The Big Rebalance patch (108) megathread: Questions, Issues, Feedback, etc.

[Erik Asmussen]

The changes in 108 are very big, so I figured it might be helpful to collect a bunch of information into this single thread. Here's some background info, FAQ, and other helpful tips for moving your old town into a post-108 world, or starting a new game from scratch.

Also any specific patch feedback is welcome here if you want!

~~~

Why all the changes?

In the rush up to Early Access launch, I was very focused on bugs & critical quality-of-life features and didn't have time to spend on getting the balance 'just right', especially because I knew it would be a long process of experimentation, and I also needed to see how players would respond. In the month after launch a few things became clear:

- Coins became useless really fast, because houses consumed endlessly
- Town layout was an afterthought
- There was not much incentive to have multiple markets & town centers - there's basically one dropoff point for everything
- Item & coin type associations links are fairly arbitrary and hard to internalize
- It's kind of weird that Houses need an endless supply of things like Conveyor Belts

It turns out a lot of these problems could only be solved in combination, which is why all of this happened in one big build.

So what, exactly, changed?

There's a lot of changes (see here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/860890/discussions/3/3491891042504802952/), but the most meaningful gameplay differences are:

• Markets now consume goods & produce happiness directly
  
• Markets only consume when 'hungry', not endlessly
  
• Building & upgrading houses near markets will allow them to unlock higher tiers of demand that let them consume faster (and therefore earning more money)
  
• Foot Paths and Roads are used to connect Houses to Markets
  
• These higher tiers of demand can only be filled by better-quality items
  
• Coins are now used in a lot of production recipes
  
• Lots of research has been re-ordered, and linked to Base upgrades
  
• There are now charts to track & pause coin expenditure since you will often run low

Will my old maps work?

Yes, old maps should work fine. You're still delivering to the Market, so your main supply routes will stay intact. You may need to build more Markets though. You will probably also need to reposition your houses - especially if you built a giant scaffold tower of houses. They should be near your markets, but you can always use roads to extend the market range out further. You can see highlighted tiles when placing houses to see your Market's range of influence.

You can also still deliver to Houses directly, if you need extra gold, so you may want to leave some space between your houses.

Where are my coins going?

You'll probably notice your coin counts dropping rapidly. That's because many recipes are now consuming coins! And it means you have to make sure you are supplying the right goods to your Markets, and that you are using as many Markets as you have available (up to 4 of each type, unlocked as you progress).

When in doubt, you can pause consumption of a particular coin from the new Production menu (shortcut: P, or bottom toolbar), or see which buildings are consuming them.

Now, coin types are more closely linked with Markets. Food = Yellow coins, General Goods = Red, Apothecary = Blue, and Specialty = Purple (mostly). So it's easy to figure out what you need to make in order to fill up the new coin deficits.

And if your markets aren't selling fast enough, you can always deliver directly to Houses. Workers are smart about house deliveries and will target any house near your dropoff house target that can accept the item.


I'll update this post as more specific questions come in!

[O3i]

How should this work?

We can deliver 28 different items to the food shop but have only 8 storage slots?

This forces me to deliver only the highest tier of items and to have all the houses on the same level and both I hate.

Anytime now 20 food items are taken out of the game because I can not deliver them?

[Erik Asmussen]

Yep that's the idea - in practice you'll only be delivering 1 item from each category per market, based on what's nearby. Usually you just go for the high tier thing. No need to keep filling up food markets with Grain as you progress. (although Houses consume anything)

[O3i]

Previously I had a multi-delivery factory with 24 products food only and now you castrate it to 8?

I don’t see anything good in this but maybe I have to start a new save and test a little more.

[Caradog]

Sure I get you wanted to "fix" the unintended outcome of markets. But now you've made them just more messy and convoluted and their UI in a game where the UI wasn't already stellar just less intuitive. At least previously the game rather easily told you what houses are connected and what ones where buying...now even with none connected you sell stuff anyway? (so in theory just have a market and process feeding into it in some corner of the map for just constant cash I guess no homes needed).

But then you've also just punished creativity in a game where surely for many that is a large part of the joy, that flexiblitiy it how you can build and get things to work, removing options shouldn't be a good thing, someone doesn't like it, well that again is the great thing about flexibility, they can choose no to do it. They don't like I do? Well tough it's a single player world that has zero impact on their life or game.

And not even scaffolding with paths on connect houses....which frankly seems like more of a bug then a feature, now you can't build on anything but land I guess or it won't work. No tiered homes of any kind...nope just all flat land with paths everywhere, no other options allowed. Guess you'll be seeing a whole lot less variety in screenshots now.

Within 30 mins of booting up this new update I don't want to play anymore, seeing all the need extra excessive steps to production, even though it was busy work that attracted me to the game to begin with but in 1 patch it's gone from a 5 and cranked up to 11 overnight.

Probably pop back in a few months, maybe there will be a balance patch to the balance patch. Though I'm surprised the patch notes don't mention a rebalnce of the excessive number of resources per square which not only over provides but also just makes it a dull chore to clear land. And in opposition find it strange you remove the need of a plant to plant it...removed the hunt for the material you want as long as you have some coins.

And when I heard you were lowering the amount of items that provide for houses I was hoping for a more streamed lined sensible selection that covers the 4 catergories..rather then 4 caterogies of other catergories that don't always make sense, like cake not providing food. Nope same number now it's just again...more restrictive for the player, not a cleaner feature.

[The Undead Watcher]

Sam님이 먼저 게시:

Within 30 mins of booting up this new update I don't want to play anymore, seeing all the need extra excessive steps to production, even though it was busy work that attracted me to the game to begin with but in 1 patch it's gone from a 5 and cranked up to 11 overnight.

But isn't that what production games are all about? You produce stuff that takes alot of other porducts first to finish.


I will definetly jump back in and see if it really got as bad as Sam describes it to be.

[O3i]

Sorry to say but this dont work at all…

From 24 different Food producing processes down to 5, only to add 4 additional shops for distribution, make longer belts, more spaghetti only for distribution, not for a perfect process chain or for optimizing, no, only repetitive distribution to get the happiness. In the end, we get a little factory and a big distribution chain, not a town but villages.

We have 11 lvl 5 food items but only 8 storage slots in the shop. We need at least 2 slots per category! Because if we cant deliver enough lvl5 we need the possibility to deliver lvl4 at the same time.

Some ways to play the game have been removed without creating new ones…

Before, I could deliver low, mid, high or all products, how I want. Now the game forces me to only deliver 5 specific.
Before, I could upgrade my houses and production chain when and how I want. Now I have to do it all at the same time, as the game commands.
Before I could make buildings with 10 recipes simultaneously or with 1, now there is only one right way, one building – one recipe, one little boring production chain with a big distribution behind.

Sorry Erik for your hard work, but I have to be honest…

I have never experience that one patch could take out all the fun of a game. And I’m a fan of early access and used to changes.
After 6h in the new patch and no fun at all, I will try it again but not sure how long I will hold out. Maybe I come back and ask for an optional rollback of the patch because the 107 would have a 100-200h fun potential for me, but 108 is to shallow and forced.

[♛Smash™]

O3i님이 먼저 게시:

Sorry to say but this dont work at all…

From 24 different Food producing processes down to 5, only to add 4 additional shops for distribution, make longer belts, more spaghetti only for distribution, not for a perfect process chain or for optimizing, no, only repetitive distribution to get the happiness. In the end, we get a little factory and a big distribution chain, not a town but villages.

We have 11 lvl 5 food items but only 8 storage slots in the shop. We need at least 2 slots per category! Because if we cant deliver enough lvl5 we need the possibility to deliver lvl4 at the same time.

Some ways to play the game have been removed without creating new ones…

Before, I could deliver low, mid, high or all products, how I want. Now the game forces me to only deliver 5 specific.
Before, I could upgrade my houses and production chain when and how I want. Now I have to do it all at the same time, as the game commands.
Before I could make buildings with 10 recipes simultaneously or with 1, now there is only one right way, one building – one recipe, one little boring production chain with a big distribution behind.

Sorry Erik for your hard work, but I have to be honest…

I have never experience that one patch could take out all the fun of a game. And I’m a fan of early access and used to changes.
After 6h in the new patch and no fun at all, I will try it again but not sure how long I will hold out. Maybe I come back and ask for an optional rollback of the patch because the 107 would have a 100-200h fun potential for me, but 108 is to shallow and forced.

I agree

[Eric]

My current game. Went from over 100+ happiness down to 22? Now I need to make sure each sell-able has a stock of 10 in every market... I'll start a new game but my best file seems pretty much ruined.

Edit: Connecting houses while using paths is a lot better then the circle area.

[The Undead Watcher]

I have been playing for a while now and i really like the new changes.

[Lyan Dreth]

I hadn't been playing long, but this patch seems to have really messed up Happiness levels.

Started a new game, failed miserably, so started another, but instead of getting to 20+ happiness fairly quickly before, now I'm struggling to maintain 4 happiness.

Perhaps I'm missing something here? How do I get Happiness up now, please?

[Sassy Red]

Yes like everyone is saying the new patch has made the old saved game not work anymore. All that work is gone. 150 some hours gone.... That just makes me sad.. and frustrated .

I got to this level so I could have fun just building stuff. Now building stuff is not aloud. It all has to be on the ground. I was attracted to the game because of the ability to build up. I thought it was cool. But I tried making stairs and roads up and it works sometimes and not others. And the stores I had in the sky now do nothing. It all has to be on the ground.. Just like the other city games.

It worked fine before. In fact I loved the game..

[The Undead Watcher]

Lyandreth님이 먼저 게시:

I hadn't been playing long, but this patch seems to have really messed up Happiness levels.

Started a new game, failed miserably, so started another, but instead of getting to 20+ happiness fairly quickly before, now I'm struggling to maintain 4 happiness.

Perhaps I'm missing something here? How do I get Happiness up now, please?

Just supply the Markets with the stuff from their category's. Now each item has a certain Max Tier(happiness) that it can provide, for example:
Grain will fill up the first happiness tier (the bar/s besides the categories) of the grain category, if you supply enough of it.
Flour can fill up the three bars of the Grain Category(again if you supply enough of it) and this is how you gain happiness. Each Tier(Bar) provides one happiness.

Your Markets are also Tiered now and you level them up by building houses and upgrading them.
You can see the current level and progess to the next one in the markets themselfs.


So in short, you wanna look at a category and figure out what you can make easily and to what happiness tier that item can go. If that item can provide a higher Tier than your current market level allows, then you're good. If not, take a better item from that list(or at least try to).

[The Undead Watcher]

Doreen님이 먼저 게시:

Yes like everyone is saying the new patch has made the old saved game not work anymore. All that work is gone. 150 some hours gone....That just makes me sad...and frustrated.

Its an Early Acess game, changes WILL always happen.

[Sassy Red]

The happiness thing is not the point of why we want to play. I just like to build. I don't want to deal with people wining about life not being good enough. I have real life for that. Is there a full sand box mode where it is like the #7 update.

Now it seems to be like the new Anno 1800. Which I quite playing because of the winning people and no real sandbox mode.

[The Undead Watcher]

Doreen님이 먼저 게시:

The happiness thing is not the point of why we want to play. I just like to build. I don't want to deal with people wining about life not being good enough. I have real life for that. Is there a full sand box mode where it is like the #7 update.

Now it seems to be like the new Anno 1800. Which I quite playing because of the winning people and no real sandbox mode.

There is the Creative mode, but i take it needs updating then.

@Erik Asmussen maby add a Beta branch for pre-balance-patch, so people can keep playing their world.