LUCK?????

[itsthemarcel]

The problem I have with the game is the lack of skill involved and the ridiculous amount of luck needed. You need a very low level of skill to succeed with the game. Once you have a basic knowledge of the buildings and ingredients the game becomes 99% luck based. Luck on the perks, Luck on perk re-rolls, luck on blueprints, luck on blueprint re-rolls, luck on the map modifiers, luck on the traders, luck on the trader blueprints, luck on good glade resources, luck on good glade events.

ALMOST EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY LUCK BASED!!!!

Your success or failure on a mission is not skill based, it is luck based, but you just have to play through the map and see if you will get lucky enough to win or if it will be impossible.

Even luck with the coal and metal deposits to find three close enough to put a single mine over, half the time you find nodes dotted all over the place but it's not worth putting a mine on them because they are too spread out. Ironically, on almost all maps, If you GET LUCKY with lots of farmland and a grove for Dew you can just skip metal and coal mines entirely and never have to worry about running out or getting lucky to find new good nodes.

The biggest complaint I have with the game is if you get enough bad luck with the RNG, no amount of skill will enable you to win.

You are not competing against anything tangible in the game, you are competing against bad luck and bad RNG and that is it.

Edit- In case anyone is wondering, yes, I have played the game a lot and I do know that at low levels of difficulty everything is equally easy and viable. I'm talking about Viceroy (without the foxes, because they are broken) and Prestige.

[itsthemarcel]

I forgot luck with the orders and timed orders.

Orders should be something that automatically pop up as you go along to guide you along a journey through the map, not something you leave for as long as possible to make it easy late game to complete any timed orders that may pop up rather than risk revealing a currently impossible timed order and not being lucky enough to be able to complete it.

[DG]

There's enough contingency in the game for players to win despite bad luck. The better you play the more contingency you have. You don't need all the blueprints to be useful, you don't need to complete all the orders, you don't need every cornerstone to be useful, etc. Even when you're unlucky and lose, there's still something you could have done better and that's the thing to focus on.

See all the previous threads on the subject.

[itsthemarcel]

Originally posted by DG:

There's enough contingency in the game for players to win despite bad luck. The better you play the more contingency you have. You don't need all the blueprints to be useful, you don't need to complete all the orders, you don't need every cornerstone to be useful, etc. Even when you're unlucky and lose, there's still something you could have done better and that's the thing to focus on.

See all the previous threads on the subject.

I have been playing a while and I have seen enough posts to know what I am talking about.

[kory]

It is very little luck in determining if you can win or not. There is a high amount of RNG in what is handed to you to deal with, but there is so much redundancy that most in not all runs are winnable. Even myself, climbing to P20, I had about a 90% winrate, and I'm sure better players can manage near 100%.

[Tarv]

Have the developers explained anything about balance? Like, do maps spawn within a certain range with a minimum to keep them from being unwinnable? Any limitations on what building will or wont spawn? I know the game is still in development and balance is subject to change, but for people who aren't confident in the rng it might help to have at least a vague idea what the parameters are

[kory]

Originally posted by Pencilvester:

Have the developers explained anything about balance? Like, do maps spawn within a certain range with a minimum to keep them from being unwinnable? Any limitations on what building will or wont spawn? I know the game is still in development and balance is subject to change, but for people who aren't confident in the rng it might help to have at least a vague idea what the parameters are

They have explained a decent amount about the way that orders spawn, trying to give you ones that you can reasonably do on the map you have, and orders respect what unlocks you have. I'm not sure about blueprints, but my impression is that there is a general tendancy of late game vs early game blueprints given to the player. Not sure what you mean about maps spawning within a certain range.

I would be surprised if there were any truly unwinnable maps, but even if they did exist, it would take quite a bit of work to demonstrate one was unwinnable.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

That's why the game goes to 14 (18) points instead of going for a highscore or whatever. Even if you get bad rolls and the run is a disaster, it's possible to scrape together enough to win. That doesn't mean getting every type of food and service running, it typically only takes 2 or 3.
One bit of advice I can offer is packing up spare stuff during the storm. Packs (especially if you get a building with the recipee) sell better than their components, so you can buy something critical from a merchant if needed. I just had a run where my wincon revolved around pickled goods, in a map with no reasonable way to get pottery/waterskins/barrels, so I just bought over a hundred pots using excess flour bundled into trade goods. That's doable even with the prestige that makes trading worse, so extremely effective before that.

[itsthemarcel]

Originally posted by kory:

It is very little luck in determining if you can win or not. There is a high amount of RNG in what is handed to you to deal with, but there is so much redundancy that most in not all runs are winnable. Even myself, climbing to P20, I had about a 90% winrate, and I'm sure better players can manage near 100%.

There is no way you climbed to P20 with a 90% win rate without save scumming.

[kory]

Originally posted by itsthemarcel:

Originally posted by kory:

It is very little luck in determining if you can win or not. There is a high amount of RNG in what is handed to you to deal with, but there is so much redundancy that most in not all runs are winnable. Even myself, climbing to P20, I had about a 90% winrate, and I'm sure better players can manage near 100%.

There is no way you climbed to P20 with a 90% win rate without save scumming.

Think what you want, but when I was at P18 the game stats said I had played 40 games and lost 4 of them, I did P19 without a loss, and am just doing P20 now. I'm not even sure how one would save scum in this game, I'm sure you could do it, but I certainly haven't.

[Melzard]

I don't agree. The challenge levels are ways to lower and raise the difficulty, and while luck can decide how quickly you finish a town sometimes, its majority figuring out how to play with your advantages and disadvantages in each run. That's why there are so many ways to win and you can use any combination of them to achieve your goal. I have only had two towns fail, and they were both because I failed to adapt to my situation properly.
I can tell you exactly why for both times.

-The first one was purely because I hopped into the coral forest biome and tried to treat it like a royal woodland. bam. That will get you in a bad position more than anything else.

-The second one was because I simply expanded too quickly and wasn't placing enough warehouses to keep the supply lines efficient (those warehouses are the key to a good or a bad run, if you haven't been placing them in almost every large glade, try doing that. You might be surprised how much flexibility it gives you to focus on other things)

You gotta keep in mind what the game tells you, adaptation is the skill you need to rely on. Luck only determines how easy it was to finish a run, but there is almost always a way to recover from knock downs.
No metal? Don't try to make tools or barrels or pipes, you can focus on trying to make goods to trade or find valuable and useful goods in the wild while exploring to sell so you can buy the items you need instead.
No coal? Don't use coal to burn, there are so many other things. You might just have to use wood and cope with the forest hostility morality hot with leisure, education ect.
Nodes too far apart? Place more warehouses. not enough nodes in one spot? use what you have and pay to expand the resources.
Not enough farmland for dew? You don't need dew. Straight up. Its like the metal thing. I have used dew so little in my game that it hardily seems worth worrying about. Its nice, of course, its an alternate to metal. but you don't need metal either, you just have to switch your focus.

Playing more is the best way to learn how to make situations work, its just a matter of adjusting strats.
The world is harsh and you are a viceroy, someone trusted by the queen and its people with contributing to the survival of everyone. You have to be versatile because disadvantages will always come your way and unexpected trouble will always come your way.

as for RNG for events and orders, im not really sure how you'd want it handled? Potentially they could give one more option, but fullfilling orders is just one way of gaining reputation. I tend to use orders as early game ways to lower impatience and gain nice advantages and supplies, or filler in order to finish my town in less time so I can hit higher in the overall ranking. And events should be random. They have cornerstones specifically for seeing whats in each grove, but they require sacrifice and luck. it should be hard to get, its a very very significant advantage that makes the process of winning absolutely garenteed.

I hope you keep giving the game a chance, because its very good. Its one of the best city builder survival games i've played since frostpunk.

[Wintersend]

Originally posted by Torpid Entree:

I don't agree. The challenge levels are ways to lower and raise the difficulty, and while luck can decide how quickly you finish a town sometimes, its majority figuring out how to play with your advantages and disadvantages in each run. That's why there are so many ways to win and you can use any combination of them to achieve your goal. I have only had two towns fail, and they were both because I failed to adapt to my situation properly.
I can tell you exactly why for both times.

-The first one was purely because I hopped into the coral forest biome and tried to treat it like a royal woodland. bam. That will get you in a bad position more than anything else.

-The second one was because I simply expanded too quickly and wasn't placing enough warehouses to keep the supply lines efficient (those warehouses are the key to a good or a bad run, if you haven't been placing them in almost every large glade, try doing that. You might be surprised how much flexibility it gives you to focus on other things)

You gotta keep in mind what the game tells you, adaptation is the skill you need to rely on. Luck only determines how easy it was to finish a run, but there is almost always a way to recover from knock downs.
No metal? Don't try to make tools or barrels or pipes, you can focus on trying to make goods to trade or find valuable and useful goods in the wild while exploring to sell so you can buy the items you need instead.
No coal? Don't use coal to burn, there are so many other things. You might just have to use wood and cope with the forest hostility morality hot with leisure, education ect.
Nodes too far apart? Place more warehouses. not enough nodes in one spot? use what you have and pay to expand the resources.
Not enough farmland for dew? You don't need dew. Straight up. Its like the metal thing. I have used dew so little in my game that it hardily seems worth worrying about. Its nice, of course, its an alternate to metal. but you don't need metal either, you just have to switch your focus.

Playing more is the best way to learn how to make situations work, its just a matter of adjusting strats.
The world is harsh and you are a viceroy, someone trusted by the queen and its people with contributing to the survival of everyone. You have to be versatile because disadvantages will always come your way and unexpected trouble will always come your way.

as for RNG for events and orders, im not really sure how you'd want it handled? Potentially they could give one more option, but fullfilling orders is just one way of gaining reputation. I tend to use orders as early game ways to lower impatience and gain nice advantages and supplies, or filler in order to finish my town in less time so I can hit higher in the overall ranking. And events should be random. They have cornerstones specifically for seeing whats in each grove, but they require sacrifice and luck. it should be hard to get, its a very very significant advantage that makes the process of winning absolutely garenteed.

I hope you keep giving the game a chance, because its very good. Its one of the best city builder survival games i've played since frostpunk.

Pretty much exactly this.

Bad RNG makes it harder but not impossible. Good RNG makes it easier but not impossible to fail.

Focus not on going for a single wincon every time, that's a recipe for disaster, instead look at what you have to work with and figure out how you can win.

[kory]

Also don't give up just when things look like they are going poorly. The hostility reduction you get with queens impatience is huge, so many games that looked like they were going bad can actually turn out just fine.

[Samseng Yik]

"ALMOST EVERYTHING IS LUCK BASED"
What about some players with near 50 win streak at Viceroy difficulty ?
You mean they wasted their luck on a video game instead of Jackpot lottery?

A person without skill will only blame other have better luck.
Also, accusing someone save scum really only show how ugly is your mindset.
Why don't you watch some video and see how people play? But of course surely you will just said "but they have better luck !"
Some players who have worse gaming skills. But their attitude and how they see the world give them chance to self improve.
Some players only "never my fault", and will never admit own imperfection. In this case, help is not deserved.

[Kyresti]

I mean... it's a citybuilder roguelite.

Working with what the fates hand you and figuring out how to roll with the punches is the point.

And the big pool's somewhat balanced out by the fact that there's usually 3 or 4 different ways to get that one stupid thing you need.

And even in some of the worst maps, sometimes a trader's random farm blueprint is all it takes to save your tail midway through the game.

[Unchristliche Reinzockung]

i just started the game pretty much, im on 40 hours but i play on the hardest difficulty, so far i have lost one game bcs i wanted to see what killing the merchant does, besides that 100% winrate. there are sure games that annoy you a bit where you just cant find a good build but there are always outs. you just need to adapt the situation, sometimes even a villager kill build without food is possible