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Nilla - Murrietta - testing the CC Golden Lama

Started by Nilla, June 29, 2015, 04:34:55 AM

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Nilla

Yesterday I started a new game. I don't know if it's going to be interesting enough to tell about. Maybe I lose interest, as our diligent friend (we all know who I talk about ;D ) has finished his latest creations. But somehow I like to write these blogs; I like to go back and look at my screenshots from day before, I like to think about things I could tell during the game and if someone likes to read my thoughts, yes, I like that, too.

To play the Adam and Eve-challenge, I downloaded the latest CC-mod: "Curse of the Golden Lama" .This time, I choose the Golden Lama, medium start on a medium size map. There are a lot of new kind of maps, climates and starting options. I wasn't very impressed by the arid climate, I tried lately, so I choose  normal fair conditions.  I think now, that I should have picked something else, the snow on the palm trees looks weird (see second picture). But, too late, I don't want to begin from the start again.

I know, many mods are compatible, but I have no others activated.

I will make myself two special rules:
- only one trading port
- no trade orders (except maybe some special seeds or animals)
- only CC-houses, as upgraded as I can

Why this?

I have some problems with the CC-mod. One big thing, that makes it less enjoyable for me to play, is the bad economy of many production sites. More or less all advanced building materials (and a lot of other things, too) are complicated and expensive to produce. I have absolutely nothing against that. What I don't like is, that they are so cheap to buy. So if you play it with a "normal economic sense" you never produce any materials. You build a bunch of TP and buy it. With only one TP, I have to produce most of the building materials myself, and with upgraded CC-houses, I will need a lot of it.

First I had the idea, that I would only buy seeds and animals, but there are also stuff you want to get rid of. Things that only take space in our barns (yes, our all "beloved" mushrooms, but there are also other things). So I will buy what I want and what I need. If it's some advanced building materials; fine! Some of it at a bargain, why not! It would probably not be enough anyhow. I will have to produce most of it and that's what I want. Forget about the bad economy, just produce it, as good as I can.

First picture


This is the look of the Golden Lama. I have no idea what it's good for. You can send an adventurer there. You know me, of cause I did. At once! Want to find out. But......   look at the event log; seems to be a dangerous bussines. :( maybe Mechel has better luck!

The exotic trees look nice. At the beginning I will build most log cabins. I like them.

If you look carefully in the middle (no Sweden flag there this time, at least not yet). There's a small wood chopper. I had one in my other CC-game too. It produce a bit less than a normal, but still 4 wood from each log. At the beginning, it will be enough. Later, charcoal is the most economic fuel. But you need clay to build it and I don't have that yet.

I had lettuce, raspberries and olives from the start. I usually let farmers plant orchard trees in the winter, than I pause them and wait until the trees are grown. I use to build 1-2 orchards more than I need, so I can demolish them and use the trees, if I'm short of logs.

Second picture
Oh dear..... Exploring the lama is really ugly, dangerous business. I don't know how long I could do this! Lose one explorer each year! ??? :(

Here you can also see, why I said at the start that it might have been better with another climate; The snow on the palm trees looks odd!

I can tell you now that I abandoned the exploration of the Lama. But not because of the killed people. Shortly after this schreenshot, the game crashed. I did nothing, that could have caused it, as far as I could see. I restarted it from the latest save, and at the same time; crash again! I have no other mod than the CC, that could be in conflict, I didn't do anything, just crash. The only thing I could think about, was, that my third adventurer might have found something, that causes the crash. So, next try without adventurer. No crash!

I have tried to read at the CC forum, if this happens to others as well, but it's quite an active forum and it's not easy to find old threads on a place you aren't familiar with (in a foreign language). Maybe someone here knows more.

Third picture

An overview of the developing settlement. The lama will be a monument at the center marketplace. Nothing else!





irrelevant

Nice looking early town! I really like the CC markets. Too bad about the crash, I had crashes with CC as well, unfortunately.

Nilla

We have a mosquito invasion here, not in my Banished town, as far as I can see, here in life. So it's not very nice to go outside. You are never pleased about the wheather. The whole spring was windy, now I wish a lot of wind, to blow the mosquitoes away.  :-\ ;)

The mosquitoes, chased me inside the house, to my computer and to Banished. So I played a lot yesterday.

First picture

I will build a small industrial area at my trading port; a quarry, mines, production sites for advanced building materials.

Right is a Tidal Pool next to a small barn. The dredger (funny word, I thought it was something for salt on the table) catches different kind of lovely seafood. It has about the same productivity as a fishing dock. And occatianally he finds a pearl. We will see later if it´s for some use.

To support the people in that industrial area with fruit and vegetables, as long as there's no market, I built one field. I plan to change the crop every year between lettuce and raspberries. But look at the farmer! It's autumn, not one single raspberry is picked! Only lots of resources!  :-\ ??? Of cause there's a reason, and of cause, eventually, I found out why: With the CC mod you can build fields and orchards everywhere on the steepest mountain. But if you build it too high, on impassable ground, that part of the field will not be planted. And if you have one such little square  the rest of the field will be planted but not harvested!  :-\ After I made the field one square thinner, it worked properly.

Second picture

The years have passed. Everything works fine. Here is a major part of my industrial area. Look at the stock piles, they look unusual with all the materials. But that one with the reed straws on it, its not accepted. No one puts anything there, I can't take away the straw in a normal way. OK, reed is troublesome in life, too. We have too much of it in our bay and struggle each year to keep it away.  But also here I found a way; first a road, reed gone, than a new stock pile. Wish it was so easy in life, too.  ;)

I will tell you more about the production buildings, when I have examined the productivity properly.

Third picture

I have started to build the more advanced CC-houses. This is a country house. I don't really need the small markets there, but I am not sure of the category of some food and sometimes I want to know. That's why I built them there. By the way; they look nice, too. Now I know, that seeweed is a protein and honey a fruit!

Fourth picture

New merchandise. I don't know the use of this but probably replacement to ale for teetotaler.

Fifth picture

I've started to upgrade buildings; the blacksmith and some small houses. I've also started to upgrade a barn, but it takes a long time.

RedKetchup

at least you have lamas "who say yes" all the time :)
> > > Support Mods Creation developments with Donations by Paypal  < < <
Click here to Donate by PayPal .

Nilla

Yes, and these are not as dangerous as the golden one, no poisonous arrows there! Maybe poisonous spit (doesn't lamas spit?)   ;D

Dookie

I agree that the production chains in CC are pretty convoluted.  I usually only play with one or two TPs anyway, so when I tried this Golden Lama version with "furnishings" and such, I find producing the "advanced materials" to be a chore because you can easily make them yourself, that's not issue for me, but if you leave the production buildings running, it's hard to balance the inputs and outputs.  More often than not, I find myself overproducing "fancy furniture" or "pottery."   Then, I have odd amounts of various (expensive/high trade value) materials which are hard to track.  Since they are produced slowly, the small discrepancies add up to a lot of value, and since they are so many different materials, I find myself shutting on and off toggling production sites more than doing anything else, haha. 

Another thing I don't like is the gold, silver, and gem stuff.  The chartered company and bootlegger's rewards for gold and silver coins are very, very underwhelming.  Considering you have to mine or sluice to get ore, and then smelt it into coins, and the gem is rare but it requires a separate building.  The gemcutter's production site is basically always off on my map.  After doing all this, the least you could expect is some good rewards from the 3 or 4 specialized traders who only accept this new currency, but no, they just bring you 10 ale or 8 coats or something pointless like that.  Sometimes you can get luxury items like chocolate, tea, or some type of hard liquor like scotch or rum; but, the amount is so small you wonder why you wasted time constructing 3 different buildings in a chain to get this, lol. 

Dookie

Oh yeah, one more thing, don't forget to eventually upgrade your blacksmith and tailor for better tools and clothes.

irrelevant

Quote from: Nilla on June 30, 2015, 12:11:11 PM
Yes, and these are not as dangerous as the golden one, no poisonous arrows there! Maybe poisonous spit (doesn't lamas spit?)   ;D
Oh, yes they certainly do, and nasty smelly stuff it is too.

Nilla

I agree with you, @Dookie ; it's not hard to produce these materials. After running my fuel refinery, brick maker and glass maker a few years, I have plenty of it in my stores, also some of these packed building supplies. That's not my problem with these things.

My problem is this:

You need furnace fuel to produce brick and glass. (I have nothing against that.)

To produce 10 furnace fuel, you need 25 firewood or charcoal. ( That too is alright with me.)

But if you count (and in this case I agree with some of you; it's much better not to, but sorry, I can't help it, that's the way I am). Trade value of the input materials; 75 if you use charcoal, 100 if you use fire wood.

Now to the part that spoils the fun for me: Furnace fuel has the trade value of 3 (!!!!). Input value 75 or 100, output value 30. I do not make such business in life and do not really want it in Banished either.

The same with bricks. 15 clay and 10 furnace fuel gives 3 Bricks. Input 15 +3*10=45 (I am nice and count the trade value of the fuel not the production cost). Trading value of the output; 18.

There are more products like this. I don't mind the production costs. It's the tradevalue that's too low. It's not necessary to make a big profit. But it shouldn't be so much cheaper, to buy the stuff.

But we also have the opposite; charcoal. It's a fuel, equal in use to firewood. You need far less logs to produce it and the productivity of each plant is much higher. 1 log gives 11 charcoal and one plant with 2 worker could produce more than 2000 fuel each year. It's an annual tradeprofit of more than 6000. Almost like @RedKetchup´s pies, before he changed the production and tradevalue. You might remember, I complained a lot about that.  :-[

Now I will stop the complaining. In this game, I have tried to forget about this. Instead I will show you a couple of pictures from yesterday.

First picture


Hm, I just said I will stop complaining and now I find this picture. Well it's not really a complain. Only these orchards are weird. They are harvested all year and nothing is spoiled. First I thought it might be something special with the olives, I had from the start. I think olives could be harvested at different times, but I'm sure, apricots are harvested only in autumn.

Anyhow I'm upgrading everything I can. You can see it @Dookie. The tailor isn't upgraded yet on this picture. I had no ropes. And you need them for the upgrade. I would have built one rope maker, even if it's one of those "bad" materials, but I have no hemp and there haven't been any seedtraders since I don't know when. I also miss cloth because I have no cotton.

I like the upgraded barns!    :D  :D

Second picture


Ooops, I play with disasters on and the well is too far away. :(

Finally I could buy enough rope to upgrade the tailor, (not done yet but it's the footprint close to the upgraded blacksmith.)

Gordon Dry

#9
I solved the issues with coal / charcoal / fuel like this:

(First my complete list of mods which I have done with my own tool)
List of Banished mods sorted by load order:

TimeIsMoneyAltVersion1ByDarkbibou.pkm
betterharvesting.pkm
NomadsZeroPop.pkm
ALittleBitRidiculousStorage.pkm
TradersAcceptAll.pkm
CCNoSmoke.pkm
SpecializedFuels.pkm *
endiadika6CoalasMaterial.pkm *
wintinAudioTweak.pkm
LegalizedMarijuana.pkm
elfSmallerVendors.pkm
big_rings.pkm
TreeGrowth.pkm
tighterroadsextended.pkm
Wooden_signs.pkm
elfStorageCarts.pkm
roadbound.pkm
vBetterRainSound.pkm
BlackLiquidRain.pkm
SJGL_Small_Markets.pkm
IrrelevantSmallBarns.pkm
StorageShed.pkm
newmedievaltown.pkm
newmedievalCastle.pkm
ColonialCharterCotGL.pkm
TreeOfLifeVersion1ByDarkbibou.pkm
FastFoodStand.pkm
ToolShed.pkm
wintinCoastalhouse.pkm
FishFarm.pkm
JapaneseFacilities.pkm
littlehouse.pkm
Covering.pkm
GrassyRoads.pkm
CombinedMoreResources.pkm
oneyearisoneyear.pkm
Cathedral.pkm


* these ones did it for me:
Specialized Fuels
Coal as Material (Colonial Charter mod)

^in this order above NMT and CC

Now the Fuel Refinery is obsolete, you can create Charcoal (furnace coal) or Charcoal (heating coal) with the stacks burner / brick maker and Furnace coal / Heating coal with the mine.
The furnace coal is material but its limit is set by log limit, the heating coal is also material but its limit is set by fuel limit.

Edit: no, the heating coal is limited by the wood limit.
It's a little bit confusing but you can get used to it.
(I just remembered in my last save that the wood limit was reached but furnace coal was still stocked.)

DesoPL

This is kinda weird, that in tropical land, snow appears. But anyway good screenshots.

Nilla

Quote from: Gordon Dry on July 01, 2015, 01:10:13 PM
I solved the issues with coal / charcoal / fuel like this:


Sorry, I don't really understand, what issues you have fixed with this mod. Please explain it again to a dumb foreigner. The only issue I have, so far, is that the charcoal is too easy to produce as fuel (need so little logs) and that the stacks burner/brick maker is too powerful (produce a trading value of over 6000 each year) . I know that coal isn't a fuel anymore in the CC-mod and it makes the production of steel tools a bit easier but, that's no big thing.

Quote from: DesoPL on July 02, 2015, 03:08:51 AM
This is kinda weird, that in tropical land, snow appears. But anyway good screenshots.

Thank, you. And yes, I should have chosen another climate, there are plenty of new and more realistic ones. But as I realized this, I had already built some years and didn't want to start over again, so now it is; snow on palm trees!  :-\ ;)

Dookie

#12
@Nilla , complaining about games is half the fun, haha jk.   But yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you said.  However, the furnace fuel problem isn't as annoying to me as the Building Supplier, who makes 2 packages:  "furnishings" and "building supplies."   Furnishings are the worst.  There are two formulas, and they both suck because you either need
(pottery + furniture + glassware + rug) or (fancy furniture + bedding + candle)
The first formula makes more sense because "fancy furniture" requires "hardwood" which forces you to make a special forester site for hardwood, whereas regular "furniture" only uses regular logs, so I made the potter and produced some rugs from my excess wool.  But if I use the first formula, candles are useless unless I'm upgrading mines/quarries (very rare), but okay, at least I can turn them into candlebundles for fuel.  What about the bedding though?  I always have a ton of feathers clogging up my economy, so I built a hardwood forester and a bedding maker, and started using the 2nd formula.  You can guess what happen to my inputs for the first formula.  It's tedious as hell. 

  The issue with the furnace fuel creating a loss in value is also troubling, but since it is a single-player game that is balanced by playstyle (ie. how much you like trading will determine how much profit/loss, and the potential cost is only realized once an exchange is made), it doesn't bother me as much.  By the late game, I don't usually care if I'm trading at a profit or loss because the costs are not really relevant because by then, I'm usually pretty "rich."  The way CC adds products; it's impossible for it to be nicely balanced:  think about it, what would you rather have, a few hundred Stone or 1 or 2 Polished Gems?   Of course, the stone is more useful, but the gems have higher price and are almost completely useless.  Therefore, the real value isn't the market price at the trading post.  Many people have the same idea about economics IRL, like if a product is worth such and such on the market, then it must be valuable, and people store value in useless junk like gold, and then there isn't enough gold to make electronics cheaply.  But I disgress, that's a rant for another forum.  My point is, profit can't get you everything unless you play a certain way.  To be real, all the prices are kind of arbitrary.  The part of it that bothers me is the balancing of inputs like you had mentioned.
  This reminds me of when I used to play Path of Exile (action RPG like Diablo), and in those games where it is multiplayer, the discrepancy in trading value was killing me.  Instead of using standard gold coins or whatever for currency, they had this bartering system, but it turned out not to be true barter because you still had currency in the form of "Orbs"  There were various values assigned to  orbs, and they did random shit to your gear, so you can choose to use the currency on your gear but nobody but the richest players would actually be smart to use them because the trading value was higher.  Add ontop of that it was hard to establish a trade, and so most players rarely did it, but I guarantee there was a whole bunch of people not even playing the game as intended, and just trading for everything due to the weird currency exchange setup.  It's a great game if it weren't for the trading value that ruined it for me.  In Banished, I don't see this problem even if it does exist.

@Gordon Dry sounds like he has a mod list where it separates charcoal (heating fuel) from charcoal (furnace material) so that you don't have to bother with Furnance Fuel anymore.  It sounds like several mods have to overwrite each other in a specific way. 

Dookie

I chose the "Very Mild (CC)" climate, but it seems to snow just as often as when I had it on "Temperate."  I'm around year 50 with snow coming in late autumn.  Perhaps I had SeasonFX or Greener Environment mods turned on when I created the map, so therefore they canceled the CC climate.  How mild is mild supposed to be? 

Nilla

@Dookie , these packages don´t really bother me much, although you have to turn it on and off or change the product a lot. I find it a rather clever way to get around one of the limits of the game; You can only use 3 different kind of materials for a building. With these packages you make it possible for more. If it´s neccessary? That´s another question.

I played a little yesterday and little more early this evening. But I will stop this game now. As you might have understood; The CC-mod is not the right mod for me. It has many good things, but I make the conclusion; it´s a mod for citybuilders. Most of the buildings look good, the variety and possibilities are huge. But that´s not the thing, that really got me so charmed by Banished.

Is it harder to play with this mod than a normal unmodded game? I would say no. It´s much easier to fullfill the basic needs of food and fuel, than in a unmodden game. But it´s not easier eaither (unless you do a lot of o trade) because you have to control a lot of production buildings and production chains. Just different. I like the simplicity of the original Banished; the few materials, the few proffessions, the few goods.

Finally I will show you a couple of more pictures.

First picture

As you can see @Dookie, there are many buildings temporarily stopped in my game, too. I wish there would be more multi-task buildings, like the shore house. When you don´t need any sand or clay, let them catch frogs.  ;D

This Chartered Company; not so my biggest favourite either. It took a long time until I understod what pouch is. I don´t know that word. I tried Google Translate, but made a mistake and wrote "poach", so I was very confused, until I looked more carefully.  ;D  ;D   :-[

Second picture

A nice looking river side view

Third picture

What are these weird decorations on the mountain side? Maybe some art installation.  ??? At least there are two viewers, the lamas don´t seem very interested.

Fourth picture

The mayor have to live somewhere. Why not at the rear of the Lama? ;)

By the way; the crash I had at the start, really comes from this piece. There were no more problems, during the whole game after I let the adventurer retire. I wanted to test it once more, so I let one adventurer go on with the exploration. (No poisonous arrows this time). It took maybe a year, than crash again!

See the sign on the apothecary. I have no idea to what it is connected. I would have thought herbs, but there is the limit 800, so it´s not.