"protected trade" is soooo good

[Jumboman]

Sure, it requires that you have something to sell, but once you have some economy going (I was turning 1 plank and 2 dew bars into 6 tools) you can basically keep hostility below 0 for the rest of the run. Really helps when you play marathon games.

[arjensmit79]

Yep, its still great after being nerfed :)

[Lil brekky]

I would agree, to the extent that it is imbalanced. Other gold-tier -Hostility cornerstones have clear limitations, like the one that gives -40 for Neighborhoods (space-limited) or for Empathy solutions (yeah right good luck with that, you will "spend" more hostility exploring for events that have them, than you will negate...). Obviously not all cornerstones should have equivalent value, but both "sides" of Protected Trade can scale arbitrarily. There's no practical limit on how much you can sell, and no practical limit to how much you can benefit from reduced hostility... and selling things and doing things that increase hostility are both already beneficial. Compared to those other cornerstones, it is as if Protected Trade thinks selling trade routes is a "risk" or "cost" rather than pure benefit... It reminds me of the Landfall mechanic in MTG, where you are rewarded for doing the most basic and necessary action in the game.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

I would agree, to the extent that it is imbalanced. Other gold-tier -Hostility cornerstones have clear limitations, like the one that gives -40 for Neighborhoods (space-limited) or for Empathy solutions (yeah right good luck with that, you will "spend" more hostility exploring for events that have them, than you will negate...). Obviously not all cornerstones should have equivalent value, but both "sides" of Protected Trade can scale arbitrarily. There's no practical limit on how much you can sell, and no practical limit to how much you can benefit from reduced hostility... and selling things and doing things that increase hostility are both already beneficial. Compared to those other cornerstones, it is as if Protected Trade thinks selling trade routes is a "risk" or "cost" rather than pure benefit... It reminds me of the Landfall mechanic in MTG, where you are rewarded for doing the most basic and necessary action in the game.

I think that's the route root of it. It's trade per se that is simply too strong to begin with, not the boost that Protected Trade gives it. Almost every other mechanic in the game has some scaling built it, where the more you do it, the harder it becomes. Eg, every time you get reputation from resolve, the amount of resolve needed goes up. Trade needs something like that to balance it. Something like, for every 100 ambers worth of goods you've sold/traded, the amber value of your goods halves (exact number needs to be balanced of course).

That would make trade a complement to other strategies, and even the main strategy at times, but not the default way to solve every problem.

[Lil brekky]

A fine point, Olleus

[madzai]

While Trade is obviously strong, i don't think nerfing it is the correct way, Unnerfing other aspects is. After returning to the game, i'm quite puzzled how much stuff is nerfed. Some cornerstone that very really nice before, now aren't worth bothering with, or indirectly require you to engage in trade anyway - like a lot of harmony solutions to galde events require packs of provisions and amber.

If it's still to easy for some people, better to just think about another 10 additional levels of prestige...

[Olleus]

Adding higher difficulties level would exacerbate the problem. Balance isn't an issue that the game is too easy or too hard. It's that one strategy (trade) is almost always better than the others. The harder the game becomes, the more the player is pushed towards optimal play, and the more experimentation and deviation from the meta is discouraged. Considering that a major attraction of the game, and the whole point of it being a rogue-light, is that you need to adapt your strategy to the map, species, and RNG, this is a fairly big problem IMO.

Of course, rather than nerfing trade, you could boost every other mechanic... but that seems a lot harder to implement than some inflation-like mechanic were the amber value of your goods decrease the more stuff you sell.

I'm also not sure that the game has been heavily nerfed in the last year. Caches give more resources than before, which can be obtained without tools. Species starting bonuses gives you more freebies. Failed dangerous glade events are less punishing than I remember.

[madzai]

Yes, balancing is always hard, but again, a year ago trade was really good (in its un-nerfed state!) while there still were other good strategies to win. Now, with nerfed trade, it's still the top, while other strategies start to fall behind (or at least feel less effective) even earlier. To me it's a sign that game is overnerfed in favor of people who spend way too much time on P20 and want even more challenges.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Meh just noticed the additional nerf to it.
It was already nerfed twice so far. (If i recall well it offered for every 25 amber trade route -25 hostilty. First the hostility reduction was reduced to -15, then to 30 amber requirement.)
Now it also lowers the resolve gain from complex foods by 1.
I would say this is quite the nerf...It is already quite rare to get it with all the new and extra cornerstones.

[kory]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Meh just noticed the additional nerf to it.
It was already nerfed twice so far. (If i recall well it offered for every 25 amber trade route -25 hostilty. First the hostility reduction was reduced to -15, then to 30 amber requirement.)
Now it also lowers the resolve gain from complex foods by 1.
I would say this is quite the nerf...It is already quite rare to get it with all the new and extra cornerstones.

Its such a funny cornerstone in that they keep nerfing it, and it continues to actually be good. Sure, its not what it was, but its is still a strong choice in most situations.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by kory:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Meh just noticed the additional nerf to it.
It was already nerfed twice so far. (If i recall well it offered for every 25 amber trade route -25 hostilty. First the hostility reduction was reduced to -15, then to 30 amber requirement.)
Now it also lowers the resolve gain from complex foods by 1.
I would say this is quite the nerf...It is already quite rare to get it with all the new and extra cornerstones.

Its such a funny cornerstone in that they keep nerfing it, and it continues to actually be good. Sure, its not what it was, but its is still a strong choice in most situations.

It is still strong, but the nerf does make it less useful. Especially on later years, when your resolve might matter much more than your hostility. (Yeah you can get like easily 60-90 hostility reduction with one trade route, but that takes usually 6 minutes to complete. Whereas that resolve on all your foods will add together meanwhile. I know it is a situational issue.)

[Miathan]

Originally posted by madzai:

Yes, balancing is always hard, but again, a year ago trade was really good (in its un-nerfed state!) while there still were other good strategies to win. Now, with nerfed trade, it's still the top, while other strategies start to fall behind (or at least feel less effective) even earlier. To me it's a sign that game is overnerfed in favor of people who spend way too much time on P20 and want even more challenges.

I beat P20 without ever failing a settlement (200 hours played and 0 failed) so I don't think the game is "overnerfed" or too hard at all.

And I did it without using Protected Trade, I don't think I've even seen it once in my whole prestige climb. There are so many orange cornerstones that the chance to get a specific one is really low, especially once you get the -2 choices modifier.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Miathan:

Originally posted by madzai:

Yes, balancing is always hard, but again, a year ago trade was really good (in its un-nerfed state!) while there still were other good strategies to win. Now, with nerfed trade, it's still the top, while other strategies start to fall behind (or at least feel less effective) even earlier. To me it's a sign that game is overnerfed in favor of people who spend way too much time on P20 and want even more challenges.

I beat P20 without ever failing a settlement (200 hours played and 0 failed) so I don't think the game is "overnerfed" or too hard at all.

And I did it without using Protected Trade, I don't think I've even seen it once in my whole prestige climb. There are so many orange cornerstones that the chance to get a specific one is really low, especially once you get the -2 choices modifier.

I also beat P20-s without protected trade. But lately a number of the cornerstones feel a lot less useful. They are so situational, or require other cornerstones to offset their malus or make it work...
Seems that certain buildings are even much much more useful than they were before simply because their "cornerstone counterparts" got nerfed so hard, and with the introduction of extra cornerstones it is a lot harder to get them. Some kind of a smuggler like for cornerstones "cornerstone" would be useful.
Also these just make it more and more into micromanaging the game, which robs quite a lot of the fun i would say for many.