How to increase rating?

[FieteH]

Does anyone have tips on how to increase estate rating? Because I am completely stuck! After I built my manor, I rot to the first tier of Laborer, but Clergy and Kingdom went down the negative, and I have been unable to get them back up, or to get Laborer to the next tier. Any tips would be appreciated!

[Zoid]

As the tooltip says, the rating is determined by the splendour of the buildings belonging to the estate, subtracting a factor of the splendour of the buildings belonging to the others.

To increase the rating of an estate, you have to build buildings that have a high splendour score. However, this will lower your ranking in the other two.

[FieteH]

That's what I'm doing, but I can't seem to get the balance right, unless I start building multiple churches. And the military buildings don't even have decorations!

[Zoid]

The basic idea is that you mainly work on one estate. Rather far down in the unlocks, there are also edicts that reduce the impact on the others.
You don't necessarily need decorations. The buildings alone also provide points.

[FieteH]

I see... I was trying to balance all three, since you unlock them all at once

[mcollin5]

I tried adding 3 more churches and a monastery masterpiece and my Clergy rating went from -43 to -44. Nothing I try seems to raise my rating and this blocks most fun building projects under Clergy. My Kingdom rating is Feels like negative consequences for doing well in Labor. I have a Splendor of 400 and population of 384. My Kingdom Estate rating is even worse (-136). I've put in 266 hours in this game (including older versions) and will likely quit totally since there seems to be no rationale for rating scheme and no way to improve it.

[Otkin]

Originally posted by mcollin5:

I tried adding 3 more churches and a monastery masterpiece and my Clergy rating went from -43 to -44. Nothing I try seems to raise my rating and this blocks most fun building projects under Clergy. My Kingdom rating is Feels like negative consequences for doing well in Labor. I have a Splendor of 400 and population of 384. My Kingdom Estate rating is even worse (-136). I've put in 266 hours in this game (including older versions) and will likely quit totally since there seems to be no rationale for rating scheme and no way to improve it.

Labour has 2 privileges that decrease the non-exclusivity penalty: One for Clergy and one for Kingdom. Try using them.

To increase the favourability with Clergy, you can build a big, tall monastery. All or almost all monastery parts add splendour. Making them taller also increases splendour. Once your favourability is high enough, you will be able to unlock 2 privileges that decrease the non-exclusivity penalty for Labour and Kingdom.

Kingdom is a bit trickier if you haven't developed it yet. You might have to build a lot of fortifications and barracks to get over the penalty. Once you get 5 influence you can unlock decorations and use them to further raise your favourability.

[mcollin5]

Addendum: Penalized for doing well! I increased Splendor to >500 only to watch my rating with Clergy sink to -54 and with Kingdom to -110. So, there is no way I will ever be able to unlock those building features. Such a shame the game designers created this obstacle. Goodbye Foundation.

[vjraymon]

Originally posted by mcollin5:

Addendum: Penalized for doing well! I increased Splendor to >500 only to watch my rating with Clergy sink to -54 and with Kingdom to -110. So, there is no way I will ever be able to unlock those building features. Such a shame the game designers created this obstacle. Goodbye Foundation.

You can always start a new game with goal on clergy on kingdom !

[Minotorious]

Originally posted by mcollin5:

Addendum: Penalized for doing well! I increased Splendor to >500 only to watch my rating with Clergy sink to -54 and with Kingdom to -110. So, there is no way I will ever be able to unlock those building features. Such a shame the game designers created this obstacle. Goodbye Foundation.

You can absolutely unlock those too if you use the provided privileges in game to minimise the penalty and devote a similar amount of splendour to the other estates as you did for the first one.

[vjraymon]

I agree there are a lot to "guess" currently in this game, but:
1) You can always ask here or on the discord official foundation serveur
2) Trying is part of any game

[[Ger] Daen]

Maybe, but why should I try and guess an be annoyed and constantly blocked without reason if there are other games who don't want to make fun of their players?

There is no fun in playing a game which lets you know after 20 hours spent time that you did something wrong. If the game wants to be the "Dark souls" of medieval games then it failed, because it is not challenging. It is unfair and unlogical and lacks so many helping features that would be implemented in a jiffy.

If a game is only playable by using mods, steam discussions or discord then I'm out.
I know that you, Mino, personally try to help everyone here - but instead wasting your time it would simply be better taking your skills to simply write some tool tips for this game. Or the built-in Wikipedia in which the Sculptor-Workshop couldn't even be found (in the German Version)

I really really really really tried to love this game but it is sooooo frustrating considering how great it could be. Instead it tries to raise the difficulty by just being unfair, annoying and blocking.

And don't even get me started about bugs like showing rocks as perfect ground for wheat or festival visitors creating 10% malus because they choose to rather starve then buy food on the market stall that is literally one inch away from them.

I guess the devs won't mind as I was stupid enough to buy the game. So they have my money, why should they care?
But I lost all interest in that game and will opt out to try Patron, after the storm, farthest frontier and Settlement Survival. Perhaps those Devs love to make a game and not just a prank.

[vjraymon]

I don't speak German, and too poorly English to write guids, sorry.
Take a breath, try other games, and maybe come back on the next upgrade... on Christmas ?

[[Ger] Daen]

Taking a breath is a good advice. I'm really frustrated that I'm stuck after 20 hours and therefore there is no motivation to start all over (doing it right... ugly by building one part of each estate instead of building a wonderful major house but right. :/ )

This is soooo sad as this game could have been exactly my type of game.
Well, sad. :(

[wcbarney]

Originally posted by Ger Daen:

... why should I try and guess an be annoyed and constantly blocked without reason if there are other games who don't want to make fun of their players? ... I lost all interest in that game and will opt out to try Patron, after the storm, farthest frontier and Settlement Survival. Perhaps those Devs love to make a game and not just a prank.

"Settlement Survival" is OK, but has its faults too -- and is rather tedious. You might want to try a base building / survival game like "Stranded, Alien Dawn," or "After the Collapse."

Originally posted by Ger Daen:

There is no fun in playing a game which lets you know after 20 hours spent time that you did something wrong. If the game wants to be the "Dark souls" of medieval games then it failed, because it is not challenging. It is unfair and unlogical and lacks so many helping features that would be implemented in a jiffy.

In my first play-through with Version 1.9, I also had -100 ratings for the Labor and Clergy estates, and saw no way to ever get over it. But I went ahead with the Military estate anyway, built up a large army, won lots of spears on missions, and fairly soon was able to get the "King's Quest" achievement + the Hard version since I had way more than 100 swords to sell, and I sold them pretty much all at once.

In my second (current) play-through, I followed Minotorious' advice and advanced all three estates slowly, and soon got the "Privileges" to reduce the rating penalty by 50% for all three estates. From then on it has been fairly easy to advance all 3 estates; have just completed the Clergy achievement (but not the Hard version, since I had already promoted a bunch of folks). Am about to complete the "Great Builder" achievement, including the Hard version. Then I'll start a new game and go for the two Labor estate achievements. There are those who have completed all eight new achievements on only one play-through, but they knew what they were doing, and I kinda don't.

Originally posted by Ger Daen:

If a game is only playable by using mods, steam discussions or discord then I'm out.

I don't know a thing about mods or discord, but am a huge fan of advice that can be obtained freely in forum discussions -- not only for this game, but for all games I have played. I actually want to start a new thread asking about which mods are any good and still work with Version 1.9.

Originally posted by Ger Daen:

I really really really really tried to love this game but it is sooooo frustrating ...

C'mon, the current version of the game just has a learning curve. Those who really want to love the game should just learn the mechanics & git gud, instead of complaining about every little thing.

[[Ger] Daen]

wcbarney, thank you for your long answer.
I understand your points completely despite not agreeing to them.
I will try to explain my problem but this is not sooo easy as a not native speaker. ^^

As I wrote above I already managed to find out for myself that you can - and have to - balance out the estates. Whats frustrating for me is, that I found out after 20 hours and way bigger a problem - you can either build balanced or you can build beautiful.
If you need to build balanced, you add one room, one wall, one tower at a time. That means I have to look most of the time playing the game on my half-a**ed tavern, fort or monastery. That might even be more realistic - but it is fun in terms of a video game?
In my opinion a good game can entertain hardcore players and "builders". That what normally difficulty sliders are there for.

That's why I'm not happy with "git gud".
I'm here to relax and having fun, not to be challenged. Again: That what difficulty sliders are here for in my opinion.