Diffiiculty with new update too high

[alemanito]

I like the new scope of the game provided by the new update, but I think the level of difficulty in the initial phase is too high.

10,000 - 15,000 starting capital is simply not enough. Here a few examples. For one thing, you need at least level 2 patricians to generate a significant regular income from taxes. The patricians level 2 will move out if they do not have enough entertainment. A theater is not enough for this, they apparently also want festivals. However, it takes around 2,000 dinari just to provide entertainment, construct the buildings, train the actors and organize the festival.

But the starting capital must also be enough to build the rest of the infrastructure up to this point and pay the wages. Trade routes are hardly possible, you need military and scouts, so the initial costs are too high.

Now I do manage to generate at least a small plus in income to keep my head above water. But I have to wait forever to get ahead with the money I've saved. Until then, there are various unfulfillable tasks like “send 30 infantry to Rome”. Haha, dream on. You also barely manage to satisfy all the gods, which leads to constant punishments. Let alone build up military/fortifications to defend against attacks.

Maybe I'm doing something fundamentally wrong. But I don't see any logic in the necessary costs and the possible income in the initial phase to get to the military phase without major problems.

[Sui Generis]

no. you're right, i have the same issues. Just cant get around with the starting 10k or 15k gold.

[FAIR]

The game got more interesting now. I just lost my first map and I am glad. The last nail in the coffin for me was the need of cemeteries and patricians now demanding bread instead of melons since you now need to harvest salt for the bread and for the cemeteries you need bricks. In addition to that, starting with 10k and attacked after 10 min humbled me for sure. Not such an easy game anymore. Decorations changed as well? I used to build internal gardens to get at least lvl 2 houses (both) but this doesn't seem to be an option anymore.

[mrk54]

Where are you getting clay and salt? I haven't found a map with them yet.

[piosue]

Salt is on the maps it is big and white it is hard to miss. Just select the salt mine and it shows lines to where it is.

Clay seems to be able to go on any of the tan arid land that isn't fertile for farming.

[mrk54]

Originally posted by piosue:

Salt is on the maps it is big and white it is hard to miss. Just select the salt mine and it shows lines to where it is.

Clay seems to be able to go on any of the tan arid land that isn't fertile for farming.

Which maps?

[piosue]

I'm on the 2nd Spain map and there is a huge white salt deposit

[FAIR]

Clay doesn't show on the map, you can harvest by placing the building in any arid ground.

[Schatta]

Es ist richtig, das man Salz und Ton auf den normalen Karten beigefügt hat. Ich spreche jedoch von der Community zur Verfügung gestellten Mappen. z.B. Mission Rt, True easy game, The Island City usw. Überall da, wo auf den Maps schon zu sehen ist, dass da keine Trockenstellen für Ton vorhanden sind.

[PinkCashmere]

it suddenly got so hard it's not fun

[platon57]

Money, Timing and Balance

I have started to play the mission "grab the wolf by the ears" (in german: "Den Wolf bei den Ohren packen") some days before the huge update was released. Some ideas of the community the developers have been integrated there.

Like the community members have written here in this posting, I do also think, there is not enough money for paying all the necessary equipment - why? Well, there are not enough slaves in this game! Ancient Roman Empire could only emerge and rule of the people all over Europe because there are a lot of slaves in everyday life - doing the hard work in the quarries, the claypits, the salt mines aso. If you have to pay for these working people, you cannot build up an army.
Also the costs for food and beverages are too high in the game - because there are also no slaves at the agricultural fields ...
My wish: give much more money for the missions or introducing slaves in the games.


Like before written in another posting, I think, some changes should be done for a more balanced and good timed game. My list here is not sorted by priority.

1. Fire alarms
In my opinion in general there are too much fire alarms at the buildings. Ok, if there are no engineers and no fire fighters in in the neighbourhood, no one will put out the fire. But I do not see really a direct connection between the fire risk and their existance around.
At a bakery or a weaponsmith there are existing more higher risks for fire alarms than in a thermal spring I think. Although if there is a fire brigade close to the buildings where the fire started I cannot see any equipment in their hands … no buckets, no fire pumps - in ancient Roman Empire these equipment already exists. Water supply sure has to be organized before near the buildings.
My wish: much less fire alarms in the City and fire fighter should have more effective equipment to put out the fires. In PANE little egypt fire fighters carry buckets :)

2. Attacks inside the city - and battles against enemies out there.
In my opinion there is not a good timing in the game connected with the game Level III to Level IV. Both - inside the city there is only a small chance (time period) to build up an effective town guard with enough members - and also out there for recruiting and training enough soldiers in order to have a realistic chance against waiting 50-70 soldiers legions of the enemies. Additional you get not enough information about the battle field and the "background" of the enemies troops and supply.
No responsible commander will send his troops into a battle without more information before the battle and you always need a one to three ratio (better one to five) if you attacking an army - that's simple combat tactics. Therefore also the "Explorer" until now is in my opinion a "lazybones" - nearly only one information i will get "I have found a new city" - wow, how great! ;) Collecting more information is therafter my Job, isn't it? A real good explorer tells me a lot more about the situation of the battle grounds. Ok, exploring unknown areas is always a dangerous job ... but do you really think, in a city there is only one explorer connected with the administration or army? At last also - as far as I have learned in history lessons: founding a city starting NOT with a forum building - always with building a soldiers camp and later than with a fort or castle …
My wish: more quicker recruiting and training of the soldiers and city guards - and for city guards more greater covering areas of their stations and a little bit more closer contact with historic facts.

Ok, that's for now enough - I do not dreaming - less or nothing of my ideas will be used in another update … until Hannibal will resurrect and will wake up those Hispania Romans aka Devs :)

[Tyrion]

I started playing this game after the latest patch and I was wondering why it's so hard in the beginning before you have enough Patricians paying taxes. Now I get it.

Imho, the game needs better balance in the beginning. One way to do this would be to double or triple the starting funds. Another would be to improve income from trade. Even the first 2 missions feel like playing in hard mode. I will give this a break and see if they update it with a balance patch. At the moment, it's one of the least chilled city builders.

[Stinkypinky]

I just came to check these forums to see if I was doing something wrong. Having to get a crematorium up and running early game really sucks.
Also all the citizens are bored and leaving my city. All I can do is build a theater and wait forever for actors to train, then once you have a play you have to wait again. I can't get to the next prestige level to get more entertainment because everyone keeps leaving.
I was excited they added the clay pits like they had in C3 but this new update seems to have broke the game, I was really enjoying it up to this point. Hopefully they listen to us and fix it.

[Doc_Hotpants]

I agree with much of what's already been said here, and would add this:

- ground resources are far apart (stone, salt, clay, iron), meaning you'll need a functioning reservoir, fire station, engineer for each of the production clusters. That alone eats a lot of money and manpower. And then of course, you'll need that extra warehouse as well. So you have the choice of trying to level up your houses or try to just build more... it goes on...
- trading partners are severely limited
- even in easy mode, the game asks the (likely) beginner to perfectly balance building for residential, production, efficiency, money, etc. - that's neither motivating nor fun.

I've found it punishing, to be honest. Just tried sandbox mode that specifically said "no battle necessary", yet the scout gets killed on the third tile, I don't have residence level yet to train a new one, so trying to trade is out of the window while finances are dwindling.

I played this game very early on, and it has made a lot of improvements since then, but easy/relaxed mode should be easy/relaxed, not a fight for perfect balance, while juggling impossible religious demands (which of course cost money you likely won't have early game). So the gods come and destroy what you built, while you can't trade because your scout got killed... It's just... not fun right now.

It could be, though. So I'm hoping for patches for better balancing. Alternatively, let the player decide how much money or resources they would like to have when they start a game. That way it gets to be as hard or as easy as the player would like.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Having finished the first 8 tutorial missions, I have to disagree with my own post above. The game becomes manageable with more practice (and better resource management).

If you've been struggling as well, here are some tips that might help you (I've been breezing through the last five missions with this):

1a. Start with one efficient city center that is served by one (and only one) each of these:
-- reservoir
-- fire station
-- engineer
-- market
-- 5-10 pleb houses
1b. Once you can build patricians' houses, go by the ONE service building rule as well (and fit it around the same market/fire station/etc. you've already built, then build
-- bath
-- tax collector
-- doctor
-- 5-10 patricians' houses (depending on budget for the mission)
2. Try to find space for food and goods production that serves as many types of production as possible and try to maximize your warehouses' and granaries' reaches.
3. Remember that you'll need fire stations and engineers for your production clusters as well
4. Fire stations do NOT need a reservoir to function. Just build a well next to it, and you're good to go
5. One worker per building is enough to get you started. Make use of the prioritization feature as needed.
6. As soon as you can, send your explorer out to find a city or two to trade with. Trade is your friend!
7. As soon as you can, try to build a sword and bow maker (one worker each is enough). Then build a guard training building and try to maximize guard coverage (via the guard tents) for all or your residential and production buildings. Remember you'll need meat (and money) for guards. It's either this or rebuild 3-10 buildings each time you get raided. If you have enough resources and money, rebuilding can be the way to go, depending on preference.
8. It's okay to make the gods angry at first. One god/dess will only ever destroy 3 or 4 buildings, so save the money and resources to build the temples for later when you have enough of a trade and resources surplus. Once one god/dess has been on their destruction spree, all gods will be mollified for a while (I know some players will disagree here, but this strategy has worked for me)
9. As soon as you can, also build fields for the resources you don't need just yet for your population. This will come in handy as gifts to trading partners (getting you better trade deals AND more troops to levy from them)
10. You don't have to build your own military. Levy them from your trading partners (for money) if you want to. Do train centurions, though, they help in battle and cannot be levied from your trading partners.
11. You CAN leave space between houses for decoration (and you will have to decorate in order for houses to level up) but it's not necessary. The Roman column thing for the roads is plenty to get you to at least level 5 or 6 houses.
12. Once you can and want to build temples, make sure you have enough resources to build all of them, and the Regia building on top (make sure you have all of the resources you need for automated festivals)
13. In the early game, once you discover a city to trade with, maximize production for what you can sell to them.
14. Don't be weirded out by silk and ivory. In later stages, you'll find the cities that you can buy those goods from (and sell at a profit). By that time, you should have plenty of money to buy the max and sell the max. This makes a lot of money very fast.
15. Entertainment can wait. Patricians may not be happy about it, but they still pay taxes. So don't waste your precious resources and money for this as early as you can build those buildings.

TL;DR: Start the game with focus on efficiency. You don't need several reservoirs, markets etc. to get your city going. Trade is your friend. Develop your game to upgrade exisiting houses rather then spreading them out further.

I hope that some of this will help those struggling as I did in the beginning.

[Sate]

The starting money is enough, you just have to be quick enough and not put down two of everything, you have to scale very incrementally. Making sure your new pleb industries are always fuelling Patrician growth.