People leaving before you can even construct housing / huts in time?

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

edit: Decided to leave negative review in the store. I am so sad at 1.0 things as simple as gathering resources, even getting indication of the tasks your people are doing or better control over it is not in the title. Gathering is a core mechanic of the game and I struggle to delegate gathering sticks, straw, rock, keeping a stockpile of everything, etc. Even something as simple as building a straw hut is HARD because if my gathers are told to cut plant fibre but they also have gather stick, etc, heck even when you do just give them one goal, there is 0 indication it's even being done. The game should literally drop groups and just give player an option to set amounts of resources they want gathered and AI cycle through gathering that based on priority since doing it by groups seems to fail based on people even just no joining despite what you set labor age too.

I get enough of one thing and now suddenly I can't even gather sticks in time? I have 1 craftsman, 2 fire places, and I can't gather sticks in time? I destroy my queue for clearing and instead focus it on one single patch of plant fibre and it STILL does not get cleared.

I am over it, and so frustrated lol. I want to like this game and it has potential, but even ♥♥♥♥ as ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ simple and basic as just gathering your core resources remains a chore. The UI is a chore, the group functioning is a chore too. I'm sorry, I'm over it, I literally hate that this is considered 1.0, what wasted potential. I am leaving a negative review :\

Like, I'm not posting a negative review because the game is challenging, I'm posting it because it is actively a fight to interact with it. I want to play the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game as core content as simple as gathering and your tribes people getting consistently hung up on what to do/needs doing/etc just does not work in the game right now. There is too little player control and too little functional AI to not need constant busywork to just hope your people gather what you want them too so something as plain as a hut can be built. Sorry guys, want to love the work you're doing, but it is literally a chore rn.


original post; Hey there.

I'm struggling gathering resources in time to house members of the tribe before they leave, they then leave also taking knowledge of tools and such with them.

I have groups literally solely gathering straw, plant fiber, and making rope and fine sticks, and a starter tribe of 20 is still unable to construct anything fast enough? Am I missing something?

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Lol down to 11 by fall of first year because it took that long to get everyone house and i needed to mix/max, and now despite storage for dried fish and plenty of raw fish, people are also starving? I set policy for food quite high and found I was only able to get things built doing one building at a time (pausing any other queue) and focusing on gathering one resource at a time. Not fun or functional delegation, it's annoying, intensive, and the game doesn't even give me feed back that x-laborer is going to gather y-thing, I just need to hope groups are actually on task with what I hope they're gathering based on what I select and the feedback seems to be they're always not gathering anything at all with any efficiency.

And I'm unsure how to even create things like thresher / etc and cannot chop logs as the people with tool knowledge left my tribe, haha.

I'm seriously confused, I can't even get logs, because I don't have the tools because my members with the knowledge to create them left, how do I get logs? I've had options for chopping/clearing not move/change at all. If I set a group of 2 too gather logs, no one joins the group, etc.

It seems to me AI gets hung up on specific gather things - i.e you can tell a group to gather 2 items, but they will gather 1 item like rocks ad-infinitum and never cycle to the other unless you specifically limit them by number or cancel their other task. AI don't seem to move on without player intervention? This is so frustrating.

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Will add again, finding one continuously needs to remove clear orders, set groups to only gather one single item, and so on, otherwise the AI cannot delegate and gather tasks efficiently.

Set my food rationing to max and people still dying of starvation too?

Tried to send a report and it said it failed then 'sent' anyways too.

I dunno, as an early backer, it's kind of frustrating to me that even in its current state after all this time, things as simple as the games very base mechanics around gathering resources can literally not be done in a reliable way. Players should literally be able to click a worker and select resources for them to gather, because the group delegation is failing in spectacular ways. I feel like I am only ever getting things done when basically focussing solely on one resource, and it creates constant deficits everywhere else.

I'm so disappointed this is considered 1.0 of the title, it literally feels like the base core mechanic alone around gathering is unfinished and labor intensive for players because AI cannot properly function and follow tasks, they get hung up cycling a single gather command for one item and never move on to other things.

If I focus on plant fibre, I run out of sticks. If I focus on sticks, I run out of plant fiber. If I make 2 gathering groups, one to gather either or, one goup will remain unstaffed. If I make a group of 2 people and set it to gather those 2 things, they only focus on one thing, etc.

I dunno. I've come and come back to this game with updates and my base frustrations over how unreasonably difficult it is to gather ♥♥♥♥ as basic as REED. There is REED all over the map. I click to clear it. I have places to put it, etc. I have gather group to only gather reed - and nothing gets gathered. I'm a year plus into a game and my people have barely started building a reed hut still while finishing literally everything else, because they will not gather reed even why I try to make them?

I just do not understand why gathering literally any single small thing is so intensive and difficult. I feel like the game is fighting me at every point just trying to get into it, and im laboring over the tiniest details like gathering sticks. I want to love this title for striking me as a city builder with a sort of anthro focus, I like the appeal of migration and interacting with other tribes, etc, but I find I just am literally not having fun because I spend so much time trying to figure out why my people wont gather what i assigned them to gather 20 minutes ago, what I assigned to clear, etc.

I'm over this, leaving a negative review. This is so tiring. Sorry UnCasual, something needs to be delivered better in resource management than any of what we can navigate right now.

It kind of feels like I, as a player, have very little feedback in knowing if the duties I want done are actually being done as I would want them prioritized, and that lack of control feels like something I'm fighting and micromanaging to do very simple, basic things - it frustrates me that a simple core mechanic and game play loop of Ancient Cities, things like gathering stuff you use a lot of like sticks or plant fibre, just feels so hard to get done? What am I missing? Again, I legit love so much about the game, I'm just finding a critical part of it - gathering - unfun because of how difficult it is to manage making sure your people are gathering what you often times literally delegate for clearing and stuff. It feels hard because its unintuitive and unresponsive, not because the nature of gathering is bad or slow, the game itself just seems like it can't decide on tasks for people. I feel like I'm spending my whole time trying to make sure the correct things are getting gathered rather than experiencing my game world, and I am so badly interested in experiencing that world and my little people who inhabit it.

Case in point. I have enough leather, stone, sticks. A pelt hut is nearly built, and its on high priority - for a whole day and a half I watch everyone mill about doing other things instead of finishing this hut that's literally in easy walking distance of the leather pelt stockpile. Instead of finishing the hut within the day, the player instead needs to watch his people continue to do other things and then get angry sleeping outside unhoused again when they literally were about done building a hut and had the resources for it. It's just constant interactions like that that are frustrating me. Players literally need more control when the AI cannot delegate in its own interests like this.

Also I know you can skip nights in general, but with the lack of gameplay for nights already in the first place, it really is an annoying amount of gameplay that they take up.

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

And part of it too, I wondered, I was like, I haven't played in a year or so, maybe I just forget how - but the difficulty in gathering things reliably when you're on a map lush with resources was something that struck me even well before husbandry and all that was in game.

I feel like I'm literally just trying to play the game and the most difficult part of it is UI and a dysfunctional gathering system with lack of player control in the wrong direction - the challenge is in game design, not the games natural actual content and challenge haha.

It sucks, I wanna really like this and there literally is so much potential here.

If anything it feels like it needs a serious design review. I don't think it needs to really compromise much of the aesthetic of overall goal and still give the player better control and feedback over task management, for example.

[Drakken]

In my latest game, winter is coming and i am still camping ...
At first i didn't look the ressource needed to build a single house...
10 ropes... Sigh, they need 3 years to make just one.
200 reed, i have 7 gatherers just for that task, and i have 73 in stock... I am kind of responsible for building the big houses first, but still. :/
I am not completly gulty, i have some real lazy b**** in my game like a hunter, he proudly brang to the camp a stick, just a f**** stick!!! A hunter!!!
And i saw a smile on his face, he was really proud...
The game is poorly made, i had no option to put this stick into his place without a light...

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

For ropes early on I found best strategy was to make one crafter or 2 doing just rope and one or 2 gatherers doing just plant fibre too. Likewise literally only do one construction at a time, even setting priorities, early on if you dont pause the constructions it'll really really lag it behind quite a while.

Likewise, set up stock piles right near the resource you are harvesting - I think its easier for crafters to for for a walk to grab one resource than it is for a bunch of gatherers to walk back and forth dropping off resources at a centralized location.

Early game for things like baskets and stuff too you just burn through a tonne of the little plants for fibre along the river and such, it seems best to figure out what storage options (pits, basket) for food that works best that won't conflict with the same resources as your shelters need because it'll really slow down all the buildings over all.

Even writing that out I hope devs realize like, I care about learning and playing the game, haha, I'm seriously just frustrated with the ways gathering feels clunky and unresponsive - even if we could queue individual gather/chop/clear orders instead of it all just being listed as a number to kind of delegate a sensible order to work orders I think would be an improvement.

Goona continue playing later this evening when I have some time, I'd restarted in a more food-friendly region towards France/Italy with more plentiful spring food and such, and really micro'd getting the early pelt huts and such up - still seeing frustrations with getting all the things moved from where AI un-optimally set up their goods at the initial map spawn. Slowly getting it all moved to the down center, hehe.

Noticed if you lose lots of people to leaving early on (i.e half the tribe like the one I was ranting about), it can also start a cycle of struggling just to build your numbers and labor pool back up properly (though I basically just focused on gather / craft / fish at this point since I couldn't create tools anyways, lol).

Sigh, lol I'm going to begrudgingly continue because it is beautiful, and vibrant, for as much as the gathering frustrates me, since the dev in another thread told me to play with the communal policies more (which I had been, anyways)

[LegionElite]

jesus christ guys! write a book or somethin lol

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Originally posted by LegionElite:

jesus christ guys! write a book or somethin lol

Its a video game forum, are people not supposed to talk about the games they purchased?

[LegionElite]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

Originally posted by LegionElite:

jesus christ guys! write a book or somethin lol

Its a video game forum, are people not supposed to talk about the games they purchased?

Absolutely not... it is extremely wreckless to do such things bc you might offend someone.

[LadyLillyno]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

Its a video game forum, are people not supposed to talk about the games they purchased?

Yes, of course you are, I do think tho that if you made your longer posts into a more point by point system it will increase readability a lot.
Many here will chime in to help you by explaining how things work and also their own experiences with the game if they do not have to read "an essay", no offence meant, promise :)


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