Hey guys! After playing 30 hours or so, I have some suggestions to make this good game greater! Well, in my opinion I guess:
Bodies disappear after a set time limit. At the moment, what’s with dead bodies? Are there any advantages to bury them? (Besides aesthetics) Either get rid of them after a set time, or add some incentive to bury them, like disease spread (infects villages or increased chance for field infestation). It’s pretty pointless now and my village looks like a WW2 front line.
Is a minimap doable? Warcraft and Starcraft style. It’ll be nice as sometimes I don’t click “view” when the goblins attack, and I have to look up relations and view those unfriendly factions to check if goblins are deploying from that village.
I think the skill experiences need a slight re-work. A scholar can reach up to level 25 till death, but a farmer can only reach about half that, when he is set to permanently farm. My point is, the farming experience rate gain is nowhere near the rate of a scholar’s gain. I know one can train using the bookshelf but this experience rate gain when actually doing the job is not really balanced in my view.
Equipment is automatically removed and stored once a villain is killed. Why create the extra micro?
Better weapon and armour scaling? I don’t know what the exact values are for HP and armour reduction, but to me it feels like wearing heavy armour isn’t really effective. And I have never crafted anything below an iron suit as you can easily get pirates captain armour, tiki turtle armour and tiki wood armour. This makes everything under iron suit obsolete. Crafted armour needs more advantages, if not your crafters are useless. Take the iron sword for example. It’s the best weapon in the game, and it’s worthy of crafting. But anything below an iron suit is a waste of time in my opinion.
Ranged attacks are buggy? My villagers are total derps when they hold bows. Instead of firing, the move around and fire off 1-2 shots, then they move again. I also notice that most of the time, the guy on top of the towers just stand around and do nothing. Tiki archers also seem to outrange villager archers by a long shot.
What’s the point of asking a migrant for their traits when once can easily save the game and accept them, and load if they’re dumb?
Are children supposed to be OP? Granted, it takes a crap ton of micro to groom children into total monsters (>30 mood and skill points) Was it designed to be this way? My children have like 5-6 positive traits, and with fast learner definitely one of them, you can get them to be fully trained in 2-3 skills in a season, with maxed soldier melee skills as well.
Fast learning is totally OP.
Dumb is really tough. You have not much choice if you choose to accept dumb migrants, and have to try to get rid of this trait. Maybe try scaling back the removal points from 4 to 3?
Deep mining needs a buff to resource collection rate gain. To me it feels as if it’s the same as regular mining. Yes it mitigates dwindling resources on the map, but really, paying a couple hundred coins just to mine at the same rate is unbalanced in my opinion.
What’s the deal with tailoring and master/apprentice outfits? Do they buff your skills or something? I’ve never crafted any and it seems it creates extra steps to switch between normal mode and combat mode. Say a trader is in trouble and wants help to kill pirates and you accept. All my villagers are then derping around the armour and weapon stands. I don’t bother with clothing so they already don their armour, so they just equip their weapons and go to battle.
Like point 5, stone swords need a buff. A tiki club is better. It’s easy to farm tiki clubs so I have never made a stone sword ever. Also, the pirates cutlass needs a major buff. It’s a tier 3 “iron weapon” that does 7 damage? Give the pirates wooden/stone swords if you want them to deal 7 damage.
Food shelf pathing. I have a 3 floor house that has at least one cooked food/kitchen food/baked food stand on the ground floor. Most of my stores are up on the 3rd floor. My villagers eat kitchen and cooked food on the first floor but for some reason only takes their baked food from the corner shelf on the third floor. This needs to be looked at.
Introduce an interim win condition to the game? Say, destroy all tiki totems to win. You give players a choice to leave at least 1 totem standing and continue playing, or to destroy everything and win.
Press ‘TAB’ to cycle through all your villagers. It’s just probably me, but I keep pressing tab to try to cycle through them to no effect lol. I thought that it was a worthy addition.
Buff watch towers. It’s already a super late game building. But since mobs don’t change their aggro target much, archers can be left anywhere without harm. What was the use of towers again? Either give archers a much longer range buff when standing in them or something else.
Children aren’t able to be in relationships. I have a new migrant that I want to ‘mate’ with an existing villager that was born in game. Unfortunately after progressing the relationship bar to great friend, no icon appeared next. So the maximum was great friend. Is this a bug? And yes that child was already grown.
I probably have more suggestions, but these are just some of what I can remember. Please remember that these are only my interpretation of how to improve gameplay, and it shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Also, some of these might have already been considered and/or looked at, so ignore when necessary. This game has massive potential! Kudos to the developers!
Some very well thought out ideas and agree with much that you have said
Anyways, my 2 cents worth
A mini plague for the village would be good, maybe a timeout for playing on ‘calm’ mode.
/ 16. Goblin villages - Normally I know which village is likely to be attacking - so hotkeys to each Goblin village would suit me.
Guess there is always going to be balancing needed - personally I find the whole ageing system to be out of whack to many game functions.
Agree and even the raw resources need to be beefed up a bit harder for all iron forged goods.
/ 17. Had problems myself with towers and archers - I don’t use them. Very little gain (if any) for a lot of work mining and crafting.
Should be scrapped all together and be automatically given two average colonists to start the game - solves many issues.
Some find children to be too much work and others are OK with it - for me, no worries atm.
Fast learning has been recently changed up - probably needed, but now needs a bit of balancing (before it was nearly useless).
Dumb hasn’t changed since early Alpha’s. Yes it is over-weighted at 4, unless it is given much more meaningful balances with a number of professions abilities.
Nearly all professions gain an increase in speed to complete their tasks, as a mouse-over will show in the tailoring section. Also defence points.
Building games do not normally have a win scenario - though you can lose in this one. Might be fun to have options.
Hey Roo, thanks for reading! Are you from down under? Some thoughts on your reply:
Are you referring to the dead bodies?
With regards to goblins attacking, if a minimap is too difficult to implement, maybe we can have a small red arrow on the side of the screen, indicating where the attack is coming from, during an attack.
Yeap, definitely some minor tweaks are needed for experience gain rate balancing.
Are you referring to buffing and balancing of crafted goods vs loot?
Archers need a buff, maybe remove friendly fire or something.
What’s this point referring to?
I really wonder if one can spend 100% micro on 1 child with maxxed good dream, well rested, pleasant conversations, enjoyed fire, maxed hugs, maxed snowman built and have a child with >50 points, that would be a total boss. Would be funny to see a villager with all the positive traits.
Maybe we can tone down fast learning and make dumb villagers the opposite, they can gain experience but at a rate of negative fast learning.
See #8.
What are you referring to?
Yeah I agree, options will be good, and adding an optional win condition is pretty simple (I think)
Yep, from Adelaide, South Aust - and roo (old nickname) is just a shortening of andrew…
1 - Yes, the dead bodies always look bad around the village (to me) - your idea of disease spread for leaving dead bodies makes sense, so some sort of interaction would be good.
4 - Yes, its easy to attack small goblin villages to gain weapons and armour - its better than studying during winter
Also in the earlier Alpha’s, goblin attacks were nearly automatic and started early in the game, so it became an easy source of booty before Diplomacy was introduced. Now its more of an option to fight or not with the Goblins.
6 - Should have been 7. - maybe just a random default starting pair (2) of Foundies - no strong good or bad features. Actually before Alpha 8 (or 7?) the game started with 3 Foundies which sort of made more sense to me, especially now with all the recent additions to Professions - more balancing again.
7 Should have been 8. - 8 to 9; 9 to 10; 10 to 12; 11 to 15 - lol
The auto numbering over rode my original number system, and me being as bright as I am, completely missed it - really early in the morning is my excuse
Hah, probably need more caffeine to increase your stamina, or a proper bed
I found another issue, I have 5 migrants in a new game, wanted them to have children, but same issue as the previous game, after great friend, I have no other higher friendship icon, thus, I am unable to progress to lover.
Hi, glad you like the game so much! Thanks for the feedback.
Couple of easy clarifications/answers:
Point of asking migrants when you can save and load: Player can decide if they want to break the 4th wall like that or not. You might not get full info when asking them.
Deep mining has 2 things going for it: More resources than usually on map and placeable where you want. That last one can be really important. Reduced walking time, different village layout.
As the desciription says, clothes make people work quicker in their profession.
Funny you say children are OP. Others say they are not worth it
It’s strange that you’ve got people that are unable to be in romantic relationships (except for relatives and kids, of course). If you’ve got a save where it’s broken, feel free to send it to me for investigation.
On children, maybe you can make it easier to level up, but have the max level capped. That way you can make it such as they only gain a maximum of 5-8 points on personality and a couple points on skills. Lesson the effort, but also take away the massive gains.
Another idea about bodies. If you don’t bury them, a group of 5 bodies will have a chance to spawn a ghost at night, this ghost will roam around (like sheeps) for a 1-2 nights, causing nearby villagers to scatter and have a higher chance to get bad dreams or nightmares the next time they sleep.
Started a new game with the new update. Here’s my thoughts on balance in my opinion.
Animals are way overrated. They do not provide enough incentive to keep them. They produce very little milk, eat all your food, don’t grow up fast enough, and don’t reproduce fast enough. I think a tweak is needed. Like doubling/tripling the milk quantity per action, speeding up reproduction, making animals eat less of your food, and slowing down the taming bar.
Does forests re-spawn? If it does, it’s a tad too slow. Probably buff the growth speed.
Growing trees (apple, pine, cotton) takes too much care.
Again, these are just my opinions for better game balance. Thanks to the devs who are constantly working for our fun!
Thanks for your response. I tried 5 pigs and 5 cows once, and my 800 food reserves disappeared i 1-2 seasons. Hardly gained any substantial amounts of milk or meat in the process.
I currently just keep 3-4 cows for fun… and getting like 2-4 milk every now and then seems pretty underwhelming.
Started a new game with the latest update, here’s what I feel:
Is the scarecrow bugged? I still have infestations within the AOE.
Scarecrow’s collision size is too big, my colonists cannot farm nearby. (or is that the intention?)
I think we can think about how animals multiply, and how they are chosen to either go wild, or get butchered. Instead of the current way which you enter a target no. (breed till X, if current population>X then butcher, wouldn’t it be better if each animal has it’s own individual setting (checkbox), like ‘breed’, ‘butcher’, ‘go wild’. That way, you can choose exactly which animal does what.
You cannot heal animals (or give them a potion). They should have a base health regeneration.
A great suggestion on base building and base defense, introduce traps. Simple traps just to stun, or slightly damage, any enemy who steps on it.
Archers are useless and need to get re-worked. They are very derpy most of the time, firing a couple shots (and missing most of the time) and then walking to another angle.
Animals should breed on their own as well. That way we can just butcher them wild. The breeding frequency should be tied to the total amount of wild animals on the map, high when there are few animals, low when animals are plenty.
Have you thought about factions? Imagine teaming up with a tribe of tiki’s and attacking other tribes, battles will be epic haha.
4: They should regenerate health when sleeping
7: They do, but very slowly and only up to a maximum number of between 4-8 I believe
8: Coming with the 1.0 update this Friday
- maybe just a random default starting pair (2) of Foundies - no strong good or bad features. Actually before Alpha 8 (or 7?) the game started with 3 Foundies which sort of made more sense to me, especially now with all the recent additions to Professions - more balancing again.
