Obsidian Archive

[vindicar]

Is it even worth upgrading it past level 7? Most upgrades there look either irrelevant, or just plain detrimental.

[kory]

I cant recall any upgrades that are in the sanctum that are detrimental. Which ones are you thinking?

[vindicar]

Originally posted by kory:

I cant recall any upgrades that are in the sanctum that are detrimental. Which ones are you thinking?

Level 9: Timed Orders. "They will randomly appear in some order packages." In other words, not only it already takes me well over a year to fulfill most orders (not counting some instawin ones), not only I keep getting orders where both options are equally unlikely to be done, the order pool will be polluted even further by orders I can actually fail because of time? Why would I want that? Unless the timer starts only when I take the order, then it's just cheating the system anyway by accepting the order only when you are about to complete it anyway.

[kory]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Originally posted by kory:

I cant recall any upgrades that are in the sanctum that are detrimental. Which ones are you thinking?

Level 9: Timed Orders. "They will randomly appear in some order packages." In other words, not only it already takes me well over a year to fulfill most orders (not counting some instawin ones), not only I keep getting orders where both options are equally unlikely to be done, the order pool will be polluted even further by orders I can actually fail because of time? Why would I want that? Unless the timer starts only when I take the order, then it's just cheating the system anyway by accepting the order only when you are about to complete it anyway.

Timed orders do not pollute the order pool. Without timed orders the queen gives you a choice of 2 and with times orders you usually get a choice of 2 and sometimes a third option appears. That third option is usually very hard and ignored, but it is never harmful to just completely ignore the timed order mechanic.

[Clawyer]

I am not quite sure which upgrades you are irrelevant. The training expedition and the daily challenge might not be that interesting to you when you are still happy with the core game, but after the timed orders (which kory correctly explained as an additional, optional choice, they can give you very valuable resources if you manage to finish them in time) most upgrades are helpful:

The field kitchen can help you when bad luck does not give you the blueprints needed, as even the basic recipes put out more food than you put in and complex food gives resolve. In some (prestige) games I have built 2 or 3 field kitchens in order to get complex food going.

The additional caravan slot gives you one more choice when embarking, this helps because sometimes the first two combinations of races aren't very helpful (e.g. foxes and harpies have only one commodity in common).

More citadel resources is always helpful, the later upgrades become quite expensive.
Forager's Camp and Trapper's Camp as an embarkation bonus can be very helpful depending on the races and the biome you embark on.

The last stand is.. well.. since having it unlocked I have never come to the point where it woul have activated. But that doesn't mean that other players don't get there, especially when taking the gambler's bet world event you can get a very high amount of impatience very quickly.

[arjensmit79]

https://files.fm/u/2c9nr4vev

This is my file giving numeric values to the quality of all upgrades.
Im sure some people will vastly disagree. Im interested to read their argumentation.
(im also sure im vastly wrong, i made this file based on rusty old experience and currently being only on P13 having unlocked only half of them. So its been ages since i played and actually had to use the higher end of perks). I will reconsider all of them when i reach p20

For reference:
Embarkation point is my benchmark. I stated those to be worth 10 and tried to judge what the other perks are worth in relation to that. Also of course the values are average. Some of them are entirely worthless in one game and very important in another.

PW: Now that i look at it, i already know i probably want to downgrade that "40" for amber embarkment dramatically. I used it by default when i played last year. I now learned to build a tradercamp right after the woodcutters and a makeshift post so i can start doing trade routes right away. This makes me feel amber embarkment loses much of its value

Now lets turn this into a discussion about unlock priority.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by kory:

Timed orders do not pollute the order pool. Without timed orders the queen gives you a choice of 2 and with times orders you usually get a choice of 2 and sometimes a third option appears. That third option is usually very hard and ignored, but it is never harmful to just completely ignore the timed order mechanic.

Ah, that's a different story. Wish they'd phrase it more clearly in the description.

Originally posted by Clawyer:

The field kitchen can help you when bad luck does not give you the blueprints needed, as even the basic recipes put out more food than you put in and complex food gives resolve. In some (prestige) games I have built 2 or 3 field kitchens in order to get complex food going.

That's not the impression I'm getting... whenever I try to go for complex food early, I end up running out of base ingredient while still not getting enough of complex food done. And that's with 1+* recipes, while Field Kitchen gives 0*. Maybe I've missed something else that consumes them, but so far all 0* buildings are only useful as jumpstarters, or as a desperation play if you have an abundance of base resources. They waste too much for me to afford them running normally.

Originally posted by Clawyer:

The additional caravan slot gives you one more choice when embarking, this helps because sometimes the first two combinations of races aren't very helpful (e.g. foxes and harpies have only one commodity in common).

And third can be equally unhelpful. Besides, you will end up with something completely different anyway. Like, it's good, but doesn't seem that good.

Originally posted by Clawyer:

Forager's Camp and Trapper's Camp as an embarkation bonus can be very helpful depending on the races and the biome you embark on.

True, but I've unlocked Herbalist camp embark bonus, and it's what, whopping 5 points?
My normal pool is 6, and I have far better things to spend those on. So it seems only useful if you get a royal resupply earlier.

As for last stand, if I've gotten to that point, I've already lost, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, there is a chance, and yeah, extra time might let you grab that chance. But you probably have some systemic problems that led to this situation. So unless it's about grabbing the very last prestige point, you will probably lose afterwards anyway.

Still, thanks for the detailed answer!

[Clawyer]

I get that you find other unlocks more exciting. Some of the unlocks in other buildings are also very very situational or only interesting for high prestige play.
On the food consumption problem I want to add this:
Harpies and Lizards eat every 1.5 minutes, all other races every 2 minutes. If they are working at the time their break would normally start they will finish the task and then eat, so in general it will take a bit longer than that, but you can roughly estimate with these values that Harpies and Lizards will eat 6-7 times per year and all other races 5 times per year. You will have to compensate for that by producing new food and if you don't have enough food sources on your open glades you need to open more glades or buy food from a trader.

0* recipes always have a lower numerical food resource input than their output, so in essence you are converting inedible resources like rainwater, flour, containers or fuel into food which then also gives a resolve bonus. It is inefficient, you are right about that, but on higer difficulty levels you want to have some kind of resolve bonus for your harpies or they will start to leave as soon as year 2. The games I was referencing were very inefficient, 3 field kitchens means 6 villagers are bound producing food with only 20-30% gain where other buildings would double or triple the amount of food, but even that small margin combined with chance for double production and the resolve bonus meant I could concentrate on other things for one more year.


The prices for camps range between 4-6 and I think they are randomly distributed. Taking a camp should of course only be done when you are fairly certain you are going to use it, e.g. you have harpies and lizards and go to the marshlands, because there you have 2 options for the trapper's camp (eggs and meat) while only having 1 for the other two camps. If you come to the same conclusion as many other players on this forum that small glades are rarely worth the hostility gain (I disagree on that, but that's my playstyle) then you will find much more use for the large camps as dangerous glades often only provide large gathering nodes which are completely useless to you if you only have small camps.
With the rising number of blueprint choices you will find it harder and harder to get the camp you need if you don't choose it in the beginning. The same is by the way true for buildings using fertile soil, there are many games where I start with humans and invest the 4 or 5 points into a farm or plantation.

[el Darkness]

Originally posted by vindicar:

As for last stand, if I've gotten to that point, I've already lost, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, there is a chance, and yeah, extra time might let you grab that chance. But you probably have some systemic problems that led to this situation. So unless it's about grabbing the very last prestige point, you will probably lose afterwards anyway.

Still, thanks for the detailed answer!

Last stand have one benefit that be not be obvious, you can abuse the counter. Let's say you have high impatience and few orders ready to finish. You are still lacking few Reputation points. You can gain much more time when you wait for Impatience to build to max, what 1:29s, complete Order and BAM not only you stopped the countdown by lowering Impatience, you also refreshed it, so next time your Impatience rises to max you can do the same trick.

You can go even further, why not call the trader? you are 0.13 Impatience away from triggering Last Stand? Call the trader, you will not lose (well, you will lose 0.13 Impatience), Last Stand will keep you alive, then you can complete Order. Or maybe you are working on sending treasure to the Capitol, it will work the same way, but with orders you can count until the very end and still make sure everything will turn out okay.

That said, Last Stand is what it is, a Last Stand. I would prefer to avoid using it if I can. :)

[Hariman]

Originally posted by Clawyer:

I am not quite sure which upgrades you are irrelevant. The training expedition and the daily challenge might not be that interesting to you when you are still happy with the core game, but after the timed orders (which kory correctly explained as an additional, optional choice, they can give you very valuable resources if you manage to finish them in time) most upgrades are helpful:

The field kitchen can help you when bad luck does not give you the blueprints needed, as even the basic recipes put out more food than you put in and complex food gives resolve. In some (prestige) games I have built 2 or 3 field kitchens in order to get complex food going.

The additional caravan slot gives you one more choice when embarking, this helps because sometimes the first two combinations of races aren't very helpful (e.g. foxes and harpies have only one commodity in common).

More citadel resources is always helpful, the later upgrades become quite expensive.
Forager's Camp and Trapper's Camp as an embarkation bonus can be very helpful depending on the races and the biome you embark on.

The last stand is.. well.. since having it unlocked I have never come to the point where it woul have activated. But that doesn't mean that other players don't get there, especially when taking the gambler's bet world event you can get a very high amount of impatience very quickly.

I find that if you're triggering The Last Stand, you're already on a downward spiral and a couple minutes is unlikely to be enough to save the settlement.

[arjensmit79]

Thats the beauty of the upgrade tree. The entire top part of it is trash :)

[Hariman]

Honestly... the greatest and probably most broken upgrades I can think of would be making the Camps permanent at a level higher than 18 to allow for NOT having to buy camps with Blueprints or Embarkation Points.

[arjensmit79]

Originally posted by Hariman:

Honestly... the greatest and probably most broken upgrades I can think of would be making the Camps permanent at a level higher than 18 to allow for NOT having to buy camps with Blueprints or Embarkation Points.

I dont know what you want with levels higher than 18. But i am leveling up every single game i play and i am starting to believe this is exactly what the tech tree is designed for. All the way up you have to make tough decisions what to unlock. By the time you get to P20, you wont have the entire tree unlocked, but definitely most of the stuff that matters. Im sure someone has put some thought into this, so lets keep it this way :)