ravenkana]

I went back and checked the Atlas again and Harpies and Lizards dropped down a little more for me. Beavers and Humans go on break every 120 seconds; Harpies and Lizards every 100 seconds. Basically, Harpies and Lizards will take more time off and consume more resources as a result. Sure, they'll get more bonuses if you managed to start producing a new luxury or complex food since the last break, but that isn't worth the increased consumption costs.

[kwork]

I have to disagree on both the race balance and the blueprints.

On lower difficulties (veteran and below) beavers and humans feel more impactful as they manifest in early game resources (food/wood) which might well win you the game by fulfilling orders as hostility/resolve wont become that much of an issue that you really need to go for services/complex food as badly.

On higher difficulties not only that becomes much more important much earlier, you also cannot always go for those long farming production chains (as they always need to produce flour as an additional step), as you will need other buildings first. Additionally farming requires workers to be in the farm near constantly which allows for less flexibility. On higher difficulty levels you often cannot accept any caravan of newcomers and therefore you don’t have an abundance of workforce.

Also, as there are fewer orders you almost always have to win via resolve and with beavers and humans that is way harder.

[Garney]

I was going for a Lizard town achievement, so I tried three times to make an all Lizard settlement. Each and every time I would get saddled with a few harpies as well.

Each time I was just hoping for a ranch, or a map with enough meat and a way to get the trapper. One map just straight up never gave me either. The start of each of these games was a struggle, and I lost a few harpies along the way. Then one map I got both and flew through it much more easily.

When things work, they work, and it's a lovely settlement indeed.

But then there are those other settlements where you're grinding amber and eyeing impatience while sitting on +1 blueprint to try and afford just one more reroll.

Harpies are definitely delicate little pains, but they're good for the raindew to condensed dew to simple tools chain, and generally that keeps them happy enough in the midgame for me to only lose one or two during storms. The rain collectors order pops up often enough to be helpful there.

[Soul4hdwn]

how are you people losing, are you guys actually going into higher "difficulties"? because its not required at all, just stick to default mode of 1.5 hostility multiplier...

that said... yes there's an oddly large amount of blueprints that can cause issues. races are fine from my experience. harpies are kinda useless yeah but they're a lesser lizard for me... i get TONS of reputation from lizards, they're how i gotten a few of the "win before year x" achievements. ...and they enjoy food production buildings so its kind of a default win...

on other hand, dwarves... nope too deep requirements to make them happy... i don't see how people even use them for that. the resource doubling is for wood... unless you had aweful luck (which is fair) on blueprints, you'd never have wood issues even without dwarves. back to harpies... i never needed alchemy based buildings so... *shrug*

despite mixed praise, my last run did have an oops... impatience wasn't growing due to a "helpful" modifier to the run. impatience helps reduce hostility so i did run risk before i spammed traders (and actually extra used fuel for once)

[Lucky_Star_Fan]

I like the idea of races bringing a blueprint. Harpies are super annoying and I'd trade them for any other race, so something really needs to be changed with them I think.

[auraneas]

I hate playing with harpies, myself--they always seem to be the first ones to leave during a storm. (Cowards! If they're afraid of storms, why did they become pioneers?) I can never get their resolve above ten, unless I get the blueprint for their houses.

I agree completely about the camps--there are too many different ones, and not having a specific one can leave you staring at a map full of resources with no way to collect them. Why not amalgamate some of them? Surely we don't need a separate camp for gathering flax/reeds; the foragers could do that. For that matter, the scavengers could collect meat and insects. And it would definitely be better to have them available as essential buildings.

(By the way, before anyone says it--yes, I suck at games! I can't even get through Pioneer level in this one. So embarrassed.)

[frank327]

kwork původně napsal:

I have to disagree on both the race balance and the blueprints.

On lower difficulties (veteran and below) beavers and humans feel more impactful as they manifest in early game resources (food/wood) which might well win you the game by fulfilling orders as hostility/resolve wont become that much of an issue that you really need to go for services/complex food as badly.

On higher difficulties not only that becomes much more important much earlier, you also cannot always go for those long farming production chains (as they always need to produce flour as an additional step), as you will need other buildings first. Additionally farming requires workers to be in the farm near constantly which allows for less flexibility. On higher difficulty levels you often cannot accept any caravan of newcomers and therefore you don’t have an abundance of workforce.

Also, as there are fewer orders you almost always have to win via resolve and with beavers and humans that is way harder.

In my experience the production of flour isn't all that much of a hindrance. If you start with humans, you can pick the farm as an embark bonus and from there you only need 2 blueprints (multiple options for both) to get to biscuits. If you get the provisioner for flour you can also produce the barrels for ale production and leisure which benefits both humans and beavers.

[Toshio]

Beavers and Lizards are my choice. Doing two most important things best - keeping fire up and provides easiest food. Also their needs are easy to keep up. Humans are good only on maps, where you are going to produce beer. But there they are really good. Sad that i've did this type of strategy only once in 20+ runs.
And for the last place are useles sluts. Their bounuses are late colony stage only, they work poor and require so much to be satisfied, that rule "bros before ♥♥♥♥♥♥" became mandatory. I HATE them! I hate maps where they are put into your colony! I hate when there is no "cannibalism" and "devil pact" on first two days, cos on day 3 they already will start leaving! They are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad even on 2-nd difficulty, that on hard+ i even do not try to manage them! They need buff and BIG one!