Bone sickle and knives in late game?

[mortache]

Is the advantage of steel/bronze tools just in the gathering speed and durability? Mines run out in super late game, and I am aiming to boom as much as possible so I thought maybe i can build bone sickles and knives to reduce the load on metal.

[buds]

Yes you are right, gathering speed and durability are the differences.

I’m still wondering up to now why the minerals are not sufficient to get you through and the traders supply can make your game to infinity. For less than 300 population maintained you should have abundant supply and/or stockpile of minerals. Only copper ores are mostly tight because you need it up to Bronze Age.

Yeah if done properly bone tools can be used as flints do too. Meaning you have to have a good proportion of workers to plants numbers.

The game has so much leverage so that things can just be fine in many ways. For as long as your actions make sense and focused on the welfare of your villagers (not the players welfare 😜), then things are going to be ok.

[General Malaise]

Yeah, you should have ♥♥♥♥ loads of steel.

I've only built 3 iron mines, and they aren't even deep ones. My pop of of about 190 got loads of knives, sickels, picks and axes(don't need build axes, Ancient Warriors drop them). I could easily build 10 mines in reasonable proximity if I wanted. Like I said though, I only have 3 none deep mines so far in this game. Bone tools are just crap in comparison.

[Ale82]

Agree and both are pretty accurate statements. Now, if you are talking way past the point of no more deposits and resources available other than bones then yes you will have to revert and rely on bones again, assuming you have used up all else (flint, copper, etc.) ... at that point you will not be able to build more axes or picks as well so it becomes slower and constant tool production and your best option would be to buy the ores, metals and tools, all that you can from the trader.

[mortache]

I'm thinking about conserving ores because in this playthough i wanna try pushing the population as high as i can. 300-500-1000 sky is the limit lol. But that would require both a long time and a larger number of tools being used. So currently I'm only making steel swords and shields, bronze picks and axes, and flint/bone sickles and knives, so that I deplete the ores relatively slowly

[Mk Z]

its interesting to compare bone tools with steel tools
for bone tools mining, smelting and charcoal making are not required so they are somewhat balanced against steel tools despite their lower productivity

[General Malaise]

I only make Steel Swords(and Bronze) for the achievements. I've never made a shield yet. I don't want them fighting hand to hand - I want them shooting from safety at the enemy. Seeing as I only play on Ancient Warriors(which I guess you're not), they drop loads of steel weapons anyway.

I just can't imagine how long you'd have to play to use up all steel - but my guess is it's months and months of playtime. 3 shallow mines is usually enough to get you to 200 population. I guess you could build about 20 Iron mines at a reasonable distance, and if these are all deep mines - then like I said, you could play for months before running out. That's what I think anyway.

[mortache]

Originally posted by Leland Stottlemeyer:

I only make Steel Swords(and Bronze) for the achievements. I've never made a shield yet. I don't want them fighting hand to hand - I want them shooting from safety at the enemy. Seeing as I only play on Ancient Warriors(which I guess you're not), they drop loads of steel weapons anyway.

I just can't imagine how long you'd have to play to use up all steel - but my guess is it's months and months of playtime. 3 shallow mines is usually enough to get you to 200 population. I guess you could build about 20 Iron mines at a reasonable distance, and if these are all deep mines - then like I said, you could play for months before running out. That's what I think anyway.

I make sword and shield for 50% of pop and composite bows for the rest.

And i haven't run out of iron yet, but like I said, I intend this game to drag on while I try to see how high I can push the population. That would both the number of tool users AND the total amount of tools needed to be built over the duration of the game. At least I want to see if i can go up to 500 first.

[Shampoo+3]

You can't go up to 500 unless you're using mods. Also you might want to take a closer look at at tool limits. If you set swords to 50%, your 100people settlement will produce 50 swords. The 30 children will refuse to fight so you're left with 20 people for bows. I'm not sure that's what you had in mind. I feel like alot of people use flawed tool limits. Mabye it's because the default numbers are mostly flawed aswell and for some reason the game doesn't allow more options for limits than there currently are. Else I'm pretty much with Leland on the original topic.