Not using services (and pipes)

[Genyl]

Hi

I really love the game and I play on prestige 20 winning around 75% of vanilla games.

I practically never produce services or pipes. I do use the unique buildings for the bonus towards end game and I use my initial pipes on key buildings (I have a rain collector for recipes like porridge or orders)

I never actually produce things like training gear or tea. They provide powerful resolve bonus and good cornerstone synergies but I don't have the resources or the blueprints to set up the proper production lines. Same for pipes , as you need bars and even then the bonus is not so good considering you have to clean up the blight root after

On higher difficulty levels I worry , in this order, about fuel, food, construction materials, housing, complex food, money and expanding to build hearths. Complex food is a priority towards most of the game,, not only is a resolve booster, but also multiplies food quanitty itself. With all these priorities, I don't have enough resources to dedicate towards something that doesn't have a negative if missing

Towards the end of the game I usually try to produce clothing and tools and then open all the caches. With that I usually win the game

Unless specifics I don't find services good. Let me know if you agree or if you think I am wrong

[ktur]

I'm only making my way up prestiges (9 so far, but streaking wins since P1), but so far it seems that sometimes its great to pick service building specifically for bonus when it fits situation; those effects often work as efficiency multiplier

[Sins]

Services tend to require a much shorter production chain than a lot of complex foods. Figuring out how to make them work is probably where that last 25% of victories is missing, because this is a game where even on prestige 20 a 100% winrate is very possible, though not terribly easy.

You also need to deal with blightrot anyway so why not use rainpunk stuff? Blight post is just sitting there 2/3rds of the time with nothing to do anyway.

[Urza]

Originally posted by Chaotic Submissive Succubus:

You also need to deal with blightrot anyway so why not use rainpunk stuff? Blight post is just sitting there 2/3rds of the time with nothing to do anyway.

depends on whether you've gotten strong fuel blueprints or cornerstones
if you dont get those, you can limp through the whole game just burning the extra ~100 wood every 3 years with the blightpost and survive, but you cant really afford all the extra burning rainpunk would entail
not saying thats a good plan, but it will sometimes happen. not every map has a coal, and the blueprints for fuel producing buildings are imo a bit rare.

[Clawyer]

I find services to be in a place where they are very usable for victory but hard enough to get to not be unbalanced. I think these goods could be a bit more expensive compared to complex foods. As of right now they are rare occasions where I use them and most of the time they weren't produced in my settlement.

Three luxuries are comparatively hard to produce (tea, ale, wine), so I produce them if I happen to produce all the materials, if I find a good blueprint while not lacking another one, if I have the necessary, useful service building and if I have species that will net me some reputation when I offer those services. That's 4 ifs.

I will build up to 30 of the other luxuries for glade events if one of my buildings has a recipe for them (I would usually not choose a building to produce service goods) and if I do not miss the materials once they are gone. Or if I am able to produce cheap packs with them.

Pushing you +8 over the resolve cap for two species can net you 3-4 you reputation in one year. But in order to get there I can also just buy those goods from a trader. When I start offering services to my villagers I am probably in the last year of that settlement anyways, so just give everything away that is not crucial for success and buy complex food and luxuries that you cannot produce yourself.

[Genyl]

Originally posted by Clawyer:

When I start offering services to my villagers I am probably in the last year of that settlement anyways,

Thank you. That is my experience as well. They seem perfectly fine towards endgame but at that time there are many tools at my disposal to get the last reputation points

The games I am losing are in the first years because I am lacking certain key materials , ran out of food or some random mistake. I rarely lose games once I have a good setup stablished.

Good point about the 30 items needed for events. I tend to buy them from trader. But having a producing line of those could be useful, i will try that.

[马小褂]

i'm near 100% winrate on p20 and i think service goods are generally underestimated even by the good p20 players here.

its true that the game allows all different of approaches to reach victory and you definitely can just ignore service goods production and only buy them from the merchant in the endgame, but stabilizing a service goods production line makes the new Sealed Forest so much easier. i noticed in another discussion ppl were complaining about the order that requires keeping high resolve from everyone for a full 5 minutes, but interestingly i never had trouble with that, and its often the easier one for my playstyle.

complex foods are ofc more important, but i prioritize getting service building and production line once i have at least one type of complex food for every specie. service goods are often faster and cheaper to produce while gives more resolve bonus so its often better to get service goods online rather than to have multiple types of complex foods for my experience.

but i do agree that training gears/teas are kinda bad since they're the harder ones to produce, and i also seldom produce them. but wines, scrolls and incenses are really good and i would even sometimes take blueprints for those before i get the right service building. scrolls and incenses can be used for a lot of glade events, while wines are the cheapest service goods (2 berries + 3 pots for 10) which can lead to a very efficient production line for packs of luxury goods. trading is so overpowered in this game and wine for this specific reason is probably the strongest service good imo, which makes beaver + fox a very strong combo.

i also almost never produce pipes though i do value rainpunks a lot and by the endgame i probably would have all my key buildings running rainpunks. but producing pipes is such a pain so instead of producing pipes its simply just better to buy pipes from the merchant.

[KD.AltQQ]

Services are actually quite great (they give way more resolve than complex food) however due to the nature of the random luck-basedness of blueprints (and rerolling is quite often not worth the cost) they are very hard to get going efficiently.

The only ones I would consider are wine and ale (and maybe if you have a ton of +root cornerstones, herb gardens, and get free +incense from roots maybe). If you have 40 waterskins from resolve reputation for example, or something making pottery (on a clay biome) or waterskins (on marshlands with trappers camp) they are the same as pickles really, except they don't fulfill food requirements but give more resolve.

And that's often the problem: you need the correct service building and then a proper building to get those items in a renewable manner--the stars need to line up. I find that it's a bad idea to plan for a particular service at the start but first rather see which service building pops up and then see whether you get lucky with the goods-producing buildings and the resources to make the goods (and the buildings worth picking are the ones that are still good even when you don't have the goods to use in them: tavern, guild house, and monastery; and maybe in very specific games, explorer's lodge; the rest are trash compared to the huge building costs)

If they had offered the player greater control over the blueprints (like for example, guaranteeing that every trader carries a contraband, perhaps at a higher cost than the 84 amber right now) then I feel the game would be better strategy-wise; it would reward planning/strategy rather than rewarding good luck. Right now, the delivery lines that you take on embarkation bonuses are just not viable options at all given their cost in 99% of the games.

[马小褂]

Originally posted by KD.AltQQ:

And that's often the problem: you need the correct service building and then a proper building to get those items in a renewable manner--the stars need to line up. I find that it's a bad idea to plan for a particular service at the start but first rather see which service building pops up and then see whether you get lucky with the goods-producing buildings and the resources to make the goods (and the buildings worth picking are the ones that are still good even when you don't have the goods to use in them: tavern, guild house, and monastery; and maybe in very specific games, explorer's lodge; the rest are trash compared to the huge building costs)

i would argue that market is one of the better service buildings even when you dont have the goods to use in. +10 carrying capacity is speeding up the overall production by a lot. forum is also decent with +15% bonus yield chance. clan hall is one of the worse buildings in general but its like s-tier in marshlands. the only service building i would consider trash is probably the temple.

[马小褂]

https://imgur.com/a/qRuQ2Ez
take my previous two runs as example, both of them are with beavers/humans/foxes lineup. they are from my current fresh file to p20 profile and for each settlement i increased the difficulty by one to get to p20 asap. so they were done without many upgrades and essentially harder than normal p20 runs on a maxed-out profile.

with a lineup like beavers/humans/foxes, i would value containers > porriage + pickled goods (so everyone gets at least one kind of complex food) > service building > service production line (ideally wine + ale) and coats. i know a lot of ppl would probably value flours over containers to make biscuits for beavers/humans but i would say for most of the time containers still outperforms flours since they open up wine/ale while flours cannot.

the p19 run was on the sealed forest and i got lucky with drizzle forest mystery (+3 berries production) so raw food was never a trouble. i didnt even get field kitchen unlocked by then so without getting good blueprints for complex foods i just never got any complex food production running. but once i got tinctury to produce wine+ale everyone's resolve started skyrocketing. with some complex foods bought from the traders (i spammed 3 traders in a row), it was quite chill to keep their resolve high for a whole 5 minutes.

the p20 run was more of my usual playstyle with field kitchen unlocked. since i got zhorg's ingredient i started producing pickled goods by year 1 (otherwise i would go for porriage by y1 but the logic is the same). after gaining 2 rep points from foxes i started produce another complex food for foxes which was porriage so they could still be kept in blue bar and everyone was having at least one complex food. after that (around y4-y5) i just focused on getting service buildings + production line rather than flours->biscuits/pies. i even ended up with 4 unique service buildings (market + forum + tavern + monastery) and i built market + forum when i didnt have the required service goods. market noticeably helped farmer's harvesting speed by quite a lot as well as all the complex foods/service goods production.

the thing is with field kitchen, even you got unlucky to find good blueprints for complex foods but in the worst scenarios you can still rely on your field kitchens and probably buy some from traders as well. but at least one good blueprint for service building is a must in the late game so i do value them more than unnecessary blueprints for complex foods.

[LotusBlade]

Well i have 100+ hours on prestige-1 and 30 or so at viceroy, getting to services is very complicated and annoying. But this is only bad if you try to produce them, instead, i just either buy them directly from trader or take as embarkation bonus (weapons are particulary good to open caches and not rely on stone). 3 per minute is quite a lot and you can always turn them into luxury goods and sell.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

I just focus on trade so I can buy a stack of everything to close out the game. They should probably cost more. Pack of luxury goods being a fairly rare recipe doesn't help either, there's a universe where an early Scribe or similar is exciting because mass-producing goods can be huge... but it isn't this one.

[arjensmit79]

Fully agree with spacesuit.
Its too easy to buy stacks of everything to close out the game.
Thats why i very rarely produce any of these goods. If i do it, its for packs of lux goods usually, or very rarely for the +1 resolve per 70 produced cornerstone.

I also rarely produce pipes. You start with exactly enough to produce 1 geyser and hook up 2 buildings. So thats what i usually do. Sometimes i may find a a guyser for both drizzle and storm water and may want to use both. In that case the extra pipes are often bought.

Buying and using these things is a very important part of the game though. The game normally ends when 1-3 service buildings are built and stacks of special foods and lux products are bought from multiple traders. (start buying a year before the victory push, while turning of the consumptions if you arent yet getting your people in the blue)

[Urza]

seems like rainpunk gets crazy if you use it too much
had to build 3 blightposts last game

[马小褂]

Originally posted by Spacesuit Spiff:

I just focus on trade so I can buy a stack of everything to close out the game. They should probably cost more. Pack of luxury goods being a fairly rare recipe doesn't help either, there's a universe where an early Scribe or similar is exciting because mass-producing goods can be huge... but it isn't this one.

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Fully agree with spacesuit.
Its too easy to buy stacks of everything to close out the game.
Thats why i very rarely produce any of these goods. If i do it, its for packs of lux goods usually, or very rarely for the +1 resolve per 70 produced cornerstone.

well, you both are right about buying everything to close out the game. and it works for 99% of the runs except for the sealed forest.

i think the reasoning behind that 5 minutes high resolve order is to limit the abuse of trading. a stack of something is only 50 from one trader and it would be used up after 2 breaks for a sample of roughly 16-17 ppl so it cannot hold their resolve high for a whole 5 minutes. you either need some luck to get multiple traders to sell the same services goods, or you have to have a stablized production line.

maybe this is why many ppl think that specific order is hard while i often find it the easiest to fulfill.