a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Cars and planes do have lots of potential, and the fact that they are not yet feasible reflects their prototype nature. These cars are still crude cars, after all. I'm guessing that Jason has some plan to turn both of these into beneficial investments for towns after an upgrade or two. Nevertheless, some issues such as the fuel consumption based upon time and the easily-griefed nature of both vehicles limit their use even with upgrades.
But also, even buffed, there is little reason for a city to invest in a plane. To have gotten to that tech level you will have needed one of each race in your town regardless, and even if you need a new seal for your pump after all your rubber-farmers died, it would be easier to seed a town than trade with it. Radios allow people to signal ahead in theory, but the massive amount of time required to make one and the fact you don't know who you're talking to makes this almost impossible. The main use for planes or cars would be as migration vessels: to take the people from one town and move them to the next. Or perhaps even as tourist-vehicles? If that proves to be the case, extra player-carrying capacity might be the most useful thing to upgrade a car or a plane with. An upgraded car that could seat two or three people would be very useful for ferrying people about. Similarly, big planes could be used for entire town migrations, allowing a high-tech civ to keep moving west as their resources ran out.
I don't think families are large enough for empires. Colonization? But that requires more people than a town does.
Yeah, that's one of the annoying parts of the game XD. But still, if we want to make complex societies and trade, some kind of complex cross-generation communication method is needed. Economies are complex things, especially if you only live for an hour. Governments and cultures are as well. If there was just some way to increase the communication potential then we could see all kinds of stuff popping up. Economics are something of a long-shot, but if villages want to trade then somebody's gotta make the contract at some point.
At the moment there are town libraries, but they are rare and limited. Usually they are full of maps, local knowledge and tips. But if you want to create more complex social structures more complex communication is required. After all, the hallmark of civilisation is the written word. If there was some high-tech way to drastically increase the number of letters that a player could transcribe then these libraries might look very different. People might read up on your towns history in the volumes of an ancient elder that all the children know the name of, or clergy would read prayers from their holy book, or the advisor would read out the exploits of the town's greatest queen to the young king-in-waiting. This might just be my personal preference, but games with a strong sense of the written word have more nuanced cultures.
Murder is not the cause of griefing. Maybe once it did more harm than good, but as this game has developed the use of weapons has become heavily weighted to benefit the town rather than the lone wolf. From posses to the *gasp expression* when you're targetted, it has gotten to the point where griefing via murder is relatively easy to combat. It is also the most efficient way for a town to defeat a griefer. If somebody is griefing your town, you could become a nomad and wait for them to die naturally before returning to pick of the pieces, or perhaps you could get all the town to curse one person and prevent that specific griefer from coming back for a while, but these solutions are rarely utilised because they have a low success rate, a high cost, and require support of the entire town to succeed. Whereas if you and your brother Tim decide to deal with the griefer in town, you can do so relatively quickly before the settlement is damaged too badly. The existence of medicine means that mistakes can be made and fixed. What's more, killing has provided many an interesting life story. The majority of griefing that players complain about is not as a result of killing, but rather due to more subtle methods which can paralyse a town. If killing was disabled, then players would be almost defenceless against a determined, skilled griefer, as well as making lives more monotone by taking away all those sweet roleplay opportunities. Removing killing would aid the griefers more than hinder them.
Why not just give players a reason to expand rather than specialise? Living in a city state is fun and all, but it's nothing compared to an empire. Players will have more unique lives the bigger and more complex the system they are born into is. Perhaps if there was some way to reward towns that develop a wider degree of infrastructure, as well as giving them a few tools to help them do this, we could see the rise of trade and empires? Take the current system. Information exchange is limited to paper, maps and word of mouth. Word of mouth is the only way to convey a sophisticated message, and as a result players are rewarded if they stick together, as this means they can communicate. If Village A sent a trader with a cart full of rubber to Village B that was in need of a new seal for their pump, then who in Village A would know they left apart from those that saw them leave? Therefore, how can a complex trade route which is regularly supplied develop, if people cannot communicate complex information down the generations? Even if they built a road between their two villages, it would rely on future generations stumbling upon the road and wandering down it before coming to the same conclusion as their parents. But by this point they'll be old themselves XD. Imagine if there was some way to transcribe lots of information at once. The trader could comfortably write a note to the rubber farmer asking them to regularly supply rubber for the trade route without needing to spend half their life making the paper and the other half waiting to be old enough to write on it. That way the rubber farmer (and, more importantly, those that take over from them) will know what needs to be done. The same technology could also be used to inform the town that there is a road going east that requires a trader for the town to flourish, or it could be used to create a merchant republic. The possibilities for long-term endgame societal structures expand greatly when complex communication becomes possible and reliable over multiple generations. There's no point building a radio that connects to a distant city which supplies you with oil if your great grandchildren won't know who's on the other end, right?
Building on previous suggestions, how about this alternative to the family speciality system?
1: The world generation changes to one based upon latitude. An impassible rift would be at the far north and far south while the east and west would remain infinite. In between, the common biomes would spawn everywhere, but exotic biomes would only spawn at specific latitudes. For example, oil would only be available near the poles, whereas mid-game pump materials could only be harvested around the equator.
2: Eve race is determined by the latitude they spawn at rather than a random roll of the dice.
3: Race would provide heavy advantage and disadvantage in certain biomes, but not prevent players from manipulating objects. For example, a brown skinned player might be resistant to mosquito bites and able to more easily regulate their temperature in the jungle, but in the tundra they would lose food very quickly and perhaps be slowed.
4: Eves would spawn closer together, perhaps on the same longitude as each other on the world map, so that civilisations can more easily experience cooperation, competition or even conflict between each other.
The theory behind such an update would be to put the fate of a civilisation back in the hands of players, rather than simply making it a question of which races stumble upon which cities in the infinite expanse. With this change to the game, civilisations would be forced to expand and develop complex supply routes in order to survive. Infrastructure, imagination and the ability to dominate/work with other civilisations would become the definining factors of a civilisation's survival. However, the races would retain some biome speciality, meaning that societies that work with others have an advantage on those that don't.
Advantages:
- Socities would no longer be able to survive in isolation with a multicultural population. No matter the races you have helping you, for a civilisation to survive it must expand, naturally bringing it into contact with other nations. This increases the likelihood of more complex societies developing, trade and war, making for a more varied and interesting experience.
- For low population servers with too few races, survival would still be possible. However, in high population servers, societies that do not work with others or have a multicultural population will be outcompeted by those that do.
- The world would become better defined, encouraging exploration and cartography while creating more immersive and detailed game-worlds.
- There would be more than one way to succeed. An expansionist empire that raids other civilisations and develops a massive transport infrastructure could be just as successful as a peaceful trading nation that cooperates with its neighbours to get the resources it needs. This gives more initiative to the decision makers of families.
Disadvantages:
- Relatively hard to code. Such an update would be a big one.
- Cooperation would be encouraged, but not necessitated, potentially allowing some civilisations to avoid working with other families even in high population servers. Hopefully this could be avoided simply by making the disadvantages imposed on players in exotic biomes they do not specialise in great enough.
Having a challenge to survive is what makes the game fun, but if the way that almost every family dies out is due to water shortage and lack of rubber, civilisation building might become increasingly predictable. But waystones and maps give players the tools to become more connected over time. Why not simply nerf the family speciality aspect so that single-race families can still survive (but perhaps not survive so easily), and then create some alternative, more player-driven way in which civilisations could die? If families are better connected, there is an increased risk of war. Perhaps changing the eve spawn so that families spawned regularly closer together would mean that the doom of a civilisation would be more varied, and less predictable.
Pine buildings are good for second and third generations. When you've got more helping hands finding the resources is less cumborsome. However, it's best for small buildings like nurseries. Once I was the daughter of an eve, and my sister built a pine nursery. It only had a 2x2 interior, but it saved us when the babies started coming thick and fast. It also created a nice homely space for our community.
Surely there's an easier way to break out of the adobe prison? An adobe wall can be broken with a bowl of water and a pickaxe. I can't remember if there's any water in the tutorial, though. If there is then that's one less tool to have to make.
Am I the only one who liked the game as a noob, even in high-tech towns? I did read up a bit on onetech though to be fair. Usually I just became the town nurse or helped with baking or something similar for a while.
Maybe the game should remain this easy indefinitely? It's not as if even this mode is a breeze - towns still struggle to survive and water eventually runs out. However, making food drain as slowly as it does now would allow towns more time to develop cultures and identities in the world around them. Towns like these are ultimately more fun to play in. So if such an easy mode as this makes it so that each town lasts for 2 days rather than 1 on average, would that be so bad? That's a whole other day to make a cool city before water runs out.
The pine walls are awesome. I was born as the daughter of an eve and by the time I was 30 we already had a small nursery house. Helped up a lot with bootstrapping and gave me a chance to properly teach my kids. If not for that house old John might not have lived so long XD.
Ooh, that sounds cool. Maybe wood buildings as well? They're simple to make and good for quick, cheap buildings mid-game. However, they're also rather water and soil-intensive to make sustainably. Perhaps two sets of boards per wall to give people enough incentive to make stone walls when they become advanced enough? In the early stages when you're chopping natural trees left, right and centre though, wood walls would be rather handy. It would also give the architecture of each town a little more variety.
Hmm. So if you had 16 deep wells then you'd get 16 extra buckets every two or three generations. Not too bad, although getting that many wells under your control would be extremely difficult. I agree with the idea of using railroads or just roads to transport the water though. Most villages will never find the families they need to create a newcommen engine, and even if they do, oil is another matter. Spending your iron on rail might be the solution we're missing.
Wow, this sounds like a cool update, thanks ^^. These new building types will allow for the construction of early-game buildings. By the way, have you considered implementing a high-tech building material at any point? The idea is that industrialised cities are still using stone, which is expensive and quickly runs out in your immediate area, limiting each city to one or two buildings. However, what if there was something with a lower insulation factor (so it would still be worth having those railway stone-collection lines) but that was cheaper and more sustainable. Something like bricks that can be made out of fertile soil using industrial tools, perhaps? This would allow the largest cities to develop more houses. While this isn't strictly necessary for a town to flourish, it would certainly make each town more interesting if buildings existed such as tool outhouses, small family properties and big estates rather than one or two stone communal buildings. I'm thinking along the lines of Victorian London XD.
Ah, shepherd's pie, that yummy dish.
If you build roads then it'll become progressively easier to farm your nearby wells. It'll also make your town easier to find for explorers.
Eventually, if wells regenerate over time, you could even have relative sustainability simply by having loads of wells under your control. If you had, say, the central village deep well + 6 ponds and 4 shallow wells in every direction, that gives you a much greater regeneration bonus. If you build roads then you might even get a maximum of 8 of 12 wells under a city's control. Perhaps a town's priority should therefore be to gain control of as many wells as possible. Even once you have a newcommen engine this is not perfect. By spreading out your influence, a town can last for a very long time indeed. With roads it should be more sustainable.
It'll settle down once the new player influx starts getting to grips with the game. As it stands, many parents are having dozens of new kids, and teaching them all can be overwhelming. However, there are those out there willing to be good teachers. If you find yourself lacking a sense a community then you can always try creating one with other new players. Greet citizens in the street, learn the names of your family and keep up to date with the town leadership. Doing those three things will usually guarantee a fairly well-connected life. You might even develop a few lifetime friends XD.
Considering the recent water shortage, perhaps there's a strategy a family could attempt to follow in order to make a living and keep dry well towns alive a little longer.
Although newcommen engines are harder than ever to construct, there's plenty of water if you have a shovel and follow the well graident west. So how about this. Whenever you spawn into a town, simply take a shovel and go straight west from your town well. When you arrive, use local stones to construct a shallow well and return the shovel.
Now you've got yourself a water source. However, to transport it back to town you'll want some buckets and preferably a cart. You can use a bowl to fill buckets until a deep well is invested in. Simply fill up the buckets, put the buckets in the cart, and deliver to the town. If you can't find a well then a series of ponds also works nicely for this. As long as your children understand the mission, you'll be able to keep a dry town alive for generations to come so long as your kiddos keep on carting that water back to town. If the well you've dug runs out, there's another one westwards. Or you could try a different direction. As long as you have a dedicated water-carrier then it shouldn't be too hard to keep carting the water until you can make a newcommen engine.
If you wanted to be really industrious you could even make a business out of it. Two or three people, each with a cart and 4 buckets, could produce a lot of water through such expeditions as they utilise the limitless map. The more buckets you have, the fewer trips you need to make. In other words, until you town is seeded with a great enough variety of races, you're better off making buckets than newcomen parts. Eventually you'll end up with a massive water stockpile for your cisterns despite having a dry well. Even one kitted-out person doing this for their whole life will be able to supply your town with more than enough water.
As your town might never have the luck to find the right family, if you use this method of water-prospecting then you'll have time to construct a bell tower and attract them straight to your doorstep. I did something like this once with a cart and two buckets using nearby ponds, and I got a surprising amount of water back to town. Shame I started too late in life and the town died anyway. Ponds have a surprising amount of water in them, and there are a surprising number of unused ponds XD.
What do you all think of this water-carrier profession idea? The main challenge is in creating a dynasty that keeps up the business for long enough.
Drums sound like a good idea. Or simply change the eve spawning system so peeps are closer together. Waystones are useful, but only if other families are found in the first place, and there's very little time when you can't make a newcommen engine until you find another family.
I agree. Specialisation can be encouraged, but forcing it like this is too clunky. At times it works well when a bunch of families with experienced enough players of a variety of races spawn near enough to each other and meet at just the right time of development. However, this dosen't usually happen so neatly. What if races instead represented temperature tolerances. Black characters would do well in the deserts, all right in jungles and fatally poorly in tundras, for example. As long as the penalty for stepping into another biome was steep enough then it might have a similar effect to the current update.
Let's say you want to harvest some rubber. To do so you'll need a variety of tools and a complicated process. If you're a ginger haired colonist then while you could technically achieve this, you'll probably starve before you do so. However, if a society is determined enough, it could find its own rubber without needing to use other civilisations. I know it's not perfect but at least it would give players more flexibility.
Slower hunger for beginners might be a good idea, and perhasps a mechanic whereby new players don't spawn to the early generations of a family unless there's nowhere else to be born? Just for the first five or ten lives. This worked quite well for the mobile version of the game.
When the newbies learn some basic skills then this game could be cooler than ever. Imagine having a world with five or six large, developed families and ten more primitive ones. In the meantime, veteran players should probably learn to use rubber and make industrial components for these wells. I don't even know how to do that properly yet. So many different components...
Cool strategy. With so many babies, running away into the wilderness and foraging is probably the best solution. If you do it in a straight line from the town well, then your baby diaspora might be able to find their way home one day. Just make sure to tell em that west is best XD.
Wait. Hang on. Did I just read that Jason once made turkeys speak and bushes appear?
Da legends are true!
Having looked at some of Jason's earlier comments concerning the specialisation update, I'd also argue that this change might tick the boxes that the update was aiming for. If players have an ill-fitting race for, say, collecting oil, then they won't be merely disadvantaged as they run into the biome, quickly get some oil and move out. Instead that actual ability to find that oil would be much more difficult. A civilisation would have a bunch of choices. They could mount an expedition and set up an outpost in a distant tundra via which they gain oil and export it, despite the fact that this tundra would likely have a few ginger people who might take issue at this tapping of their specialty resource. Or, they could trade with the snowy civ and gain their oil that way. Perhaps some polylingual pasture-dwellers could act as a go-between for negotiations (or a war supply camp, of course XD).
However players deal with resource shortage, interaction with other players and exploration of the map would still be necessary. It's just that families born far away from a certain race wouldn't necessarily be doomed. If eve spawns were brought closer together then this would also help the implementation of this feature, as civilisations would almost always encounter another family on their quest for oil/rubber/sulpher. What's more, this tweak of the update might do a better job than the original of encouraging widespread communication across the map. Whereas before all a family needed to do would be to create a diverse enough city, with this change every city would need to spread its tendrils of influence across the map. When such tendrils meet those of other civilisations, there would surely be some cool role-play as the families try to co-exist and share resources like respectable nations rather than just killing each other.