Large forests are really spoiling my fun

[Malidictus]

I came back to try Kingdom again with the new patch, but ran into pretty much the same issue I did last time: forests can only be cut down from either end. If RNG decides to roll an uninterrupted forest from my town to the Cliff/Dock portal, I have no choice but to plough through everything in said forest - including all of the Vagrant camps. On some maps, forests can be attacked from the far end if workers have enough time in the day to get there. However, my Fourth Island rolled with pretty much unbroken forest the entire way through.

I would personally love for either the ability to rebuild Vagrant camps once I've cut down the trees surrounding them or else some way to attack forests from within such that I can cut around Vagrant caps. As it stands, the game gives me neither option. And yes, I get that it's supposed to be a strategic choice - destroy the Vagrant camps or trudge through the forest. The problem is that larger islands arae too large to trudge through the forest and oftentimes ALL Vagrant camps suffer from this issue. So I can either try to fight enemy portals two day's trek on foot away, or I soft-lock my island by destroying my sole source of new villagers.

I did my best to work around this in the past, but it was always annoying. Right now, I've had to deal with two never-ending forests on one island and that's simply not fun. Wasn't the new patch supposed to create more diverse islands? Because it just seems to generate never-ending forests for me.

[Monkey]

I agree. While large forests can pose interesting challenges, *unending* forests are just... bothersome. Especially because most of the mounts can't graze in forests, which just pushes the "get the griffin" strategy even harder.
There's already the bridges - that can be quite large, at that! - showing up on the islands. Perhaps those could function as a natural point where our workers can start tearing down trees, and thus giving them a purpose beyond simply aesthetics. Or perhaps even a building of some kind that, once built/purchased, will allow us to put marks (at triple the cost, perhaps, to encourage people to clear the 'usual' way for the sake of profit) on trees in the middle of a forest.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Monkey:

Or perhaps even a building of some kind that, once built/purchased, will allow us to put marks (at triple the cost, perhaps, to encourage people to clear the 'usual' way for the sake of profit) on trees in the middle of a forest.

This is my preferred solution. I'd say don't tie it to a building, but rather just let us cut down any tree for 5 Coins anywhere in the forest. Trees at the edge of the forest (the ones we can currently cut down) would only cost 1 Coin, as normal. Cutting down trees would reduce in cost as they move closer to the edge of the forest - or rather, as the edge of the forest moves closer to them. You can then introduce either a Hermit or a Structure which reduces the extra penalty from 5 Coins for trees in the middle of forests to 3 coins, as you proposed.

I suspect the underlying issue here is mechanical, however. I'll do my best to be polite about it, but Kingdom's codebase isn't very clean. Off the top of my head, there are significant race condition issues with auto-placing buildings (catapult/spearment/etc.) in response to building walls, occasionsally causing build to spawn on top of each other or disappear entirely until walls are rebuilt. The game appears to attempt to enforce some kind of "parcel division" on the map, and that division can fail spectacularly in some cases.

All of this is to say that I suspect forests may be saved as a single "parcel" with the game lacking the codebase to subdivide them into multiple "parcels" if trees are cut down in the middle. The artwork may also not work very well for forests receding from the middle. I worry that this is a more complex issue than one of pure design. Sure, Kingdom has deliberately slipshod design in a lot of places, something the developers see as part of its "charm." I'm willing to meet them half-way, but never-ending forests have simply become a progression-stopper for me.

[Sapador]

I remember Gordon saying that they wanted to release in this patch (Never Alone) a better RNG on island layout generation. He gave a few examples like the wall spot appearing at the wharf bell, and also the amount of streams for farms not being consistent, if I'm not mistaken. But what you've described here does not look like a good island layout generation.

[Wojtek64]

Idea: Lumberjack hermit, if u hold him on your horse, you can pay 2 coins to any tree. Hermit will jump out of horse and start chop a tree with his axe.

[loganjamesalex]

unless it is island four or five I can usually manage to destroy everything and cut the forest from the far end even if there are no clearings. I might have to destroy one vagrant camp in order to extend far enough to get catapults but that's it. I will literally send out the squads as soon as the last greed of the night is dead so they have max time and I go with them, with a full coin purse and heal the knights/squires with coins

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Sapador Castelo:

I remember Gordon saying that they wanted to release in this patch (Never Alone) a better RNG on island layout generation. He gave a few examples like the wall spot appearing at the wharf bell, and also the amount of streams for farms not being consistent, if I'm not mistaken. But what you've described here does not look like a good island layout generation.

Yeah, I remember reading that in the patch notes. I for sure thought this meant putting hard limits on the size of unbroken forests as well as on the frequency of non-buildable parcels. I replayed the game almost entirely for this reason, in fact. I will say that the generation algorithm for interactive elements like tower bases, wall bases and streams is much better. I've not run into any instances of 10 miles without a wall base like it used to be back in the day.

Back then, I'd often find, say, the Beetle cave followed by a bridge followed by the Lizard cave followed by a birdge followed by the Iron mine followed by a bridge. Because nothing cna spawn on top of these, this meant I couldn't build anything for nearly a full day's worth of travel. That hasn't happened to me since the patch. Large parcels like bridges, huts, mines, mount spawners and such - those are spaced out by neutral ground pretty well. Tower and wall bases and streams usually spawn there, as well. The distribution of those is pretty good.

But forests... Yeah, those are just as bad as ever. Like I said - my Island 4 rolled with unbroken forests from my town to the edges of the map. In fact, it was functionally impossible for me to even attack the forest from the other end, because the last few trees were so close to the Cliff/Dock portals that workers wouldn't touch them until those portals were broken. I don't know if this is a bug or just bad RNG, but it pretty much ended my run. I CAN deal with it, but it's just such an unpleasant slog that I can't bring myself to bother.

Originally posted by Wojtek64:

Idea: Lumberjack hermit, if u hold him on your horse, you can pay 2 coins to any tree. Hermit will jump out of horse and start chop a tree with his axe.

I thought about this myself, actually. Mechanically, it would be a neat compromise. Carrying Hermits is slow and dangerous, so it's a nice counter-balance for what would otherwise be very cool utility. The problem is that a Lumberjack hermit would require a new Hermit hut which needs more space on the islands, plust it would likely also mean an additional Gem cost. We already have 3 gems fewer available to us than the cost of all gem items combined (35 gems vs. a total cost of 38). Adding more hermits means some mounts or statues end up falling even farther behind in terms of usefulness.

Personally, I feel this is the reason why Dead Lands Monarch unlocks don't cost gems - only coins. With three additional ones besides Miriam, that would have increased gem costs by +3 at least, which the developers seem to have considered unbalanced. Now I'll be perfectly honest here - I don't like the "finite gems" system in general as it needlessly locks some of the game's cooler toys, but we still have to consider it.

Back in the day, when I proposed an idea for decommissioning towers, I used the Banker for this for this exact reason. It's something a Hermit would normally do, but I didn't want to introduce a new hermit.

Originally posted by loganjamesalex:

unless it is island four or five I can usually manage to destroy everything and cut the forest from the far end even if there are no clearings. I might have to destroy one vagrant camp in order to extend far enough to get catapults but that's it. I will literally send out the squads as soon as the last greed of the night is dead so they have max time and I go with them, with a full coin purse and heal the knights/squires with coins

Agreed. That's what I did on Island 2... And Island 3 :) I had massive forests on those, too. In fact, my Island 2 reset once on me, so I had to clear it twice. Neverending forests on both sides on Island 4 is where my patience ran out, though. Sure, on the previous islands, I did knock down a Merchant camp on one side and a Vagrant camp on the other. I made SOME sacrifices. On Island 4, however, I knocked down two Vagrant camps (one on each side) and still had forests for miles, covering three portals all the way up to the end of the island. My only option there would have been to knock down ALL Vagrant camps, at which point I basically lose the game then and there.

I sincerely believe that either forests need to be given some maximum unbroken length limit, or else we need to be given tools to cut into them from the middle. Or, I actually had a roundabout suggestion in that other thread. Basically, let players rebuild destroyed Vagrant Camps, and potentially let players upgrade them with Stone and Iron some. To me, it makes sense that I'd be able to secure my own supply of people within my own borders, rather than trying to cut around it, leaving it surrounded by 2 trees like a nature preserve.

[Demize99]

An interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.

[Raptor-75]

I agree with this.