Small Questions

[irrelevant]

You'd use @RedKetchup's creamery mod for milk and cheese. Not in the basic game.

Mines and quarries give the people who live within a certain distance (20? 30? I'm not sure) a decrease in happiness. That can be offset by building in the same area a well, a cemetery, a hospital, a tavern, a market, or a chapel, all of which increase happiness.

The other downside of mines and quarries is that they are finite; quarries contain 3000 stone, and mines contain (I believe) 2000 coal/iron. But after they are depleted, you will not be able to remove them, so they are just wasted space after that.

[irrelevant]

Stone houses, so expensive! I find it's very difficult to consistently build these without bringing in goodly amounts of logs, stone, and iron through trade, or making a significant commitment to stonecutting and iron mining.

[snapster]

In additional to pollution, and perhaps more importantly, a mod should make food spoil and perhaps introduce salt for preservation or even refrigeration or something. Although I guess what do you need great surpluses for? But perhaps it should go further than great surpluses, making the game more difficult.

I'm currently running surpluses of 1k logs and 7k food, by the way.

[irrelevant]

In additional to pollution, and perhaps more importantly, a mod should make food spoil and perhaps introduce salt for preservation or even refrigeration or something. Although I guess what do you need great surpluses for? But perhaps it should go further than great surpluses, making the game more difficult.

I'm currently running surpluses of 1k logs and 7k food, by the way.

If you have disasters turned on, a tornado can come through and wipe out huge swaths of your houses, your storage, and anything that is in that storage. You're always just one disaster away from near-annihilation.

Also, if you don't have a significant cushion of food in storage, two or three back-to back bad harvests can become a threatening situation.

What's your population? How much stored firewood, how many houses?

[snapster]

That doesn't sound good.

I'm not relying on harvests for food. Haven't had the opportunity to. The 5 gatherer huts, 3 hunter cabins, and 2 fishing docks carry most of the weight. 126 population, houses queued up at a second central location I'm trying to establish, firewood is fine.

Speaking of that second location, its market is not stocking up with the products derived from trade which are being developed at the first central location. So do vendors not go everywhere? Is the other market taking them too quickly and there is no inter-market transfer or redistribution?

By the way, having 2 herders for larger animals like sheep and cattle in 11-capacity pastures does seem to make them reproduce quicker.

[salamander]

Just as in real life, having a surplus in reserve can mean the difference between making it through a bad period and crashing-and-burning.  Sounds like your reserves of logs and food are fine, although it does depend on your town's size.

As far as your markets, if the further-out market is not getting its fair share of goods, it may be because of the extra distance the vendors have to travel to collect things -- it's possible they're just being beaten to the punch by other vendors closer to point of production.  Vendors do go everywhere to collect resources, but the farther they have to go, the more likely someone else will get the resources first.  One possible solution is to put more vendors in further out markets to increase the likelihood the resources will be collected before someone else gets it.

[irrelevant]

Also, the farther vendors have to go to find what want to stock in their market, the more time they spend walking, the fewer trips they can make. And if they make fewer trips, that means less stuff in their market. So the solution is additional vendor(s) at that market. The rule of thumb I use is, if a market isn't at least 60% full, I add a vendor. If it's over 90% full, I remove one.

[snapster]

Can mods weigh foods, i.e. have them count differently per unit? What is the difference between different types of foods? Them onions and berries might be op.

[salamander]

Not something I've really looked into, but I believe that a mod could affect how much individual resources weigh.  Why would you want to do this, though, and is there some reason you specifically mention onions and berries?

[snapster]

To make the game harder and more realistic. Gatherers are very productive, although they don't outpace fishing docks in good positions by too much... like 500 food perhaps or more than 25%. :/ As low as over 10%. If 3 out of 4 workers is more sustainable, and that's a big if also factoring when the effects appear and how long they last for, then I guess they could be roughly even. Then there are the effects on the rest of the game.

[salamander]

OK, so maybe the onions and berries were just examples of resources collected by gatherers, but I still don't really understand what you mean.  Do you want resources to weigh more so not as many can be carried on one trip, or is it something else you're after to make the game more realistic?

[A Nonny Moose]

Along this line, I've been wondering whether there is any difference in the nutritive value of the various field crops.

[snapster]

The nutritive value on the quantity side of things. Weigh them for consumption. The quality side or more involved quantity side is why I asked what different types of foods do.

It would also be a very good idea for a mod to display the trade value of everything. Even if it is conditional on boats arriving first for people to inquire. Not a good oversight by the developer, and he rolls like this. The finding things out on your own is a thorny debate. Needs to be done quite deliberately.

[snapster]

Along with trade value of things, how much certain things cost, things like farmers carrying baskets of how much food, pasture size to capacity of different animals, etc. This is important. An informative mod.

[slink]

Along this line, I've been wondering whether there is any difference in the nutritive value of the various field crops.

Not as far as we can tell from the descriptions in the code.

This section describes corn's behavior at the trading post.

Code Select Expand

ValueDescription value
{
SpriteSheet _spriteSheet = "Dialog/SpriteSheet.rsc";
String _spriteName = "CornSmall";
StringTable _stringTable = "Dialog/StringTable.rsc:rawMaterial";
String _stringName = "Corn";

// how much the item is worth, +- some tolerance
int _baseValue = 1;

// how much is sold in a single sale
int _stackCount = 2000;
}

This part describes corn's behavior in the game.

Code Select Expand

RawMaterialDescription rawmaterial
{
SpriteSheet _spriteSheet = "Dialog/SpriteSheet.rsc";
StringTable _stringTable = "Dialog/StringTable.rsc:rawMaterial";
String _name = "Corn";

int _lowCreateCount = 20;
int _highCreateCount = 28;

int _weight = 1;
int _createChance = 4;

RawMaterialFlags _flags = Edible | Grain;

float _carryScale = 0.5;
}

The rest of it is graphics.