Is this game just too hard?

[Sapakosa]

Just achievet 5 day and... boom! Endless wave of zombies were running through my wooden wall maze and almost all my villagers were repearing broken towers/ refilling ammo for 30 min and the whole wall has finally fallen. Banish spell was the only thing keeping my base alive, but it was just too expensive and duration of this spell was just too short. I've bearly got my essence collector, one fire bolt tower and two golems spawners.
The worst thing - my population reached 28 on day 5 (1+ since begining) and I've had a lot of issues with management.

[Rayvolution]

Have you tried building wall mazes to bait your monsters into?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=734926810

Also, building golem combobulators helps a lot in conjunction with the maze quite a bit as well. :)

[Sapakosa]

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/493527550089507004/63E84A550CE038609C9D8B3CD8FF8BE38907E718/

This is the screen after wiping out my defenses .-. Will be there any option to customize difficulty? I'd like to start game with monsters on day 3, not 2. I like this game if this is possible. Anyway - is there any option to stop dismantle/terrain harvesting or destroying?

[Rayvolution]

Yep, there will be. Sort of. :)

There won't be a typical difficulty slider you can set beforehand, but there will be "per map" difficulty levels that come in the form of changing map flags around to manipulate the game world, but these flags will be set by the map maker (IE: Me during development, in the case of the world map) and can't be changed by the player.

Some of the things the map maker will be able to adjust;
- Season length (Set per season, so they can set one season to be longer than usual, and another to be shorter)
- Starting season.
- How many "no monster" days the player gets.
- Specific spawns, allowing you to enable/disable what mobs you want on the map.
- The overall maximum spawn cap before monsters can no longer spawn.
- The spawn speed once they are allowed to spawn.
- The ratio of how much rare resources are found.
- The growth speed of all the renewable resources like trees and food.
- How much weather there is, and being able to disable certain weather entirely.

Almost all of the code is actually already there to make it all happen, I just need to tie it into the map editor so it can be configured (by the map maker) on a per map basis. :)

I'm also open to any other suggestions on what flags to add if anyone has any.

But, as far as the world map is concerned, once these flags/settings are coded in, I'll go into the world map and make some maps easier than they are now, and some harder. So if you're having trouble, you can just stick to the easier maps for now.

Also, have you considered trying out peaceful mode?

[Sapakosa]

Well, thats sounds great:) The only thing I can really want at the moment are gates (not too hard to breach by monsters, but they will give a while for villagers to run out before monsters breach in - I know this might be not in mind) and random people wandering around (willing to join my side, bandits fighting monsters and my villagers/building nests or just people ignoring everything, dispatching monsters and passing through the map - what do you think?). I really like your game and I'm looking forward for it, also it's very nice to see a developer replying to a fan question just by himself. Just before I finish my sentence - will be there any sort of building upgrades? Something like upgrade to village center (visual - the wall will look complete and this upgrade will add some more builder slots + 10 housing slots + 1 bow tower for security).

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Sapakosa:

Well, thats sounds great:) The only thing I can really want at the moment are gates (not too hard to breach by monsters, but they will give a while for villagers to run out before monsters breach in - I know this might be not in mind) and random people wandering around (willing to join my side, bandits fighting monsters and my villagers/building nests or just people ignoring everything, dispatching monsters and passing through the map - what do you think?). I really like your game and I'm looking forward for it, also it's very nice to see a developer replying to a fan question just by himself. Just before I finish my sentence - will be there any sort of building upgrades? Something like upgrade to village center (visual - the wall will look complete and this upgrade will add some more builder slots + 10 housing slots + 1 bow tower for security).

Glad you're enjoying the game. I love talking to players, personally, I never understood why so many developers stay out of the community. My only guess is fear the community might backlash on them if they say one thing and do another? Although I've never had that problem. :)

As for your ideas, actually almost all of them are planned already! I'll be adding gates eventually, that golems and villagers can freely pass, but monsters can't. I'll also be adding "wandering" friendlies that can join the village, but how it'll all work is a bit too complicated to go into here, as it ties into some of the major changes coming to the Limbo system soon. Building upgrades are also planned, very similar to how your described it as well. Upgraded work buildings will provide more workers, homes will provide more occupant slots, and towers will do more damage (or gain new abilities).

The village center itself will also get many upgrades, it's actually a major part of where the "Castles" aesthetic will come into play. You'll start the game with a simple village center (even more simple than the current design) and you'll slowly upgrade it until it looks like a towering castle, with each step adding more functionality to the village some way or another.

[Sapakosa]

I'm very happy to hear that :)! I really love sandbox games with aready living world, just before I bring it to live. And yes - as you said it is too early to think about something like this Oh, I have almost forgotten to ask you - will you add "building broken" status on buildings list or just simply button to prioritize broken ones on the list, so villagers will repair broken buildings and then continue working on the new ones? This might be very helpful ;o

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Sapakosa:

I'm very happy to hear that :)! I really love sandbox games with aready living world, just before I bring it to live. And yes - as you said it is too early to think about something like this Oh, I have almost forgotten to ask you - will you add "building broken" status on buildings list or just simply button to prioritize broken ones on the list, so villagers will repair broken buildings and then continue working on the new ones? This might be very helpful ;o

They actually already do that, sort of. But it's all automated in the AI.

There's two building repair branches in the AI, one is for critical repairs, when a building is below 25%, the other is non-critical. Non-critical only activates if the builders have nothing better to do, they'll wander around and patch up minor damage. Critical overrides all their work AI and they'll go straight to repairing the building. :)

[narmophin]

Curious. I wonder if the critical damage should be raised for certain buildings, i.e. towers. Maybe 30 or 40 percent.

[Air Bear]

In that case are we going to be able to renew stone eventually? or will the reserves be made much deeper? Right now the only way to get more stone is to expand across the map somehow and that's very difficult to do, what with how you're constantly under attack at all times.
I don't think I could see being able to build that many upgrades to a castle without literally being in peaceful mode and drawing more stone on the map

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Troppamus:

In that case are we going to be able to renew stone eventually? or will the reserves be made much deeper?

"Yes". :)

Rock resources last a bit longer as of InDev 21 Stable (not released yet), and soon I'll be adding an "Earthquake" spell that doubles as a way to regenerate rock and do AOE damage buildings/monsters. For regenerating stone it wont be nearly as effective as the motivate land spell, and you'll have to be careful not to hurt your villagers when using it.

[Fedorya]

Originally posted by Rayvolution:

For regenerating stone it wont be nearly as effective as the motivate land spell, and you'll have to be careful not to hurt your villagers when using it.

Why, i loved burning my believers in populous back in the day :o

Well to come back to the original topic, yes actually i agree that the difficulty is raising a bit to fast, i like the idea of different difficulty on differents maps, that would allow to really set a "baby making" village to populate more harsh areas.

The real problem actually in my opinion come from the to fast spawn rate of cemetary, leading to an over population of monsters (heck it make my hairs fall when i see 300+ monsters for my 80 population huhu).

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Fedorya:

Originally posted by Rayvolution:

For regenerating stone it wont be nearly as effective as the motivate land spell, and you'll have to be careful not to hurt your villagers when using it.

Why, i loved burning my believers in populous back in the day :o

Well to come back to the original topic, yes actually i agree that the difficulty is raising a bit to fast, i like the idea of different difficulty on differents maps, that would allow to really set a "baby making" village to populate more harsh areas.

The real problem actually in my opinion come from the to fast spawn rate of cemetary, leading to an over population of monsters (heck it make my hairs fall when i see 300+ monsters for my 80 population huhu).

Have you tried InDev 21 Unstable 2 yet? It's actually a bit easier than InDev 20b.

Although the 21 Stable (unreleased) is harder than 21 U2. I had to adjust food growth and drop rates, but still easier than 20b.

[Sapakosa]

Ray, can you somehow increase chance of child birth? I can stay alive for 5 days but my population stays on 27. I've kept all my villagers on "no job" for two days and... Nothing. It was just too late to reinforce defences monstera ripped my villagers apart :(

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Sapakosa:

Ray, can you somehow increase chance of child birth? I can stay alive for 5 days but my population stays on 27. I've kept all my villagers on "no job" for two days and... Nothing. It was just too late to reinforce defences monstera ripped my villagers apart :(

You're probably overworking your villagers, try to keep some idle/unassigned so they have a chance to mate. :)

The birth system is high on the list of things that need changed though, I'm hoping to hammer out a completely new system somewhat soon.

[Sapakosa]

Thanks a lot!