a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I have a few ideas for wells. You can make a well so it has like X number of uses and refills slowly over time, like ponds do currently. However, if you drain it to zero it permanently runs dry. So it is infinite, unless you abuse it. If you use it too quickly then it is gone forever. You can also add a decay timer, so the well also decays after a set period of time. However, I think instead of collapsing, you should have it turn into an 'old well' or something, and allow people to repair it. Repair it and it is as good as new, neglect it and eventually it collapses.
In this way, if you use the well in moderation and maintain it, it will last forever. If you abuse it and draw out too much water, or you fail to maintain it, eventually you lose it forever. Though you could also make it so that a dry well can be revived by going to the next tech level. So a dry shallow well can still be made into a deep well and it will fill up again. Then a dry deep well can still be made into a pump well or what have you. It makes sense, since your basically digging down deeper for more water.
The more advanced wells, can also have a faster water recovery times, hold more in reserve, or be easier to maintain. It could be all of them, or just one of them, depending on what tech we are talking about. The easier to maintain is a good one, I don't think you consider much. For example if a deep well requires adding plaster every x hours to repair, and the pump well requires a new pump made out of 1 piece of metal every 4X hours, it pays to upgrade even if they are otherwise identical. Forging a pump is likely more intensive than making plaster but it reduces upkeep greatly over the long term.
Personally, I would like to see a deep well have like 50 uses, and a recovery rate of that of a pond currently. In that case, you could build a well and really abuse it for a lot of water in the short term but then lose it, or you can maintain it and it will last forever. Smart people will build more wells or limit their use to prolong it. It also makes it a generational issue. While you can run the well completely out in one life, it is more likely to be an issue that involves future generations and discussing with children and planning things out. Though in this case, there does need to be some kind of warning to get a general idea how when the well is getting low. Ideally a few warnings, when it gets to half, then a quarter, then only a few uses left.
On a side note, when it comes to food, I can tell you now people will have a lot of fun with different type of foods. If you had carrots, tomato and peas and they were all identical state wise, people will farm different crops and it will be fun for them. Just look how many people are sick of carrots in this game. People like variety not just in real life but in games too. Of course I wouldn't make them all identical, but if you tweak the stats a little here and there(growth speed, nutrition, seeding rates, or what have you), and throw in a bunch a new food people will have a lot of fun with it, and it wont take much work.
He said he was going to focus on content stuff for the next couple of updates but the last two updates were pretty weak as far as content went. The family thing was cool though, it just didn't add any real content. I do expect he will probably put a bunch of stuff in this week or next though. He is making progress, it is just slow getting there.
I think think the women do it by themselves just to make everything more streamlined. It would be a lot more complicated if all Eve's had to spawn in a pair with an Eve and a man. Also since people around each other all tend to be in the same family, that would be awkward as well.
While the men don't really advance the linage forward, they can work hard and take care of everyone. With the family tree now, you don't have any children of your own, but you can look at it and know you had an impact and helped everyone else survive. You know you did something. So there is still pride in being a man and advancing civilization, even if you can't pop out a baby and name it.
I occasionally let my self starve in the last few years, if things are really bad. Though it is also true, that you can probably go near a fire and live off a single berry for the last few years as well. I would say most of the time it isn't an issue, but aside from not wanting to waste food, you also can't do much work or anything either. Those last few minutes are for talking to everyone and saying goodbye, so I try to do that, but some times no one is around, or you said your goodbyes earlier and now have nothing left to do.
I say it is up to the person, either way is fine.
A lot of them seemed to have starved to death, even with all the food there. If I had to guess, I would say the mothers left the kids to fend for themselves too early. If you are cactus farming, the mother should breast feed until they are big enough that they can no longer be fed.
As for the snake, I have always heard animals can't stop on spots with items. So I always had the theory that you could cover every single tile of a city with items and the snakes and such couldn't ever get you.
A starting Eve does really need a lot of food to survive early on, if she wants to keep the children. They die in mass if there isn't a ton of food around. That is why so many towns start in bad locations, because people have to stay near the bushes and stuff just to survive.
What sucks is berries decay fairly quickly too so you can't really store them. It makes me wonder how practical it is to spend all your time just gathering up all the onions, burdock and wild carrots you can find and bringing them to your town location. Like don't bother working on anything town related at all, until you have like 30+ food laying around all over. Then you can work on your town and actually get a lot done without you, or your children starving, entirely regardless of the location.
According to this website: https://kazetsukai.github.io/onetech/404-Wild-Carrot , they do not. Normally when something regrows that site would say wild carrot + x time = seeding wild carrot, but it doesn't, so it seems to say it never respawns.
While it can be hard to stop a griefer, especially a motivated one, I think it is important to try and make things as newbie proof as possible. Because newbies will definitely be born in the town and will have to work with it. You can kill griefers but if you kill all the new people the city will not survive due to too low of a population.
You can pretty much assume some people will wander by and eat some of berries off the bushes, and there is a high chance the wells may go dry. So once you got the basic set up going, it definitely helps to plant a ton of extra bushes, and make a ton of extra wells.
It used to be that you would have more children the more often you were at full, but that got changed to being based around temperature. It got changed because I pointed out that the most civilized people who have high quality pies are basically always starving, because you have to let it drop really low to get the most out of your pie. Mean while people surviving off carrots and berries stuff their faces all the time because they give so little food. So it actually turned out the more often you were full the poorer and less civilized you likely were.
what about making two fences? once is full of dung, which is 7-8, you rope a lamb and take to other side, then make the wheat farm in that one so the dung doesnt need to be carried far, as for the oven, ovens can form a wall as well, but you cant reach from all directions
While I do like that, it seems like the reason for having two areas is going to fade with future generations, and so you are most certainly just going to end up with a wheat field and a sheep pen, and people wont swap back and forth.
People usually throw a carrot into the rabbit pies because they are easy to get and plentiful and it is more efficient than eating the carrot. If you have a ton of rabbits and not many carrots I wouldn't worry about it, but if you got the carrots laying around all over, might as well throw them in.
I was really excited when horses first came out, but honestly I never even use them because it is so annoying.
If we have waste grain isn't it then worth it to make carrot pies?
I am seeing it as a sunk cost at that point so we can ignore the soil inputs as they are gone by then?
Well the threshed wheat doesn't go bad, so you can leave it sitting around forever before using it if you want. So you can wait until later to make a better pie if you want. That said, if you need food now, then it is probably best to just make the pies. Also the more expensive pies are wasted on the young and elderly anyway, so if you are going to give them a pie, might as well make it a carrot pie.
I don't see how it is a hassle if you are making the carrots anyway. Bushes seems like a far larger hassle because they take forever to produce anything. A plot of carrot gives you five carrot in two minutes, a bush gives six berries per hour. You going to plant like ten extra bushes because you don't want to maintain a single plot of carrots? You only got 12 bushes in the picture, so you would be nearly doubling the amount of bushes to avoid just having a second plot of carrots and throwing the extra to the children now and then.
Since you have the extra space, seems like you should just make an extra carrot plot solely for seeds. Also since seeds take a lot longer, if you can grow a lot more carrots if you pick them all and replant. Instead of four carrots every 9 minutes, you get 5 carrots every 2 and you are using the same amount of soil.
You can plant more bushes and make more wells and that may increase the pie production. Or you can just feed the extra carrots to the elderly and young, so they are not wasting pies.
You need sheep to make dung for compost, so if there is no sheep in town then just make the strew into baskets. Strew decays in 4 minutes, so you can't save it for later. Either make compost or baskets with it right away. The threshed wheat does stay around forever, so it is okay to leave it there for later.
Using wheat for compost is the ideal situation. If you are making your own compost, then using up soil for wheat farming isn't a problem plus you can support other farming activities as well, and you get a lot of pies out of it as well. So that is what you should be aiming for.
You could do a full search for the newest descendant but only do it once per hour as long as the line hasn't died out. Then just pin it there, so it isn't created on the fly each time someone searches, just once an hour.
OHOL contains none of the options that make RL interesting, namely cultural things,
so far it's all chore chore chore, climbing the same limited tech tree again & again
it's true that some players might get caught up in that loop but the number of players says it all,
most players just go away because the gameplay is not giving them enough to enjoy playing the gamethe game had to contain options to make a life,
so far the life possible is rather pitiful, i can enjoy it for some time from a philosophical point of view
but i'm pretty sure most players just won't, there are reasons why players play a game & do want to play a game,
a good game has to deliver instead to demand, cause players have the freedom to quit
That is true to a degree, however there is the start of some stuff. I really think the biggest issue with the game, is just that it didn't start with enough up front content, and he is adding stuff as we go. I think all these issues will resolve in time. In the mean time, you got to be a bit more creative and work with what we got.
There is a sort of pressure that makes people run around, constantly doing stuff because they feel they have a limited time and feel like they are wasting food if their not getting stuff done. That is entirely in people's minds though. There is actually plenty of time to stop working and do other stuff without having that much of an effect on your survival.
Ironically, it does simulate real life in a lot of ways. People who have lives that are basically just working. You grow up, get a job, have a career, maybe have some children, then when you can't work anymore you retire and die. That is how many people play the game too. Just like in real life though, you need to make some time for the other stuff in life. Enjoy the little things, make some friends, get a hobby, explore a little. It doesn't all have to be working nonstop.
It is like real life, you have to make time. No matter how bad the situation seems, you have to teach your kids the basics. If you don't your just digging yourself into a worse situation when they pick those seed carrots and kill everyone.
I have messed around with it, so I am not sure, but I think the new stuff is just to remove it. Like if you have the stalk in a bad location, instead of waiting for an hour you can put the stakes down, water it, then dig it up. It is kind of a pain, so people don't grief cities with it. I don't think you actually have to water them for normal use.
Here is a few tips that will really help you out when running around on your own.
1. A stone plus big rock gets you a sharp stone. Sharp stones can dig up wild carrots, and burdock(big green leafy things), rest of the stuff can just be picked. So the food you can find in the wilds are wild carrots, burdock, onions, cactus fruit and berries.
2. A sharp rock can also be used on tula to make reeds, and two reeds make a basket. Things are a lot easier with a basket since it carries three things. I suggest one of those things being extra food, so you have some handy at all times.
3. You should learn how to make fire. It requires combining milkweed to make string so you can make the tools for it. A hatchet for kindling, and a fire bow drill are what you need.
If you keep those things in mind, you will be okay. I rarely die out in the wilds, outside the occasional snake bite or something. Once you get better at the game it isn't that hard to survive, though it is difficult to save everyone else. You can get the start of a town in a single generation, and even starting alone you can die with a big family and a small town built up from nothing.
Desert is good, but it DOES seem like a weird ingame bug that there are areas that are just as good as perfect fire..
I don't think the desert will be a permanent thing.
It seems fine to me. There is no tropical islands or anything, so having a few desert tiles that are at a good temperature range seems fine. There should be some places that are at good temperatures. Maybe in the future an entire biome will be added for that, but for now this seems okay.
Without any help a totally new person is likely to die anyway. So even if you think a person might let you die, you should really tell people if you are new. Besides, a lot of us do help new people so they shouldn't be so afraid.
I've watched a few YouTube videos of people trying out the game, and found myself vigorously headdesking at how often when someone asks if they're new, they say "N," apparently based on the fact that, nah, they've been playing for ten or fifteen whole minutes now and have totally figured out how to pick things up and to feed themselves berries.
What bothers me, is some of them people say they are not new and don't even know how to pick stuff up, eat food, or put on clothing.