New player. Do I rush Seals? Or do I lurk near the City and level?

[vindicar]

^

[Livy]

Also new, seals seems to give some bonus so rush?

[el Darkness]

I would not say you have to rush them, rather work toward them so at the cycle end (bar at the bottom is full) you are next to it, then you can try. Seals will mostly give you more time during a cycle, it is nice to have, but by no means a necessity.

[Overeagerdragon]

Last time I checked you can't really rush seals anymore as each seal will have to be conquered at the end of a cycle AND at a higher difficulty level so in order to actually be able to get the perks of repairing the seals you will need those levels (and thusly the unlocks that come with them)...

If you CAN then rush them... more cycle-time means more potential upgrades that can be obtained before you are forced to reset.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Last time I checked you can't really rush seals anymore as each seal will have to be conquered at the end of a cycle AND at a higher difficulty level so in order to actually be able to get the perks of repairing the seals you will need those levels (and thusly the unlocks that come with them)...

If you CAN then rush them... more cycle-time means more potential upgrades that can be obtained before you are forced to reset.

Well, I meant I could just ignore them altogether and pick different settlement spots instead of beelining for the seal location.
Plus, don't you get your global resources only during cycle reset? That'd mean you get more resources, but more rarely, so you have to play more games without upgrades...

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

[el Darkness]

Originally posted by vindicar:

...Plus, don't you get your global resources only during cycle reset? That'd mean you get more resources, but more rarely, so you have to play more games without upgrades...

I thought you get them after every settlement, but I was not paying enough attention to notice myself. :(

Originally posted by vindicar:

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

Wait is that still an issue? I thought it was gone.

[arjensmit79]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

Mines are a default building, dont be searching for them under camps or blueprints or you'll never find them no :)

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Last time I checked you can't really rush seals anymore as each seal will have to be conquered at the end of a cycle AND at a higher difficulty level so in order to actually be able to get the perks of repairing the seals you will need those levels (and thusly the unlocks that come with them)...

If you CAN then rush them... more cycle-time means more potential upgrades that can be obtained before you are forced to reset.

Well, I meant I could just ignore them altogether and pick different settlement spots instead of beelining for the seal location.
Plus, don't you get your global resources only during cycle reset? That'd mean you get more resources, but more rarely, so you have to play more games without upgrades...

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

Seals add more cycle time, thusly more towns to build, thusly more upgrade materials like food and gears (and such) and give you a bonus upon completion of that cycle which further adds to the amount of upgrades you can purchase per cycle in comparison to shorter cycles....remember you can buy upgrades between settling of 2 towns but you get an EXTRA bonus based on the total collected at the end; so basically free resources without having to build a town for them..

Having said that; the second bit is exactly why I said you can't really rush seals on the map anymore... with -50% fertile fields, -50% tradespeed and less resolve growth ON TOP of not having some basic upgrades you can easily find yourself in a position where a map will simply gimp you out of a victory by (for example) offering you everything to bake cookies... but not offering you a farm; making all the buildings further in the line useless... causing you to fail restoration of the seal or offering you ONLY trade related objectives and then ONLY having big nodes on discovered glades

The earlier you are in your "career"; the harder seals will be to restore

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by el Darkness:

Originally posted by vindicar:

...Plus, don't you get your global resources only during cycle reset? That'd mean you get more resources, but more rarely, so you have to play more games without upgrades...

I thought you get them after every settlement, but I was not paying enough attention to notice myself. :(

Originally posted by vindicar:

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

Wait is that still an issue? I thought it was gone.

Nope; you can still get into a position where newly discovered glades only contain BIG nodes and not getting the upgrades to the camps you need in order to "harvest" said big nodes...

[Clawyer]

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Nope; you can still get into a position where newly discovered glades only contain BIG nodes and not getting the upgrades to the camps you need in order to "harvest" said big nodes...

And this is where you stop teaching newbies to only open dangerous glades. If you need food and you are not sure you can take the hit from a dangerous glade you can open one or two small ones. They will with a high probability have food that you can harvest.

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

[...] yourself in a position where a map will simply gimp you out of a victory by (for example) offering you everything to bake cookies... but not offering you a farm; making all the buildings further in the line useless... [...]

Have you never tried to bake biscuits from gathering camps? You definitely do not need a farm for that. If you find two or three root nodes you are good to go, even with basic upgrades you should be able to collect around 20 roots per node, which translates into roughly 30-40 biscuits per node if you don't let your villagers eat them raw. If you find herbs, fruit, mushrooms or grain, even better!
Working with food gathered by camps works for most of the complex food items, the exceptions being porridge, which is even easier because you can get the water from collectors or geysirs and of course pickled food which has a very long production line.

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by Clawyer:

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Nope; you can still get into a position where newly discovered glades only contain BIG nodes and not getting the upgrades to the camps you need in order to "harvest" said big nodes...

And this is where you stop teaching newbies to only open dangerous glades. If you need food and you are not sure you can take the hit from a dangerous glade you can open one or two small ones. They will with a high probability have food that you can harvest.

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

[...] yourself in a position where a map will simply gimp you out of a victory by (for example) offering you everything to bake cookies... but not offering you a farm; making all the buildings further in the line useless... [...]

Have you never tried to bake biscuits from gathering camps? You definitely do not need a farm for that. If you find two or three root nodes you are good to go, even with basic upgrades you should be able to collect around 20 roots per node, which translates into roughly 30-40 biscuits per node if you don't let your villagers eat them raw. If you find herbs, fruit, mushrooms or grain, even better!
Working with food gathered by camps works for most of the complex food items, the exceptions being porridge, which is even easier because you can get the water from collectors or geysirs and of course pickled food which has a very long production line.

Though I agree with you; we were talking about people rushing seals early on in their careers... the nature of the game can then further lead to a scenario where you start with JUST stone and fibre nodes at the start and no further small (food) nodes will be found. Besides that it was just an example of how early game can make it more difficult to rush seals as there's plenty of oppertunity where you en up in a situation where, due to rng, you miss out on a critical building to complete a chain.... getting a farm, plantation and a rainmill offered to you doesn't help much if you don't have a reroll and play on a map with no farmable land (for example) or getting a Smithy, Supplier, Provisioner with no rerolls on a map that doesn't have ore...

I've seen it myself where I had to fullfill leisure 25x and have a tavern and then never get the tavern offered to me. or even funnier... have treatment filled 25x whilst having Beavers, Lizards and humans as populous (none of them actually need treatment)

[el Darkness]

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Nope; you can still get into a position where newly discovered glades only contain BIG nodes and not getting the upgrades to the camps you need in order to "harvest" said big nodes...

I am aware of big nodes, but I was thinking about Mine, it is unrelated to big nodes.

Originally posted by vindicar:

Honestly, the early game hell is so in effect here.
"Here, have a map with loads of copper and coal!"
"Here, we will even give you a copper smeltery in a glade that you can restore!"
"What? You don't have mining camps? Well, sucks to be you, because we aren't offering you those blueprints!"

Perhaps I misunderstood this post previously. There is no such thing as a mining camp, you will never be offered a mine, because you have it from the start.

[Clawyer]

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

I've seen it myself where I had to fullfill leisure 25x and have a tavern and then never get the tavern offered to me. or even funnier... have treatment filled 25x whilst having Beavers, Lizards and humans as populous (none of them actually need treatment)

Yes, getting unfulfillable orders sucks..
At least you can leave that order unchosen in the first situation, the second situation confuses me, I thought, orders are supposed to be at least in theory fulfillable? If you encounter that situation again where it is impossible to complete the order please open a bug report.

Originally posted by el Darkness:

Perhaps I misunderstood this post previously. There is no such thing as a mining camp, you will never be offered a mine, because you have it from the start.

Mines are unlocked at level 3 so for your first two settlements in this game you can encounter a situation where you have a lot of copper on the map but you cannot get the copper out of the ground. You can, of course, get copper from gathering clay but most of the time this isn't enough copper to get a blueprint for a building able to smelt bars..


Regarding OPs question: Reforging a seal is interesting because of the bonus meta progression currency you gain for it. So the more settlements you complete the higher the yield of that seal will be. You could of course rush the first one or two seals in order to get longer cycles but it's defenitely not necessary.

[arjensmit79]

Disclaimer: I didn't play trough everything yet with the new worldmap stuff, so i might be mistaken, but as far as i experienced and understand it:

The seals enable you to get further away from the citadel within a cycle. Further away you get more resources. So thats good. I have never noticed it being more difficult as you get further away, but i read somewhere that there is a minimum difficulty level as you get further away. I am pushing difficulty levels so i won't ever notice that.

The main question is: Do you want to push prestige levels. And that is the difficulty level. If you stay on low levels while unlocking all the perks before you go to higher prestige levels, your game will be easy. If you start pushing up the prestige levels every game you play, you will get to high levels without having all the perks unlocked and you game will be harder.

So for short: yes go far away from the citadel and unlock the seals as far as you can within the difficulty level you want to play. Pushing the difficulty levels is the real choise to make.