Difficulty modes

[sakasiru]

Okay so I started a new game on extra hard-areyoucrazy-difficulty. I did not pick idea mode and started with 5 adults to not completely crash and burn, but so far, I'm progressing quite well.

I'm on 1st winter day 5 at the moment, my people are warm and fed. I had built my standard house until fall but part of it is remnants of a mountain instead of full bricks or stone, which is fair. It's definitely doable yet you notice a difference in difficulty, which is the whole point of it I guess. I wouldn't call it extremely challenging for experienced players at this point, but who knows what the next spring brings. Also keep in mind that other than the difficulty setting, I choose easy starting options. You can stll make it way more challenging by choosing a barren map or start with a couple and their sextuplets.

So far I have mainly noticed that some stuff goes more slowly to the point where it feels a bit arduous. I usually play at 4x speed and even with that it takes ages to dig up clay for example, especially since you also get less per yield so you have to dig even more often. From the difficulty perspective, this is fine, but maybe it would help if we could speed up the game some more so I don't have to watch for ages until they finally have hauled their daily dose of clay.
The slower regrowth rate together with the smaller yields is a bit more challenging. I was really struggling for straw. While in a normal setting, you can harvest and replant a nearby river bank three times, I barely managed two times before winter and only got half the amount, which is very little since you need a lot of straw in the beginning for tools, mats, roofs, animal beds and a lot of other stuff. Note that I set my sliders to +3 grass, so that's already the most plants you can expect. There is also very little wild oats and flax on the map even with that setting, but I'll see how that works out in spring, so far we're living off hay seeds for my animals and hunting for dogs and humans. I haven't noticed any difference in difficulty when it comes to the number or behavior of animals.
Lastly, at the moment i'm really short on bog iron, but that may just be due to my personal playstyle as I set mountains to -3. I already can see that building up a decent supply of iron will be a long task, but that's a challenge I don't mind. It definitely slows progress quite a bit though.

I can't say much yet about the cooling mechanic. So far, stuff still freezes in winter which helps keeping my people fed. Honestly it was more of a challenge feeding them in summer as I had to harvest a LOT of berries to keep them fed. Never spend so much time gathering food even with a huge field of bushes right in front of the house. There were still plenty of berries left nearby at the end of summer, the problem was the time it took gathering them. So yeah again, reducing the yield AND increasing the time each task takes is making each action way less effective. Hunting is way more efficient in this setup.


I will add more insights as they come. So far, I don't think any of the new settings are game breaking.

[Blorf]

Thanks very much for the detailed info! Definitely as you or other have more comments, I would love to read them. I plan on adding many more settings and also tuning the ones in there so this is great.

[sakasiru]

Year 2 Summer 5

On spring 9, the freezer fell below freezing for the first time (regained freezing power during the night). On Summer 2, all jugs were thawed. So I had about three days of "cooling" period before the whole thing fell apart. On the one hand, it's great that supplies keep fresh well into spring. But because of the slow growth, summer is getting worse. First, by day 5 of summer berries still aren't ripe. I mostly rely on mushrooms that actually grow well in the rainy climate that early in the year, but I feel that berries are basically useless as a food source atm, especially once you are actually able to harvest them in the last days of summer, you can't really stock them due to no freezer.

The combination of floodplains and rainy weather still makes the floodplains completely useless for planting. They flood for most of spring (i actually planted some flax there which was killed after two days) and the slow growth makes it impossible to get a harvest in only in the summer month before it will certainly flood again in autumn. In fact, I planted most of my stuff in the first days of spring and it's at around 80% right now (without fertilizer but well watered), so I doubt I can manage even two harvests this year. Also i'm a bit worried how much seeds I will get out of a harvest.

Some suggestions: Increase growth speed for wild berries or give us a way to preserve them quickly (mmmh, jam!). Prolong the "cooling" period of the freezer mechanic at least a few days (but it would be nice if it worked throughout the year actually). Also consider giving some food more shelf life. Onions and neeps should easily keep fine for a year as long as you store them in a dry place and make for a good first step in agriculture before players can get to flour/bread as a reliable and storable food source. It's pretty unrealistic that there is just nothing that will keep for a decent amount of time, regardless of what you do to store or preserve it. It's great to get a feeling for seasonal food, but there needs to be a way to slowly stock up supplies across the seasons for a growing clan.

Building still is horribly slow. I now have a clay pit that increases the gathering speed but it's pretty far from my house (why can't I build those in the floodplains? At least they would be useful that way ...)
Traders come a bit less often but not so rarely that I perceive it as a challenge, but then again, I never relied on traders all that much. Maybe it will become a bit annoying when you are at the stage where you drown in leather and straw and can't get rid of it fast enough, but I'm still far from that.
Wolves are hella agressive for some reason. They have killed three out of six sheep so far despite me having 5 dogs to guard them. Also, I'm worried if I'll ever be able to build a pasture big enough to feed my lifestock. A sheep eats 5 tiles of grass at once! Maybe tone down their hunger a bit too or make grass more nutritios again or a small flock immediately grazes off a whole meadow.
I also had lightnig strike my home and burn off a portion of my straw roof but my clan got it under control quickly. The amount of fires during every storm is concerning though and I feel very lucky for the constant bad weather or my whole map would probably be burned down by now.

[sakasiru]

Summer 10: The berries never got fully ripe, they are barely at 2/3. This definitely needs some tweaking unless we aren't supposed to use wild berries after the initial summer.

[Blorf]

Thanks for the extra info, particularly with the growth rates. That takes quite a bit of time to simulate and a natural play through is the best way. I shall make some adjustments today.

Questions:

I have a couple reports of Heavy Rain/Snow mode not working, are you finding you are still getting a LOT of heavy rain? I will be reviewing if I broke this, this morning.

Also, for the cooler room, was your room in a mountain or stand alone? I am wondering how far the cooling would last in a mountain as I was hoping it would be able to extend in a few more days.

Livestock/Wolves wise, I did not change anything with their hunger or grass nutrition, but there may be some unexpected side effects somewhere. I will look into that too.

[sakasiru]

My cooler room was 14 tiles with two of them full palettes of ice. 8 of the roof tiles were mountain roof, 6 straw.

I don't have heavy rain constantly, but some kind of rain pretty much every day in spring and autumn. I don't know how "normal" rain inflluences the floodplains but the fields began flooding on the first day of spring and kept being flooded until the first day of summer straight. They gained about 4% of fertilisation during that time, so way below any level where it would make sense to plant anything there during summer. Summer was pretty dry and the fields needed watering nearly every day.

I was surprised by the wolves too as you didn't mention anything about an increased difficulty. Due to the slow growth my sheep need to go further from the house to find grass so that may cause more attacks, but I'm under the impression that wolves in earlier games rarely attacked lifestock, especially with dogs nearby, when other wild animals were on the map to hunt. But this time they ignore most wild animals and come for my sheep constantly. My dogs kill 3-5 wolves per raid so they are still very effective in defending my sheep, but if they are too spread out a wolf might get lucky. Also killing so many wolves usually made the rest of the pack leave the map for a while, but I have to deal with them about every other day now.

[Blorf]

Ahh ok all good info thanks. One last question on the freezer, were all the ice jugs totally full? Their fullness contributes to the cooling factor. The mountain roofs were providing an additional -2.8C of cooling at 8/14 tiles. I think a full mountain room may have gotten you an extra day, but not more than that. If you have a save and can check the fullness of the ice jugs that would be very useful info.

I have been very curious as to the exact time the freezers will melt and how long the cooling will last. I did a lot of experimenting in my debug mode, but it is not the same as a real game being played normally.

[sakasiru]

Both palettes were completely full, so 12x 100%

I have now built a new freezer room with twelve palettes but it isn't under a mountain roof anymore (I chose rock roof but unless you changed the effects of the standard roofs it won't make any difference). It can be completely shut off from the storage with vents since I wanted to try how the ice itself behaves if each tile is a source of freezing, but I suppose the general outside temperature will still melt it eventually?

[Blorf]

Yes the isolated jugs will eventually melt, and once winter comes, they will also eventually re-freeze as the cold from outside creeps into the sealed room.

Note, if you add a vent to the outside, the jugs could re-freeze more quickly in winter as well, but I don't think that will be needed. Just be sure to close the vent in the spring.

[Blorf]

v0.521 just went live on the testing branch. It should have some good improvements I think. Thanks again!

[pawelkrzyzak]

Had seed yield from crops been adjusted? or is still 1:1 ratio?