Re: Features to cut (was: Statistical ledger)

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:04:49 -0700 (PDT)

There was at least some point in adjusting crop mixes, when you knew the harvest was going to be good or bad.  Interesting enough to justify the feature, I don't know.

Hopefully you'll fix the bug where the sacred time screen tells you that your herds are overcrowded and starving, while the agricultural screen tells you that you have huge amounts of excess pasture land.

(another annoying bug that jumps to mind: the crop-rich clan, in tribe making where you strike a better deal when dealing for their grain, the game converts it wrong....IIRC correctly at half the rate, making it actually bad instead of good (i.e. you make a deal that for the regular price of 20 bushels of grain you'd get 24, when you trade with them for food you find you actually only get 12))

Things to drop/simplify in my opinion would be:

• crafting, only have number of crafters, and do you have special goods available to you, and do the rest of it behind the scenes.  I've never, ever, found it worth the two moves to adjust mix of trade goods up or down in response to sacred time prophecies.  At most, perhaps a button for "focus on basics this year" or "be more daring this year" would be of interest (so just one move to adapt to prophecy).
• patrols, it is annoying when you've gone briefly low on weaponthanes (disease, wounds, exploration party, etc) and then go back up, to have to re-jig your patrols (you now have 20 weaponthanes again, but only four are on patrol, so the cursed Orlmarthing get away with our cows!).  Maybe change the patrol settings to just having some options (choose one), then the game figures out the exact numbers.  So 'light patrols' 'medium patrols' or 'heavy patrols' (say 50, 70, 90% of weaponthanes) and 'protect the steads most' 'protect the herds most' or 'mixed' (for more inner, or outer, or balanced patrolling). 
• Likewise for crops you could have 'maximise yield' (but may annoy the grain goddesses and get less benefit from your crops magic, more risk of bad crop), 'honor the grain goddesses' (decent yield, makes the most of your crop magic), or 'play it safe' (lower yield but little effected by anything).

A feature I'd love to see added (sorry!) would be either an option, event, or automatic feature, where with trading partners you could convert excess of one good for another (so you have not just a general trade relationship, but in particular every year you send them some extra grain and get horses, or whatever.  This should not be at as good a rate as sending missions, as you don't want to supersede those).

Another thing I'd like to see is some way of knowing when we are near our limit of temples/shrines, etc. 

• On Tue, 8/31/10, Kaj Sotala <xuenay_at_...> wrote:

From: Kaj Sotala <xuenay_at_...>
Subject: Features to cut (was: Statistical ledger) To: KingOfDragonPass_at_yahoogroups.com
Received: Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 5:00 PM

         

      
      
      On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 11:50 PM, David Dunham <david_at_...> wrote:

> And you're supposed to be suggesting things that can be removed anyway :)

I always thought adjusting the crop mix was kinda pointless. Clearing

extra land when necessary could probably also have been automated

without any great loss (with a "clearing extra land would violate our

deal with the fox but our herds our overcrowded, do you want to do it

anyway" prompt when appropriate).

The same goes for adjusting the inner and outer patrols - I always had

a certain fixed ratio of men that I kept on patrol, and never adjusted

it because of shifting morale. If you wanted to keep part of it, you

could make it into a selection with just the options for heavy /

normal / light patrols.                          

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