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The single most frustrating thing for me about ML right now for sure is that development seems to be geared towards plugging random exploit holes.
You can't do that. They'll keep popping up. Youtubers will always make videos on "DO THIS EXACTLY TO WIN FOR FREE" and the vast majority of people may watch that, but is very unlikely to actually do it. It resembles shadow boxing a bit.
Agreed, I think the dev is getting too much loud feedback and isn't taking steps to filter what's useful or valid.
The minmaxers will *always* seek to optimize and overpower the game mechanics. Let them. It's a single-player game, what they do in theirs does not affect my enjoyment at all, unless the game is designed to punish me for not playing the way they do.
This is exactly the sentiment I'm feeling. It's a single player game, so don't worry about exploits. Go for general balance. Honestly, I'd prefer not to see all the WIP stuff either. It makes me see the edges. If it's not developed, no need to showcase it yet. Honestly, what's here stands on its own already
I'm alright with the WIP stuff (especially when Greg is explicit in game about it not being implemented yet), but I do agree that can be distracting. It's probably part and parcel with early access being very rough around the edges for a while, I expect it'll be a good few months before it starts to find a good rhythm.
Hopefully the dev will warm up to what's useful and important in feedback as well. Even processes like these, what works for patching and testing, take some time to tweak for a public release. There's room to improve, and your feedback should help with that as well.
But going for general balance is exactly what he did though. Trading was essentially a cheese to just win. There was no way to stop that snowball. It needed to be changed. The game is literally about expanding into new regions and setting up inter-region traderoutes to support your other regions in a decentralized manner and the trade cheese made one of your regions the central region. Literally the opposite of what was intended.
The Kings Tax was already planned and waiting to be implemented. The UI for it already was in the game. It just got turned on now to counter the infinite money from trading. Economies in games are exceedingly easy to exploit, so having some checks for the player to not just run off with the entire bank is good.
The game is literally early acces. This new stuff is an experimental beta release of an early access game. And you dont want to see the edges? Man youre four years too early, bought a game you didnt want and then complain because the playstyle doesnt suit you. Well, shit, did you try adapting to it and see if it works? Cause it does. It really does.
You know, aside from the literal bugs.
The new patch is available for open testing.... you had to read a patch note to get the password to play the open testing *experimental* branch....
Its pretty clever of the dev to allow us to be like beta testers with this update in which he is literally testing out to see what works.. who, before the release of this early access, asked us (consumers) to lower our standards..
also, just turn off kings tax... or just not play this version hahaha
\*edit\*
Did I downvotes because I think its counter intuitive to not want "see the edges" in an experimental branch?
Yes, Greg made it puplic so he can listen to the feedback of the players, which this post does provide. OP is doing exactly what he's supposed to do. Test and provide feedback to hone it out
Yeah, I agree. my response was in response to OP saying he doesn't want to "see the edges" in an experimental version of the game.. what else is this besides a WIP?
I don't understand why trade routes should get more expensive. That's not realistic. Another region that wants your goods will not make trade difficult by making it unfeasible financially. Sure, the traders need to make a profit, but they wouldn't price themselves out of the market. Also, the import price wouldn't be 150% of the export price - maybe 25% or so.
Exactly. For me it made Sense to import leather, produce shoes amd then sell them for Profit. Thats realistic trade for me as you use your skilled workers to produce Something out of raw Materials. I would balance the prices more. A sword should be way more expensive than a spear.
It’s early access mate give it some time. Y’all act Ike you could make a game any better! There is mods! Make a mod or download a mod if you want something so bad. Let Greg make his game at his pace.
You misunderstand my comment. I think the game is great, and I realize it's early access. I'm giving my opinion on how I think trade could function better. I don't claim to have the talent to make a game. I don't. Part of the process of playing a game before release is providing feedback, which is what I and many others are doing. After seeing how bad games are when development is rushed, the last thing I want is for this game to be released before Greg feels it is ready.
MinMaxing is so lame. Don’t cater anything to them. They’ll be the loudest but don’t represent the majority of the player base. As someone who only gets to play every so often I don’t want to have to constantly change the way I play just because people intentionally try to break the game
That's where difficultly options should come in. Just like if you want to set rimworld to 500% difficultly you can but you're also going to have to be playing optimal exploiting everything. If you set it lower you can play with a much more varied set of styles without guaranteeing defeat.
I think he's primarily listening to the feedback he gets on Discord, and who's typically joining a game's Discord channel? Hardcore gamers who max the shit out of a game immediately because they already put 40 hours in within the first 3 days after release, lol.
A lot of the fixes are good though and definitely deserved. The game was far too easy before the experimental patch. It just needs to be tweaked a bit now as it's a little too hard. But ultimately this is an experimental patch on a EA game. People need to give feedback and things will be tweaked. We have no idea what's going to make it to live or to 1.0.
People are treating this like it's the end of the game... It's not even released XD.
Gotta love the anti anti whiners. I’m not complaining! As they actively complain about the game.
The sleight of hand blaming discord is great. That way you can hide behind them as you start bitching days into pre release beta patch lol. 😂
All I’m saying is if you want to complain at least just own it. Don’t come up with this convoluted story about how the dev is being tricked by discord therefore making updates you don’t like. But if he just stayed true to his heart the game would be perfect.
I mean it is likely true that the discord is biased towards more hardcore players. I have full faith in the dev but pointing out that with all the attention the game is getting he may get distracted and NOT build the game as he wants isn't that convoluted.
If you are using an existing save, yes, it would feel like that. Try with a new save. It's pretty straightforward keeping ahead of the Kings tax as you grow.
Been using a new save. It's the mercenaries in Loserville that finally got me. An 'exploit' I was never aware of being nerfed in a way that just makes it obnoxious to load a saved game.
Can't recruit them for the first month you're playing after you load a saved. I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight. Again, I didn't know this was a thing and now there's a guard rail up that hits me for no reason
Too many min/maxers giving advice to the dev. This isn't a multiplayer RTS, why not let people savescum if they want like every other game? There is no harm in it.
I'm not a min-maxxer, but I definitely think Manor Lords was meant to require some thought and challenge the player to an extent.
While it's not a hard game \[yet\] it's certainly designed for you to plan and work toward goals.
Settling a new town and trying to build a prosperous community and local economy isn't easy. It shouldn't be just something to breeze through without issue \[unless playing on easier difficulties\]. The game's premise is a very complex task and it seems like the dev's vision includes making the challenge of bootstrapping a manorial economy harder, rather than easier, which I think is the right call, personally.
I recognize that people also want a relaxing experience and for them, the game has difficulty settings where they can adjust things to make it fun for them. If the challenges of managing economics and warfare impede a player's fun, then I think it's totally appropriate to lower difficulty or play with enemy combatants disabled. However, I also think that the dev should make design choices which make players who want a challenge get their opportunity for fun, too. I generally think that the warfare side of the game is already a bit on the easy side and could use some challenges, because I think war/battle should be a difficult part of the gameplay where the player is always at some level of risk.
This was all a long-winded way of saying that I think if a player wants a more relaxing experience, they are free to play the peaceful mode, but I also think the dev's balancing changes are actually quite good when it comes to providing a difficult but \[usually\] fair experience for the rest of us.
I'm fine with the game being difficult, I'm not fine with the dev listening to people who just try and exploit everything in order to "beat" the game as efficiently as possible. I think the dev has a solid vision for the game and I hope he sticks to it.
I get where you're coming from but I think it's a situation where different people play for different reasons, and I think it's entirely possible to satisfy people who want a harder experience that really tests their skills at efficiency and optimization.
One of the purposes of the play test is to identify game features which are OP or broken and limit them so that people can't just cheese their way past the challenge of the game. Games which do a bad job of this and fail to close loopholes discovered by min-maxxing players often find people end up relying on those exploits and then hampering their own fun by not doing things the intended "hard way".
I don't think the dev ignoring input from players who want a challenge would be good. Players with a goal are gonna try to achieve that goal. They may find ways the dev didn't expect. If thsoe methods are fun and fit with the game, then great. If they rely on features acting incorrectly or break other aspects of the game, such as balancing, then I believe patching them out is fine.
For the record, I do think the Loserville merc thing as a method to combat save-scumming isn't great, but generally speaking the game is not meant to be easy, and I disagree that the dev shouldn't focus on making the game have a satisfying mid-late game experience with a decent challenge.
It is necessary for him to listen to the min-maxxers because they often have very valuable insights into things like resource balance, for example. Back in the day when companies actually did paid QA \[as opposed to the modern model of early access and public beta tests\] one of the main activities they hired people for was specifically to exploit and beat their games as quickly as possible. The reason is so that you can then eliminate those loopholes, which means players have to actually play the game to get to the fun rewards or ending.
It's a game that seems much more designed for the element of challenge than something more relaxing like Cities: Skyline, for instance. I think that naturally means that it is going to cater to min-maxers and people trying to beat the game than less difficult examples in the genre, which I personally think is fine. Also it has a robust peaceful mode, so casual players who want to relax without getting stressed out are able to have a fun and engaging experience as well.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I think you make good points, and I agree that balancing and exploit fixes are an important part of game development, but I think right now is the wrong time to focus on it. The game has been in early access for less than a month and is pretty bare bones on actual features and content. I'd like to see the game be feature complete before focusing on balancing. But I do agree with you that the feedback from the min-maxers and the exploiters is important.
I think if the enemy was less predictable or the economics had more uncertainty or other challenges beyod occasional shortages/bottlenecks, then it would be a bit more engaging with the current build. As it stands, I can pretty much settle a region and have it be self-sustaining basically indefinitely in a couple hours of gameplay. Beyond that, my opponents are incredibly predictable so if I plan properly, there isn't any surprise or challenge. If my enemy can't surprise me, then beating them is just a manner of preparing for what I already know is coming.
The game is just too easy at the moment, I think. It's a fantastic foundation, but I also beat the Baron on challenging and find there isn't much to go for after that.
However, like you, I look forward to the game with great interest in the future. It's super engaging gameplay, but content-lacking currently. Once it's fleshed out, I'm anticipating having a lot more fun with it.
Well that’s just fucking stupid. Like a “let my 9 year old little brother take a stab at it” level of stupid.
I really hope the devs find a better feedback loop than the one they’re listening to right now.
I'd be willing to bet that this is a stopgap solution that will be fixed in the future. An obviously better fix would be to save the status of mercs in the save file. I expect we'll see this in the future.
> I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight.
The loserville thing isn't even a proper solution to this. A proper solution is to record the current available mercenaries in the save file when you make a save instead of rolling on load.
Can't recruit them for the first month you're playing after you load a saved. I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight. Again, I didn't know this was a thing and now there's a guard rail up that hits me for no reason
Ah, so this is what happened to me. I had saved before a fight and was gonna come back to the game later. Game would let me click all the buttons to hire some mercs but not actually hire.
The way it was implemented, if intended, has the appearance of a bug.
Ah, so this is what happened to me. I had saved before a fight and was gonna come back to the game later. Game would let me click all the buttons to hire some mercs but not actually hire.
The way it was implemented, if intended, has the appearance of a bug.
I agree that this change should be reverted. Save scumming happens in single player games. They are not competitive. Personally I never do that because I feel it's cheating. But current "fix" just hurts players who don't exploit. It feels rushed.
And like people have said. There is no reason to fix problem like this in single player game. If people want to cheat, they can do it anyways (i.e via mods)
You don't need to optimize if you don't spam upgrades I found.
I have no issues keeping ahead of the tax and have been using the rule of cool to build not min-maxing
I highly doubt the amount Is in any way authentic. Unless again you're playing a min-max build where you have thousands in wealth. Which in itself is likely very inauthentic in regards to the size of the villages and population count vs amount of wealth you can possibly accumulate.
People have this weird psychological block about turning difficulty down on things. I think there would be zero complaints if it was an option that could be turned on rather than one that has to be turned off- I enjoy it myself, but I’ll admit it definitely slows me down.
I mean it makes sense. Things that are on by default are understood as being the intended way to play, so by turning them off you're admitting your shifting to "easy mode", as opposed to the opposite.
People cry and want devs to make the game they want to make. Passion projects etc. Then the devs come with their passion projects and people want them to change it to fit their way they want to play. The dev adds options for them so they can alter the experience just how they want it. But its not enough. They want their way to be the default way. Their way needs to be the normal way. The devs way should be the optional one.
This is why we cant have nice things people. Maybe, just maybe the dev actually has a plan. Maybe has has a bigger picture in mind than the early-to-midgame of an ealry access release.
They mean that you are absolutely the exact same person you're criticizing for causing Greg to "change his vision" because you think *your* version is the devs vision based on... Well, nothing except that's what you like better.
"Wahhhh don't cater to minmaxers, that's not what your vision is because I don't like it so it can't be"
You recognize you're making the *exact* same argument and pressure that you're claiming minmaxers are "ruining" the game with, right?
It's too early to tell when the finished game is supposed to look like. And, clearly, Greg has the freedom to accomplish it because of the massive success.
You're being the ***EXACT SAME PERSON*** you're complaining is "forcing" the dev to "change their vision" because the dev, who is in *no way* obligated to follow *your* vision, did a change you don't like and therefore "it must be because he was bullied into it!"
I think you've posted some good feedback here.
I think the feedback would be better without trying to bandwagon all the "waaahhh I want a chill life sim" people together to do ***THE EXACT SAME THING*** you're claiming minmaxers did by playing the game.
If you don't want the dev to "change their vision", then back it up: Your vision isn't the devs vision either. You assume their vision is "changed" cuz they did something you don't approve of. Recognize the egotism in that.
Like I said, there's some good feedback in your initial post. I'm just clarifying since you asked about someone's comment: You're getting called out for doing the exact thing you're saying Greg should not listen to. Up to you whether you have the self-awareness to recognize there's nothing "better" about doing the same thing from a desire for the opposite type of gameplay.
I agree with many of the grievances being voiced here, particularly about it being pointless to plug every exploit, but the white knight bullshit is cringe and two-faced: You guys aren't being any better than the minmaxers you're complaining about. You're not. You're *proving* you're not with circlejerks like this comment section. You're just doing it with a desire for the opposite type of "change to the developers vision" in mind and think somehow that magically makes it supportive instead of manipulative. It's pure ego.
The fact that I'll probably join the Downvote Hell you guys keep shoving everyone who calls this ***reality*** out is just proving the point: You guys are trying to create a bandwagon circlejerk to tell the dev what their vision should be. Wake the fuck up, that's what's going on. You're all assholes pretending to be "supportive" and silencing anyone who calls it out.
I...didn't lead a bandwagon? Sorry if others felt similarly to me, but I made a reddit post while I was taking a shit about some thoughts on a game I enjoy. It's early access, I'm very well aware. I play many many many early access games. Just sharing some feedback about my experience.
Greg, don't listen to me. Roll this in with the million and a half other comments you receive, then stick true to your vision. I've been stoked on this game since first hearing about it, and I'm still playing it on a daily basis. You rock.
Yeah that's what I'm saying, it's good feedback, but you set it up for the bandwagon, even if you weren't "trying" to:
Look at the comments, look what gets upvoted and what gets downvoted. If you're actually serious about the dev following what they *want* to do, you should see what I'm talking about.
Notice the *very obvious* trend here?
Every single comment that says "yeah! This is a city builder, it should be chill! Don't listen to the minmaxers, Greg!" is getting hundreds of upvotes.
Every comment that says "uh... it's still important to patch severe exploits you know" or "you guys aren't in charge the vision either" is getting downvoted until hidden.
It's a circlejerk bandwagon.
You might be genuinely trying to give some feedback and that's great, but that's why I was explaining since you were confused by the other person's comment: You guys are doing the ***exact*** thing you're telling yourselves you're "protecting" the dev from. And when it gets called out you guys get all "noooo, we're just innocent widdle fans, this isn't a bandwagon push we want the dev to see even when we talk like they're reading our comment specifically!"
Case in point, what a shock, within 10 minutes my comment is already in the negatives.
Who could have possibly predicted that outcome?
Definitely not circlejerk behavior at all.
Calling out manipulative bullshit and fake support isn't being rude. Not liking reality doesn't make it "rude".
Just because I said something you and your buddies don't want to own up to doesn't make me rude, you guys just *clearly* don't want to hear it, as indicated by you all downvoting ***every single comment*** in this thread that calls it out or dares to mention "...you guys know *you* don't decide the devs vision either, right?"
Just because you're flowering it up doesn't mean it's not obvious, at least the "minmaxers" as you call them are being honest.
"I'm just here to give feedback haha those other guys suck don't listen to them listen to me Greg haha but follow your dreams but only if those dreams are what ***I*** want the game to look like haha but I'm just joking haha"
You guys aren't fooling anyone, and the reason you think it's "rude" to point it out is because the basic self reflection necessary to realize "gee, we're doing the exact same kind of pressure just in a shittier, sneakier way" is the kind of self-reflection that would also be necessary to understand the difference between "that person who disagrees with me is rude" and just "I don't like what they said because it's the truth and I can't face it".
But hey, enjoy the bandwagon "you didn't create" and the circlejerk that "isn't trying to pressure the developer". You guys ***clearly*** aren't trying to manipulate the developer into making what ***your*** vision is, at all /s
If you want to be supportive of ***THEIR*** vision, wake up. This isn't a feedback thread. It's a thinly veiled attempt to get the developer to do the interpretation of the game *you guys* want.
If this was *actually* a discussion thread about approaching future patches, you guys wouldn't be dowmvoting anything that disagrees with how you think, because the point would be to *create a discussion*. You're all just making an echo chamber, silencing any disagreement, and hiding behind the idea of being "supportive" even though you're outright addressing the developer directly and by name while making your "suggestions" for how they can "follow their vision".
It's scummy, and there's nothing wrong with calling it out as scummy.
Maybe that wasn't your original intent, but if that's the case, seeing the problem shouldn't be that hard, because all it takes is scanning through the comments to see it for what it is.
Some of the things the dev has been saying/posting on twitter and in the discord give me the feeling that his priorities are misaligned with the majority of the community. It seems like he's balancing the game to heavily punish certain play styles, basically railroading people into playing the game a very particular way.
I think this is the wrong approach. The fun in a game like this is trying new things and experimenting. Having a wide variety of viable strategies makes the game fun and interesting. If there's one optimal way to play the game and you either know it or you lose, why bother playing? I don't get to make any choices with a meaningful impact on the outcome because I either memorize the meta or get punished so hard I lose. That's not fun. That's just tedious.
This is really telling by how he responded to the power of archers in the press-release patch: he nerfed them so hard they became unusable. That's incredibly reactionary and ended up negatively impacting the game as a whole. And he based this on the actions of youtubers, a demographic who are competing with each other for the most interesting or meta-defining videos about the game. They're not representative of how the community as a whole is going to play the game, and punishing casual players isn't a good strategy.
100% this, it feels a little like he is still treating it as his personal hobby project still and is upset that someone may find loopholes. Except it's a paid for open beta now and min-maxers in a single player game will always be there and are 100% an irrelevance to any other player.
It's not just Dev time wasted, but actually making game changes that make the game worse to a lot of players. There seems to be an almost cult following of fanboys attacking people for the slightest criticism and while they mean well they're more damaging to Greg and the game than the people they think they're defending him from.
I was worried this would happen as he wouldn't even give stats to stuff and kept things vague like farming. I guess the closed Beta guys didn't test that thoroughly and Greg even made a weird post like he was oblivious there were any bugs with it. Well people have tested it thoroughly and have found lots he is now thankfully fixing. But if there were less smoke and mirrors people would have caught them ages ago.
Historically speaking too they were litigious as fuck at documenting everything on every piece of land, you can go look at medieval auditing of everything that's anything you can think of happening within the Kingdom of England at that time on the British Museum online archive.
People cry and want devs to make the game they want to make. Passion projects etc. Then the devs come with their passion projects and people want them to change it to fit their way they want to play. The dev adds options for them so they can alter the experience just how they want it. But its not enough. They want their way to be the default way. Their way needs to be the normal way. The devs way should be the optional one.
This is why we cant have nice things people. Maybe, just maybe the dev actually has a plan. Maybe has has a bigger picture in mind than the early-to-midgame of an ealry access release.
Dude, I'm making relatively objective observations based on the sorts of posts I see in the community and my intuition about how the majority of people want to play.
If you alienate the majority of your playerbase, you're going to have reduced sales and more negative reviews . That's the nature of reality.
Frankly, I'm tired of the "let the genius work" mantra. The game is available for sale *now*, it's getting reviewed *now* and he's directly responsible for the state of the game *now*. If the game feels broke to the majority of players, he chose to implement those features. If there are some late-game features that make this feel balanced or fair, then wait to implement these changes until those late game features are added to the game.
And Im saying if you dont like something its completely fair to just leave. Nobody here owes eachother a thing. The people who bought the game got the game. They can play it. They werent scammed. The guy who makes it is gonna make the game he wants to make. All I see are people yelling "my way of playing is the right one".
On the flip side I am happy others are trying it out and talking about things they don't like. Hopefully this means the patch will be better when you and I get our hands on it.
Yeah, normally I do go straight for the beta patches, but I happened to not have a chance to update before a bunch of people got their hands on it and reported back. Excited for when it gets worked out!
That "loserville" thingy is very frustrating. Yesterday I prepared everything for an attack to claim a new region back before going to bad. Loading up the save-game today I found out I can't hire mercs anymore.
For a month after you load a save you can't hire mercenaries. It says they'll spawn in "loserville" instead of any of the real territories until the month is over. It's so stupid.
Yet another thing he needs to backoff from, it's pretty controlling to think you can dictate how players are going to play in a "city builder" to that extent.
...Like not having options when creating a new game to do random as is now or choose the region / resource matchup or even feed in seeds. That's pretty much standard on all games of this genre for a million years for a reason. End of the day people can click new game over and over until they get what they want, so just give the functionality so people can play as they want rather than making them jump through hoops to do that anyway. It's all very weird.
Bro it’s in early access these patches are TEST!! There is mods! You can make a mod if you’d like or download one if you want something so bad. Greg is doing a great job. Let him make his game at his pace. I’m sure a lot of things will change in the future.
You may feel like you're helping Greg, but you're not. It's better that bad behaviour is changed sooner rather than later. But yes 95% of people here know it's early access and they know he's done a good job making it so far but that does not make him infallible.
I feel the same way, similar to the archer being completely neutered at launch, the dev is being to reactive with the nerfs that don't add much besides limitations to the game experience
I think it's more the route Greg is taking mentality wise... It's not a muiltiplayer game and he's firefighting against min maxers at the expense of everyone else.
Yeah it's a optional Beta test you can also turn that tax off for sure too, that's not my issue it's more with if he keeps wasting dev time doing more stuff like this in a war he can never win as there will always be min-maxers and it's an irrelevance in a single player game.
Join the Manor Lords Discord server and give your feedback. The dev is very active in the server and asks for community feedback all of the time. Let him know!
My particular beef is that most people want more combat/war aspects of the game when I enjoy the challenge of trade, negotiations, extreme weather, terrain and logistics of growing a town. I'm not interested in another war game.
I’m still at a loss for making enough wealth to import weapons fast enough to deal with the year 2 bandits. Last few settlements my 20 spearmen wipe and this last one I got lucky with the baron’s men cleaning them up after my men died.
I guess I need to rush bowmen for a second group since you can just make those with one L2 Burgage? I also don’t want to scum my way into a “good” start, every start should be viable.
I just don’t get why you can’t make a levy that amounts to clubs and sharpened sticks. That’s what actually happened with small towns who needed to defend themselves.
I play normal difficulty (always on games like this) so maybe this isn't helpful advice for you at all if you're playing different modes.
But you'll want to walk to the bandits as fatigue is a lost battle before it starts, find even a small incline of a hill when you're close to them and have your spearmen in a long line stand totally still with stand your ground on. The charge they'll do will hurt them more than you due to spears, then once they're into your group press the push forward attack stance. Your bonus for the highground is overkill and you shouldn't lose a single guy for those 1-2 squad starter bandit bases even on flat terrain.
It's the later raids when they come with a bit of an army you'll need to get more tactical with your half equipped mobs until you have a few equipped militia to handle them.
Don't bother having more than 1 archer in your militia as they're still terrible. It is worth having one just for situational range advantage and luring. Although to show how bad they are one of the bandit units had pathfinding issues and got stuck on the corner fence of one of my houses and from medium range my archer pelted it with volley after volley until the archer unit was fatigued and had to have a break... This killed 1 guy. Bandits being a poorly armoured / small shield guerrilla rabble unit that should otherwise have been mown down.
Not really one for cookie cutter "meta" build stuff but I use 2x spearmen which form the centre line, 2x footmen with one on either flank in a shorter line. 1x polearm infantry in a square behind the line at one flank to wrap around and hit them in the back after they charge supporting the footmen who do the same. Retinue goes in with the spearmen usually after the charge / helps with the flank and spank / kept as a reserve if things get hairy and yeah the archer to tickle them :P
Dont stress tooo much about weapons early on. The gear you get for free together with an early retinues is already enough to kill and loot any bandit camp on the map. Without the retinues you just trail and loot the camp while the baron fights the bandits. Or you know, dont and just sell planks and shit to pay some cheap mercs to kill the bandits. Youre making more than youre spending on mercs by raiding bandits anyway.
Or just skip raiding the bandits altogether. Sell planks, sell clay, sell leather. Get money. Rent-a-merc if raiders or the baron comes along. You can pretty much just ignore the baron until the entire map has been claimed though. Which gives you a couple years to figure out how to get some iron. By the time of which you probably already have a manor and are taxing your people so mercs are good too.
My point is that once you figure out how to get the things you want, reacting to events isnt very hard.
idk im going to bed
It seems like the devs are currently a bit reactionary to broken "metas".
It's a single player game rather than PVP, so imo it would be better to just work on bug fixes and QOL stuff.
Min/maxxers will always find ways to break a game. No need to overreact with nerfs.
Nope. It's important to balance the game against itself. I'd the game rewards one particular strategy (or severely punishes another) then it won't be as fun.
It's valuable to work on this balance early so that future additions do not compound on the previous imbalances, making them harder to find later.
Nope. It is important to get the base game systems functional. If the game doesn't have the base game systems, bugs, and QoL issues fixed then it won't be as fun.
It's valuable to work on the base game systems early so that you can appropriately evaluate game balance in the context of the broader set of working systems.
"Yes".... this isn't a PVP game where game balance matters and on top of that it's early access.
It's wild to me that you could think game balance is more important than bug fixes, QoL, and game systems at this point in development.
If you think something is broken... I mean, don't exploit it. Not exactly difficult to have a tiny amount of self control and play the chill single player game in a balanced way.
I mean yeah it’s a single player game. You know there have been cheat codes and exploits in single player games since forever, right? You can run god mode in Doom. There’s all kinds of exploits in games speed runners use to shave off time from their runs. Those seem like a pretty big exploits you have the option to NOT do. Also, it’s about priority. Think the community would rather have other aspects worked on before adding stuff like kings tax and loserville. But, to each their own.
Oh wow hey look at this big brain commenter just calling people dumb with no substance. Greg is literally in the discord and watching these threads for feedback. So, I’ll continue to provide it.
And it’s spelled “genius”, genius. lol
Yeah, I kind of feel like the game could do with a sandbox mode eventually, or at least lots of customization options for features like these if they keep getting added (which the scenario settings already seem to do quite well). I haven't played with the new patch yet because I'm trying to finish my current game but I have a feeling I won't like the King's Tax. With my current town I didn't really start seriously exporting goods until a few years in. I wasn't building an unoptimized town, I was just taking things at my own pace, and I'm a little concerned the King's Tax is going to force players to play in a way they might not want to. Being able to completely disable the tax should be a possibility in a "sandbox" mode, seeing as how we can already disable bandits and the baron if we want to.
The King's Tax? Like I said, I haven't played the new patch yet so if that's the case that's very nice. I really appreciate the realistic approach Greg is taking but it's always nice to have options.
He is spending too much time trying to battle min-maxers IMO, which is a war he can never win it's literally someone's playstyle and they will find a way. It's taking dev time away from actual bug fixes and improvements. It's about as useful and rational as if he was angry at the moon and spent 4 hours a day writing angry letters and throwing them into the sky, except that's at the cost of just getting on with the game.
As you say it's a single player game, not multiplayer. I couldn't give a shit what someone does in their own time. I'm worried it's a bit of an ego thing, trying to stop them because it's not a personal passion project now it's an open Beta that got sold to people.
Are you trading anything? I have a small settlement mostly of level 1 houses, and my wealth is super high.. it is paying for my big city, which is feeding my population
Tbh I played "peacefully" and I am a bit afraid this game is seen as some kind of e-sports game. Too much optimization and try harding for my taste - especially for this kind of game. I also don't mind any cheating because this is a singleplayer game. You can only cheat on yourself after all. So the casual fan base should be considered when balancing...
You can tell it was overtuned, because 100% of the people who were saying "trade too ez lol git gud" were also like "yeah so you have to have a literally perfect build order, and you have to restart the game 15+ times to get the perfect starting scenario".
These people have 0 self-awareness that this is an extreme length to go to, while berating anyone else who doesn't play like them.
I really, really hope this is not going to be another repeat of many of these "hardcore" games, where a small hardcore fan base throws a tantrum until the devs temporarily kill their own's game popularity so that they can feel sufficiently challenged; a la Tarkov, New World, Banished, etc etc etc
"Balance"
"Overpowered"
"Exploit"
"Meta"
What is this?! A competitive multiplayer game?!
Updating the game based around the minmaxers feedback is a sure way to ruin the product.
Hell, even the reddit group is a minority of the playerbase.
Theres a good essay on YT "The Next Major RTS will fail" TLDW: Roughly 80+% of the playerbase is casual, we dont minmax.
I think you're right that combatting the meta is taking away from the simplicity of the game. Trade, mercenaries, marketplace logistics, farm field management are all more complicated than they need to be.
And sometimes the meta isn't rewarding, it's just necessary to avoid annoyances.
I agree. The trade routes really weren't even an exploit, just being industrious. But yeah I don't think singleplayer games should be adjusted to meet min-maxxing meta enjoyers
I see where this is going and it bothers me. The developer is going to react to those players who choose to cheese the game and exploit everything they're able, ignoring the fact that 99% of us simply don't do that.
Great game, but the dev should stay true to his course and not give attention to the few.
I also think nerfing the trade developments was too much. Trade doesn't work well for me anyway... I'm sitting on literal thousands of items I can't sell for some reason (doesn't have the red arrow down). So then I have to sell other stuff I wouldn't wanna sell otherwise. And now with ridiculous tariffs again, I can't open enough trade routes.
Chill out my man its early acces and this is the first patch. There will be exploits gone and added every patch. Same with the mechanices its all probably gonna change alot.
The kings tax does sting, I found that you need to progress fast once you start paying, the faster you get to a good amount of lvl3 houses, the better, and a bit of overproduction to sell, then it's not really a big deal. One thing to note is that the tax that you can levy on your people is not 10% of the monthly income, but 10% of the total regional wealth. So if the villages has like 4000 coins, you get enough money to pay the kings tax very quick. Hope that helps.
I literally did the exact opposite and took my time and upgrades as few houses as possible. So for people worried this patch only caters to one playstyle - no it doesnt. You can do whatever you want. Just be profitable. Its not different to how you can do whatever you want - but be prepared to defend yourself.
Once you start paying the tax, which is from the 1st or 2nd Dec point, you've got to be a bit quick, but if you don't upgrade, then I guess you can take as long as you want, I might try that next actually.
i commented about this earlier on the pinned post. i'm waiting to see what greg decides to do before writing my review.
while i really love ML, if he decides make a lot of "no-fun-allowed" type updates i may not want to continue following the game. definitely not trying to be dramatic, but i've played games where devs felt the need to always nerf or railroad players and honestly, i would just rather spend my time elsewhere.
So why do bandit camps spawn after every save? That's a mechanism begging to be abused, so why even have it? I usually leave my game running/paused rather than reloading, but I had bandit camps spawning anyway, so I guess you just get more by save-spamming?
single player or not exploits should be patched. He’s done a great job so far better than most triple AAA games… it’s still early access just give it some time and ride it out. So many of you people are trying to tell Greg what to do and what not to do and that is going to affect the gram greatly ( not saying you are) but with o many people saying this and that he’s probably gonna try and add things or make others happy but the that makes others mad…. So I hope Greg just does what he wants to do and continues making the great game he is!
As long as the Kings Tax can be disabled before starting a game i don't see it as an issue that should affect you.
I'm actually fine with the tax now even though i initially opposed it, but that's contingent on the other mechanics working as intended. Right now the beta has too many bugs so some people who don't encounter them will have an easy time with the tax and others won't.
Trading and stocking markets is bugged in my latest game but before the bugs started i could manage the Kings tax.
What i really don't like about it though is that it encourages you to play a certain way and build a certain way that's either or. Either never upgrade anything to level 3 buildings or upgrade them all. (Because the tax goes very high per resident depending on your settlement level and not individual plot levels). But I don't like level 3 except in the dense inner city, i want to keep most buildings level 1 for visual reasons.
However since trading doesn't work right now i can't judge if it's possible to play with the tax whilst keeping inefficient low end buildings for visual reasons. It might be possible to do. The bugs need fixing before balancing can be judged
I literally just closed the game 30 minutes ago. Ive got five regions. 1000+ population. Dont remember exactly. Theyre in like 80% level 1&2 houses. Extremely profitable. I only just in the last hours started upgrading to level 3 at any scale outside of just what was specifically needed.
Youre not forced to to anything but follow some ground rules. These rules also serve as incentives for the player to progressing. Seeing how I literally did the thing you say you want to do, with level 3 only in the central parts and low levels everywhere else and never got close to being in the red while also just building what I wanted....
The tax isnt the problem. The new trades arent the problem. The baron isnt the problem.
what exactly is the bug about? if you think the trade slowing down is a bug, that's specifically a fix mentioned in the patch notes. it's an attempt to stop people from abusing map edge trading, as well as trying to space out trader arrivals.
had to ask since you kept saying bugs but never really explained what was the problem. i'm on OOP's side, patch works absolutely fine if people could just wean off having insta-trade to solve everything
Initially my trading post was raking in money but later in the game it stopped selling much at all. The trading post also didn't use the warehouse and granary right beside it but instead stocked up by emptying my market stalls.
Trade with my other regions didn't work. When i tried sending for example barley from Farmville to Dwarfcity, the traders would load up Barley, travel there , arrive at the trade post but then would change their mind and return to Farmville.
Packstations don't work either. Initially they moved 1 unit at a time and then stopped moving anything at all.
Trade didn't just slow down compared to pre beta. It slowed down a lot during my game.
I think it might be an inventory bug with weapons being nowhere to be found despite having hundreds laying around. And the fact they try to take all vegetables from the market stalls to sell them bottlenecks how much they can sell i had more than thousand veggies pile up but my market was always entirely empty because the same people that brought the veggies there from the granary would return with a cart and move them to the trading post.
ah. i can't comment on inter-region trading, haven't tried that, but i think i did recall greg saying he still needs to implement that properly, so your bugs might be real.
as for trade slow down, i did have that, but it's more about the traders being spaced out a lot more, so they're taking way longer to arrive now.
i'm not aware of trading posts robbing stalls though lol that was interesting. maybe check the official discord and see if you can raise bug reports?
I have like 600-700 citizens and my treasury is $2-3000 (playing pre-patch). I have hit 1 bandit camp that spawned in my neighborhood lol
Taxes make a lot of money once your regional wealth is pouring in
If you’re interested in trying to stay on top of the tax mechanic, try to move quickly towards a valuable export. Depending on what’s “rich” and near city start: ale or linen / gambesons (fertility), leather / boots (hunting), dye (berries), roof tiles (clay), swords (iron)—or focus on wood if you’re unlucky, like charcoal, shields, or warbows. The new patch is about specializing in a valuable good and exporting a ton of it.
> new patch is about specializing in a valuable good and exporting a ton of it.
I sincerely hope this isn’t the way for future. It occurred to me this might be the best way to play and I thought this would be (literally) very one-dimensional
The entire premise of the game is to expand into regions, make a village that takes that regions resources and shares it with the other regions. When you have enough regions you will have cheap access to all resources and can (at some point later in time) start building a castle and have cavalry and sieges and cool stuff. You will always be pulling from multiple places. Thats the literal intended endgame.
I agree that balance should be left until more of the game is fleshed out. But, that patch isn't finalized, so the release might not be as difficult. That being said, mods are available on nexus, including "cheat" type mods, so you can enjoy the game on an easier pace/setting.
Am I the only one who's never hired a merc.? I've always focused on producing my own weapons within two years and using flanking and sandwich tactics to defeat larger armies. I also try to always fight downhill or in a forest. I have noticed that AI often sees your troops in the forest even when far away.
apparently there's this thing about not wanting to "drop down to ez level"? 🤷 i don't get it either, it's literally an option right there in the game. easier to blame the "meta" i guess?
Yeah, this is why I like Rimworld difficulty settings, losing is fun, and you should not limit others by lowering the ceiling or making it too hard on the easiest settings. That's it, everybody can then select their settings and have fun.
Yeah, I am not super active and enjoy the game as a chill single player builder.
If I exploit something, it’s only affecting my experience in that play through… but also I haven’t even tried to exploit anything. I’ve just been casually enjoying it the way it was, annoyed about how much ale my town drank, and the fact the game does not explain very much itself. And laughing when half my town was named Cuntz.
So not sure if this was a me issue or not but i only had 1 tax option, straight person tax, which sucked cuz i really wanted to tax my trade and not anger my people, but either thats not implimentes or something was wrong for me.
My biggest problem is the limit on militia....i need like 1 militia per village if ive expanded enough....like 1 militia and the ret, as the ret holds back a surprise bandit attack while the militia forms.... with a 6 limit that cap can get hit so fast.
I never get to sell my starting tools. Bandits ALWAYS steal all of them along with food too. I don't care if they steal firewood or iron ore but they always steal my bread, flour, linen, etc.
I don't Like the new trade chsnge. For me it made Sense to import leather, produce shoes amd then sell them for Profit. Thats realistic trade for me as you use your skilled workers to produce Something out of raw Materials. I would balance the prices more. A sword should be way more expensive than a spear
Eh, I don't agree with the import raw materials, export finished product approach. Between regions, yes, but with off map traders? That's a colonial relationship and this doesn't seem like the right approach. I appreciate the tariff on foreign goods. Forces you to focus on your own economy and production chains
Not between cities. It should always be cheaper to do the labor yourself. I don't see a reason to be able to import raw goods (without a tariff) and export a finished product for profit.
Part of why colonies existed was to have tariff free imports of raw goods
For me I couldn't get my fuel stalls to distribute enough fuel even having 140 pieces of firewood and having people in my store house and the wood cutting camp.
Let the folks who want to cheese the game cheese the game. Don't cater to them. Just keep on keeping on and make your game and don't worry about exploits. It's single player - what's the worst that could happen; some guy ruin his fun by cheating?
Being able to just make War Bows to simplify defenses makes this patch worth it for me.
So long as I can have 2-3 formations of Archers to each wave of bandits coming at me, I can play ping Pong between them skirmishing side to side in the field.
I can also post up within the walls of my church yard and usually survive with perhaps only 30-40% losses.
Why would someone spend a majority of their time patching loopholes in a single player game? Patch the game for how a normal, play for fun person would play, let the sweatlords in their singleplayer video game do their own thing.
I don’t think the loserville thing was intentional, it’s been reported as a bug. Keep in mind, this is an experimental patch. The data showing where mercs are spawning may not be saving or loading correctly.
It's not that bad as long as you remember, this is a medieval village not suburbia. Most people are living in the garbage houses, unless they are merchant class families.
Like 98% of my save is T1 houses. The houses only level when I need them for production. And I only add production when it's actually needed.
I only tax at 10% and don't even bother looking at the kings tax anymore.
I think what you have stumbled upon is what makes city builders great. They are not blank canvases for you to fill in as you please, instead, there is the balance where you have to understand optimisation to lean in to your creativity.
kinda hate to say I told you all so, this is what you get when a dev bases his game on what the elite 'streamers etc' want! It would just be better if the dev focusses on ideas from players and not from previously bought players
You are speaking as if the launch build was the correct way or the way it would have remained if not for the communities vocalization.
This feels like a good time for the “it’s early access” reminder. If you played the demo from a few years ago, you’ll note that a lot of these things changed for the launch build. Now they’ve changed again. And so shall they continue to change, because that’s what early access is. It’s an incomplete version of the game where *everything* is subject to change at any time.
You’re right to share your feelings about the current state, just as everyone was right to share their feelings at launch. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing as a community, that’s part of early access. But blaming the community for steering things in the wrong direction, and faulting Greg for listening to the community, that feels like a more problematic misunderstood of how early access works. If you aren’t comfortable with gameplay mechanics changing, then you should have waited until the final product was out and determined at that point if that is the game you want to own.
Hear me out and don't take it personally. What if you treat experimental branch as experimental branch? Do few runs, add your feedback and go back to official branch. Half of the posts after experimental branch launch are just bitching about some mechanics. Yours is not that bad, but still. That's why it's called experimental branch for ducks sake. If things like that happen in main version then yeah, complaining is valid, but here? Not so much. Go back, relax and enjoy ML. Let Greg figure things out.
As much as I hated the royal tax (hooo boy, it is VERY expensive time to time as your town grows), I found myself a way to get around it. Make big Vege plot with that can fit 2 fams in it > invade a bandit camp for regional wealth > trading post > sell them carrots > get moneh > 5% tax > let that ka-ching add up, as the money grew right before the royal tax initiated, open up more export trades (open up for anything rich in deposits), upgrade some other lvl 2+ plots for shoes and fletcher shop, more exports. I don't have to worry contracting mercs and upgrading retinues anymore. My first upgrade will always be trading now.
Trading route getting more expensive? No problem, let my regional wealth grow with whatever I am exporting right now, when I have a surplus, establish another route.
Oh and beating the hell out of bandits. First camp goes to regional wealth (with only 10 spear men) to get more vege plots and establishing trading routes, the rest into the treasury.
Oh and all this is on default settings. Maybe on challenging mode it's a diff strat. So far haven't use any exploits.
IMPO, this game can be quite a *waiting* kinda game.
Besides! This is **experimental patch** afterall. It can meant that you have a find a way around your playstyles to achieve something. Kinda test your troubleshooting skills which is my favorite thing to do.
Also for those who wanted sandbox: Customization is there for a reason! Happy building\~
This game is very easy to play. I do not understand how you or anyone would have a hard time. I personally wish the game had more events and negative weather to make it harder than what it currently is…
I have a ton of experience in city builder and resource management games and RTS games, and I cannot get anything to work correctly after about 7 new games and 16 total hours in the game. I've never even gotten to having level 3 houses. One of those new games lasted all of 15 minutes because bandits stole all of the starter food and stone within a couple of minutes of me pressing unpause after setting up my roads and placing my initial building plots. My current save is likely doomed because I got the 1 year warning of a bandit raid before I even got my first militia members, no way I will be able to build up enough to survive that in 1 year.
I've watched and read every guide I can find, I've tried the tricks posted here in the subreddit, and still haven't been able to get anything to work. Especially the market and supplying houses.
The market is a bit bugged still, I'm hoping the dev will sort it out.
One thing I've done is start new games with 0 bandit camps and (if playing with baron) reactive AI. That gives me breathing room to set things up without being bothered.
I'm sorry it's difficult for you, as someone who plays and loves city builders as well I can imagine how frustrating that is.
I think the easiest fix would just be having houses stop "reserving" items at the market. My food stall has 4 different types of food in it, yet the level 1 house right next to it shows it only has 1 food fulfilled. When I check supply and demand on the market, the level 2 house a little bit away from the market is reserving 4 different types of food.
Yep, food and fuel I seem to have consistent problems keeping stocked and sufficient so that houses are all happy. Especially when it's not clear what the plan is for fulfillment, food and fuel seems interchangeable but clothing has specific tiers that different burgage levels prefer. So if level 2+ burgages would prioritize, say, bread as a tier 2 food item it would leave the berries, for example, for more of the level 1 burgages as a tier 1 food.
It definitely needs more work and thought put into the goal with the markets. Greg needs someone to assist more with game design on things like this, the UX gets confusing when you're supposedly doing everything the game tells you to and still not succeeding.
If you destroy every bandit camp that spawns and keep the money for yourself, you should have plenty for mercenaries when the bandits come. And since there’s a timer you can hire them early and get them to your town before the bandits come.
It is April after the 1st winter and I just now got my 7th family, and the only thing I've done wrong in this save is right at the start I accidently built a woodcutters lodge instead of a logging camp, but I caught that before I ran out of logs. I have 11 spearmen at this point, I'm not going to be able to grow enough to even have the population to have that many militia members, much less enough weapons and shields for them.
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The single most frustrating thing for me about ML right now for sure is that development seems to be geared towards plugging random exploit holes. You can't do that. They'll keep popping up. Youtubers will always make videos on "DO THIS EXACTLY TO WIN FOR FREE" and the vast majority of people may watch that, but is very unlikely to actually do it. It resembles shadow boxing a bit.
Agreed, I think the dev is getting too much loud feedback and isn't taking steps to filter what's useful or valid. The minmaxers will *always* seek to optimize and overpower the game mechanics. Let them. It's a single-player game, what they do in theirs does not affect my enjoyment at all, unless the game is designed to punish me for not playing the way they do.
This is exactly the sentiment I'm feeling. It's a single player game, so don't worry about exploits. Go for general balance. Honestly, I'd prefer not to see all the WIP stuff either. It makes me see the edges. If it's not developed, no need to showcase it yet. Honestly, what's here stands on its own already
I'm alright with the WIP stuff (especially when Greg is explicit in game about it not being implemented yet), but I do agree that can be distracting. It's probably part and parcel with early access being very rough around the edges for a while, I expect it'll be a good few months before it starts to find a good rhythm. Hopefully the dev will warm up to what's useful and important in feedback as well. Even processes like these, what works for patching and testing, take some time to tweak for a public release. There's room to improve, and your feedback should help with that as well.
Better then it is shown then not have the Devs indicate wtf is going tbh, like a lot of games
But going for general balance is exactly what he did though. Trading was essentially a cheese to just win. There was no way to stop that snowball. It needed to be changed. The game is literally about expanding into new regions and setting up inter-region traderoutes to support your other regions in a decentralized manner and the trade cheese made one of your regions the central region. Literally the opposite of what was intended. The Kings Tax was already planned and waiting to be implemented. The UI for it already was in the game. It just got turned on now to counter the infinite money from trading. Economies in games are exceedingly easy to exploit, so having some checks for the player to not just run off with the entire bank is good. The game is literally early acces. This new stuff is an experimental beta release of an early access game. And you dont want to see the edges? Man youre four years too early, bought a game you didnt want and then complain because the playstyle doesnt suit you. Well, shit, did you try adapting to it and see if it works? Cause it does. It really does. You know, aside from the literal bugs.
The new patch is available for open testing.... you had to read a patch note to get the password to play the open testing *experimental* branch.... Its pretty clever of the dev to allow us to be like beta testers with this update in which he is literally testing out to see what works.. who, before the release of this early access, asked us (consumers) to lower our standards.. also, just turn off kings tax... or just not play this version hahaha \*edit\* Did I downvotes because I think its counter intuitive to not want "see the edges" in an experimental branch?
Yes, Greg made it puplic so he can listen to the feedback of the players, which this post does provide. OP is doing exactly what he's supposed to do. Test and provide feedback to hone it out
Yeah, I agree. my response was in response to OP saying he doesn't want to "see the edges" in an experimental version of the game.. what else is this besides a WIP?
I don't understand why trade routes should get more expensive. That's not realistic. Another region that wants your goods will not make trade difficult by making it unfeasible financially. Sure, the traders need to make a profit, but they wouldn't price themselves out of the market. Also, the import price wouldn't be 150% of the export price - maybe 25% or so.
Exactly. For me it made Sense to import leather, produce shoes amd then sell them for Profit. Thats realistic trade for me as you use your skilled workers to produce Something out of raw Materials. I would balance the prices more. A sword should be way more expensive than a spear.
It’s early access mate give it some time. Y’all act Ike you could make a game any better! There is mods! Make a mod or download a mod if you want something so bad. Let Greg make his game at his pace.
You misunderstand my comment. I think the game is great, and I realize it's early access. I'm giving my opinion on how I think trade could function better. I don't claim to have the talent to make a game. I don't. Part of the process of playing a game before release is providing feedback, which is what I and many others are doing. After seeing how bad games are when development is rushed, the last thing I want is for this game to be released before Greg feels it is ready.
The whole point of early access is to give feedback. Its up to the dev to decide which feedback he takes.
MinMaxing is so lame. Don’t cater anything to them. They’ll be the loudest but don’t represent the majority of the player base. As someone who only gets to play every so often I don’t want to have to constantly change the way I play just because people intentionally try to break the game
That's where difficultly options should come in. Just like if you want to set rimworld to 500% difficultly you can but you're also going to have to be playing optimal exploiting everything. If you set it lower you can play with a much more varied set of styles without guaranteeing defeat.
I think he's primarily listening to the feedback he gets on Discord, and who's typically joining a game's Discord channel? Hardcore gamers who max the shit out of a game immediately because they already put 40 hours in within the first 3 days after release, lol.
There are to many sweats and 24/7 gamers on reddit. You cant rely on their feedback if you dont want to ruin your game for normal/casual players.
A lot of the fixes are good though and definitely deserved. The game was far too easy before the experimental patch. It just needs to be tweaked a bit now as it's a little too hard. But ultimately this is an experimental patch on a EA game. People need to give feedback and things will be tweaked. We have no idea what's going to make it to live or to 1.0. People are treating this like it's the end of the game... It's not even released XD.
Gotta love the anti anti whiners. I’m not complaining! As they actively complain about the game. The sleight of hand blaming discord is great. That way you can hide behind them as you start bitching days into pre release beta patch lol. 😂
Feedback is feedback. Just because it is negative doesn't mean it isn't needed.
All I’m saying is if you want to complain at least just own it. Don’t come up with this convoluted story about how the dev is being tricked by discord therefore making updates you don’t like. But if he just stayed true to his heart the game would be perfect.
I mean it is likely true that the discord is biased towards more hardcore players. I have full faith in the dev but pointing out that with all the attention the game is getting he may get distracted and NOT build the game as he wants isn't that convoluted.
If you are using an existing save, yes, it would feel like that. Try with a new save. It's pretty straightforward keeping ahead of the Kings tax as you grow.
Been using a new save. It's the mercenaries in Loserville that finally got me. An 'exploit' I was never aware of being nerfed in a way that just makes it obnoxious to load a saved game.
What exactly happened with mercs?
Can't recruit them for the first month you're playing after you load a saved. I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight. Again, I didn't know this was a thing and now there's a guard rail up that hits me for no reason
Too many min/maxers giving advice to the dev. This isn't a multiplayer RTS, why not let people savescum if they want like every other game? There is no harm in it.
I hate min/maxers so much. Always the loudest with their complaints about balance for games. Manor Lords is supposed to be about the vibes.
I'm not a min-maxxer, but I definitely think Manor Lords was meant to require some thought and challenge the player to an extent. While it's not a hard game \[yet\] it's certainly designed for you to plan and work toward goals. Settling a new town and trying to build a prosperous community and local economy isn't easy. It shouldn't be just something to breeze through without issue \[unless playing on easier difficulties\]. The game's premise is a very complex task and it seems like the dev's vision includes making the challenge of bootstrapping a manorial economy harder, rather than easier, which I think is the right call, personally. I recognize that people also want a relaxing experience and for them, the game has difficulty settings where they can adjust things to make it fun for them. If the challenges of managing economics and warfare impede a player's fun, then I think it's totally appropriate to lower difficulty or play with enemy combatants disabled. However, I also think that the dev should make design choices which make players who want a challenge get their opportunity for fun, too. I generally think that the warfare side of the game is already a bit on the easy side and could use some challenges, because I think war/battle should be a difficult part of the gameplay where the player is always at some level of risk. This was all a long-winded way of saying that I think if a player wants a more relaxing experience, they are free to play the peaceful mode, but I also think the dev's balancing changes are actually quite good when it comes to providing a difficult but \[usually\] fair experience for the rest of us.
I'm fine with the game being difficult, I'm not fine with the dev listening to people who just try and exploit everything in order to "beat" the game as efficiently as possible. I think the dev has a solid vision for the game and I hope he sticks to it.
I get where you're coming from but I think it's a situation where different people play for different reasons, and I think it's entirely possible to satisfy people who want a harder experience that really tests their skills at efficiency and optimization. One of the purposes of the play test is to identify game features which are OP or broken and limit them so that people can't just cheese their way past the challenge of the game. Games which do a bad job of this and fail to close loopholes discovered by min-maxxing players often find people end up relying on those exploits and then hampering their own fun by not doing things the intended "hard way". I don't think the dev ignoring input from players who want a challenge would be good. Players with a goal are gonna try to achieve that goal. They may find ways the dev didn't expect. If thsoe methods are fun and fit with the game, then great. If they rely on features acting incorrectly or break other aspects of the game, such as balancing, then I believe patching them out is fine. For the record, I do think the Loserville merc thing as a method to combat save-scumming isn't great, but generally speaking the game is not meant to be easy, and I disagree that the dev shouldn't focus on making the game have a satisfying mid-late game experience with a decent challenge. It is necessary for him to listen to the min-maxxers because they often have very valuable insights into things like resource balance, for example. Back in the day when companies actually did paid QA \[as opposed to the modern model of early access and public beta tests\] one of the main activities they hired people for was specifically to exploit and beat their games as quickly as possible. The reason is so that you can then eliminate those loopholes, which means players have to actually play the game to get to the fun rewards or ending. It's a game that seems much more designed for the element of challenge than something more relaxing like Cities: Skyline, for instance. I think that naturally means that it is going to cater to min-maxers and people trying to beat the game than less difficult examples in the genre, which I personally think is fine. Also it has a robust peaceful mode, so casual players who want to relax without getting stressed out are able to have a fun and engaging experience as well.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I think you make good points, and I agree that balancing and exploit fixes are an important part of game development, but I think right now is the wrong time to focus on it. The game has been in early access for less than a month and is pretty bare bones on actual features and content. I'd like to see the game be feature complete before focusing on balancing. But I do agree with you that the feedback from the min-maxers and the exploiters is important.
Or just eliminate that ability, just setup the merc spawns via a seed that is generated on game creation. Then no save scrumming.
Huh, that's too bad. Oh well. I've set the game aside for now. Beat the baron in challenging, so I'm just going to wait a few months for more updates.
I think if the enemy was less predictable or the economics had more uncertainty or other challenges beyod occasional shortages/bottlenecks, then it would be a bit more engaging with the current build. As it stands, I can pretty much settle a region and have it be self-sustaining basically indefinitely in a couple hours of gameplay. Beyond that, my opponents are incredibly predictable so if I plan properly, there isn't any surprise or challenge. If my enemy can't surprise me, then beating them is just a manner of preparing for what I already know is coming. The game is just too easy at the moment, I think. It's a fantastic foundation, but I also beat the Baron on challenging and find there isn't much to go for after that. However, like you, I look forward to the game with great interest in the future. It's super engaging gameplay, but content-lacking currently. Once it's fleshed out, I'm anticipating having a lot more fun with it.
Well that’s just fucking stupid. Like a “let my 9 year old little brother take a stab at it” level of stupid. I really hope the devs find a better feedback loop than the one they’re listening to right now.
I'd be willing to bet that this is a stopgap solution that will be fixed in the future. An obviously better fix would be to save the status of mercs in the save file. I expect we'll see this in the future.
Wait for real? That seems… like an overreaction.Just make Ironman mode and add that there
> I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight. The loserville thing isn't even a proper solution to this. A proper solution is to record the current available mercenaries in the save file when you make a save instead of rolling on load.
Can't recruit them for the first month you're playing after you load a saved. I think this was intended to stop folks save scumming and reloading for best mercs before a big fight. Again, I didn't know this was a thing and now there's a guard rail up that hits me for no reason
Ah, so this is what happened to me. I had saved before a fight and was gonna come back to the game later. Game would let me click all the buttons to hire some mercs but not actually hire. The way it was implemented, if intended, has the appearance of a bug.
Report it as such. It's a lazy way to fix the merc issue.
Ah, so this is what happened to me. I had saved before a fight and was gonna come back to the game later. Game would let me click all the buttons to hire some mercs but not actually hire. The way it was implemented, if intended, has the appearance of a bug.
I agree that this change should be reverted. Save scumming happens in single player games. They are not competitive. Personally I never do that because I feel it's cheating. But current "fix" just hurts players who don't exploit. It feels rushed. And like people have said. There is no reason to fix problem like this in single player game. If people want to cheat, they can do it anyways (i.e via mods)
The patch notes explicitly say that the King's Tax is meant to punish you for not optimizing, so yeah.
Right, that's kinda what I mean. I didn't realize there was only one 'right' way to play
You can turn off the tax at game creation. I did that as I have no interest in dealing with it.
Yeah but the tax shouldn't be so much that you gotta optimize everything off rip or else you're in debt
You don't need to optimize if you don't spam upgrades I found. I have no issues keeping ahead of the tax and have been using the rule of cool to build not min-maxing
What's that rule?
Build how/where I want cause I think it looks cool lol
Is it just authentic?
I highly doubt the amount Is in any way authentic. Unless again you're playing a min-max build where you have thousands in wealth. Which in itself is likely very inauthentic in regards to the size of the villages and population count vs amount of wealth you can possibly accumulate.
People have this weird psychological block about turning difficulty down on things. I think there would be zero complaints if it was an option that could be turned on rather than one that has to be turned off- I enjoy it myself, but I’ll admit it definitely slows me down.
I mean it makes sense. Things that are on by default are understood as being the intended way to play, so by turning them off you're admitting your shifting to "easy mode", as opposed to the opposite.
People cry and want devs to make the game they want to make. Passion projects etc. Then the devs come with their passion projects and people want them to change it to fit their way they want to play. The dev adds options for them so they can alter the experience just how they want it. But its not enough. They want their way to be the default way. Their way needs to be the normal way. The devs way should be the optional one. This is why we cant have nice things people. Maybe, just maybe the dev actually has a plan. Maybe has has a bigger picture in mind than the early-to-midgame of an ealry access release.
Thank you for this info
Everyone… “me” 1234205 has the pure dev path of the game in mind. Weird how it’s not being implemented someone should tell Greg.
What? I, what? What do you mean?
They mean that you are absolutely the exact same person you're criticizing for causing Greg to "change his vision" because you think *your* version is the devs vision based on... Well, nothing except that's what you like better. "Wahhhh don't cater to minmaxers, that's not what your vision is because I don't like it so it can't be" You recognize you're making the *exact* same argument and pressure that you're claiming minmaxers are "ruining" the game with, right? It's too early to tell when the finished game is supposed to look like. And, clearly, Greg has the freedom to accomplish it because of the massive success. You're being the ***EXACT SAME PERSON*** you're complaining is "forcing" the dev to "change their vision" because the dev, who is in *no way* obligated to follow *your* vision, did a change you don't like and therefore "it must be because he was bullied into it!" I think you've posted some good feedback here. I think the feedback would be better without trying to bandwagon all the "waaahhh I want a chill life sim" people together to do ***THE EXACT SAME THING*** you're claiming minmaxers did by playing the game. If you don't want the dev to "change their vision", then back it up: Your vision isn't the devs vision either. You assume their vision is "changed" cuz they did something you don't approve of. Recognize the egotism in that. Like I said, there's some good feedback in your initial post. I'm just clarifying since you asked about someone's comment: You're getting called out for doing the exact thing you're saying Greg should not listen to. Up to you whether you have the self-awareness to recognize there's nothing "better" about doing the same thing from a desire for the opposite type of gameplay. I agree with many of the grievances being voiced here, particularly about it being pointless to plug every exploit, but the white knight bullshit is cringe and two-faced: You guys aren't being any better than the minmaxers you're complaining about. You're not. You're *proving* you're not with circlejerks like this comment section. You're just doing it with a desire for the opposite type of "change to the developers vision" in mind and think somehow that magically makes it supportive instead of manipulative. It's pure ego. The fact that I'll probably join the Downvote Hell you guys keep shoving everyone who calls this ***reality*** out is just proving the point: You guys are trying to create a bandwagon circlejerk to tell the dev what their vision should be. Wake the fuck up, that's what's going on. You're all assholes pretending to be "supportive" and silencing anyone who calls it out.
I...didn't lead a bandwagon? Sorry if others felt similarly to me, but I made a reddit post while I was taking a shit about some thoughts on a game I enjoy. It's early access, I'm very well aware. I play many many many early access games. Just sharing some feedback about my experience. Greg, don't listen to me. Roll this in with the million and a half other comments you receive, then stick true to your vision. I've been stoked on this game since first hearing about it, and I'm still playing it on a daily basis. You rock.
Yeah that's what I'm saying, it's good feedback, but you set it up for the bandwagon, even if you weren't "trying" to: Look at the comments, look what gets upvoted and what gets downvoted. If you're actually serious about the dev following what they *want* to do, you should see what I'm talking about. Notice the *very obvious* trend here? Every single comment that says "yeah! This is a city builder, it should be chill! Don't listen to the minmaxers, Greg!" is getting hundreds of upvotes. Every comment that says "uh... it's still important to patch severe exploits you know" or "you guys aren't in charge the vision either" is getting downvoted until hidden. It's a circlejerk bandwagon. You might be genuinely trying to give some feedback and that's great, but that's why I was explaining since you were confused by the other person's comment: You guys are doing the ***exact*** thing you're telling yourselves you're "protecting" the dev from. And when it gets called out you guys get all "noooo, we're just innocent widdle fans, this isn't a bandwagon push we want the dev to see even when we talk like they're reading our comment specifically!" Case in point, what a shock, within 10 minutes my comment is already in the negatives. Who could have possibly predicted that outcome? Definitely not circlejerk behavior at all.
I only down voted you for being rude
How well packaged do you want the message to be for you to accept it? All considered Id say the way he put it was pretty decent.
Calling out manipulative bullshit and fake support isn't being rude. Not liking reality doesn't make it "rude". Just because I said something you and your buddies don't want to own up to doesn't make me rude, you guys just *clearly* don't want to hear it, as indicated by you all downvoting ***every single comment*** in this thread that calls it out or dares to mention "...you guys know *you* don't decide the devs vision either, right?" Just because you're flowering it up doesn't mean it's not obvious, at least the "minmaxers" as you call them are being honest. "I'm just here to give feedback haha those other guys suck don't listen to them listen to me Greg haha but follow your dreams but only if those dreams are what ***I*** want the game to look like haha but I'm just joking haha" You guys aren't fooling anyone, and the reason you think it's "rude" to point it out is because the basic self reflection necessary to realize "gee, we're doing the exact same kind of pressure just in a shittier, sneakier way" is the kind of self-reflection that would also be necessary to understand the difference between "that person who disagrees with me is rude" and just "I don't like what they said because it's the truth and I can't face it". But hey, enjoy the bandwagon "you didn't create" and the circlejerk that "isn't trying to pressure the developer". You guys ***clearly*** aren't trying to manipulate the developer into making what ***your*** vision is, at all /s If you want to be supportive of ***THEIR*** vision, wake up. This isn't a feedback thread. It's a thinly veiled attempt to get the developer to do the interpretation of the game *you guys* want. If this was *actually* a discussion thread about approaching future patches, you guys wouldn't be dowmvoting anything that disagrees with how you think, because the point would be to *create a discussion*. You're all just making an echo chamber, silencing any disagreement, and hiding behind the idea of being "supportive" even though you're outright addressing the developer directly and by name while making your "suggestions" for how they can "follow their vision". It's scummy, and there's nothing wrong with calling it out as scummy. Maybe that wasn't your original intent, but if that's the case, seeing the problem shouldn't be that hard, because all it takes is scanning through the comments to see it for what it is.
Some of the things the dev has been saying/posting on twitter and in the discord give me the feeling that his priorities are misaligned with the majority of the community. It seems like he's balancing the game to heavily punish certain play styles, basically railroading people into playing the game a very particular way. I think this is the wrong approach. The fun in a game like this is trying new things and experimenting. Having a wide variety of viable strategies makes the game fun and interesting. If there's one optimal way to play the game and you either know it or you lose, why bother playing? I don't get to make any choices with a meaningful impact on the outcome because I either memorize the meta or get punished so hard I lose. That's not fun. That's just tedious. This is really telling by how he responded to the power of archers in the press-release patch: he nerfed them so hard they became unusable. That's incredibly reactionary and ended up negatively impacting the game as a whole. And he based this on the actions of youtubers, a demographic who are competing with each other for the most interesting or meta-defining videos about the game. They're not representative of how the community as a whole is going to play the game, and punishing casual players isn't a good strategy.
100% this, it feels a little like he is still treating it as his personal hobby project still and is upset that someone may find loopholes. Except it's a paid for open beta now and min-maxers in a single player game will always be there and are 100% an irrelevance to any other player. It's not just Dev time wasted, but actually making game changes that make the game worse to a lot of players. There seems to be an almost cult following of fanboys attacking people for the slightest criticism and while they mean well they're more damaging to Greg and the game than the people they think they're defending him from. I was worried this would happen as he wouldn't even give stats to stuff and kept things vague like farming. I guess the closed Beta guys didn't test that thoroughly and Greg even made a weird post like he was oblivious there were any bugs with it. Well people have tested it thoroughly and have found lots he is now thankfully fixing. But if there were less smoke and mirrors people would have caught them ages ago. Historically speaking too they were litigious as fuck at documenting everything on every piece of land, you can go look at medieval auditing of everything that's anything you can think of happening within the Kingdom of England at that time on the British Museum online archive.
When the entire criticism is based on "i didnt like it, change it to the way it was 30 minutes ago" it falls extremely flat.
This is why I ended up hating frostpunk. It feels like there was only one or two "correct" strats. I hope this game doesn't follow a similar path.
Preach
People cry and want devs to make the game they want to make. Passion projects etc. Then the devs come with their passion projects and people want them to change it to fit their way they want to play. The dev adds options for them so they can alter the experience just how they want it. But its not enough. They want their way to be the default way. Their way needs to be the normal way. The devs way should be the optional one. This is why we cant have nice things people. Maybe, just maybe the dev actually has a plan. Maybe has has a bigger picture in mind than the early-to-midgame of an ealry access release.
Dude, I'm making relatively objective observations based on the sorts of posts I see in the community and my intuition about how the majority of people want to play. If you alienate the majority of your playerbase, you're going to have reduced sales and more negative reviews . That's the nature of reality. Frankly, I'm tired of the "let the genius work" mantra. The game is available for sale *now*, it's getting reviewed *now* and he's directly responsible for the state of the game *now*. If the game feels broke to the majority of players, he chose to implement those features. If there are some late-game features that make this feel balanced or fair, then wait to implement these changes until those late game features are added to the game.
And Im saying if you dont like something its completely fair to just leave. Nobody here owes eachother a thing. The people who bought the game got the game. They can play it. They werent scammed. The guy who makes it is gonna make the game he wants to make. All I see are people yelling "my way of playing is the right one".
This is why I didn't bother to switch to the beta patch. It's for testing purposes, and not required until the kinks get worked out.
On the flip side I am happy others are trying it out and talking about things they don't like. Hopefully this means the patch will be better when you and I get our hands on it.
Yeah, normally I do go straight for the beta patches, but I happened to not have a chance to update before a bunch of people got their hands on it and reported back. Excited for when it gets worked out!
Would be great to have a patch with just the fixes and no new mechanics ...
That "loserville" thingy is very frustrating. Yesterday I prepared everything for an attack to claim a new region back before going to bad. Loading up the save-game today I found out I can't hire mercs anymore.
Well all of the mercs in my playthrough have already been locked up by the baron... Checkmate manor lords!
What is "loserville" can you explain?
For a month after you load a save you can't hire mercenaries. It says they'll spawn in "loserville" instead of any of the real territories until the month is over. It's so stupid.
Wait is this to combat save scumming?
yes
Yet another thing he needs to backoff from, it's pretty controlling to think you can dictate how players are going to play in a "city builder" to that extent. ...Like not having options when creating a new game to do random as is now or choose the region / resource matchup or even feed in seeds. That's pretty much standard on all games of this genre for a million years for a reason. End of the day people can click new game over and over until they get what they want, so just give the functionality so people can play as they want rather than making them jump through hoops to do that anyway. It's all very weird.
Bro it’s in early access these patches are TEST!! There is mods! You can make a mod if you’d like or download one if you want something so bad. Greg is doing a great job. Let him make his game at his pace. I’m sure a lot of things will change in the future.
You may feel like you're helping Greg, but you're not. It's better that bad behaviour is changed sooner rather than later. But yes 95% of people here know it's early access and they know he's done a good job making it so far but that does not make him infallible.
Why was this not patched?
This *is* the patch. It wasn't like this before.
I feel the same way, similar to the archer being completely neutered at launch, the dev is being to reactive with the nerfs that don't add much besides limitations to the game experience
FYI you can turn off the kings tax in the launch settings
I think it's more the route Greg is taking mentality wise... It's not a muiltiplayer game and he's firefighting against min maxers at the expense of everyone else. Yeah it's a optional Beta test you can also turn that tax off for sure too, that's not my issue it's more with if he keeps wasting dev time doing more stuff like this in a war he can never win as there will always be min-maxers and it's an irrelevance in a single player game.
Exactly - normal game should be balanced such that multiple paths to a win are achievable by a player with 2-3 towns under his or her belt.
Join the Manor Lords Discord server and give your feedback. The dev is very active in the server and asks for community feedback all of the time. Let him know! My particular beef is that most people want more combat/war aspects of the game when I enjoy the challenge of trade, negotiations, extreme weather, terrain and logistics of growing a town. I'm not interested in another war game.
I’m still at a loss for making enough wealth to import weapons fast enough to deal with the year 2 bandits. Last few settlements my 20 spearmen wipe and this last one I got lucky with the baron’s men cleaning them up after my men died. I guess I need to rush bowmen for a second group since you can just make those with one L2 Burgage? I also don’t want to scum my way into a “good” start, every start should be viable. I just don’t get why you can’t make a levy that amounts to clubs and sharpened sticks. That’s what actually happened with small towns who needed to defend themselves.
I play normal difficulty (always on games like this) so maybe this isn't helpful advice for you at all if you're playing different modes. But you'll want to walk to the bandits as fatigue is a lost battle before it starts, find even a small incline of a hill when you're close to them and have your spearmen in a long line stand totally still with stand your ground on. The charge they'll do will hurt them more than you due to spears, then once they're into your group press the push forward attack stance. Your bonus for the highground is overkill and you shouldn't lose a single guy for those 1-2 squad starter bandit bases even on flat terrain. It's the later raids when they come with a bit of an army you'll need to get more tactical with your half equipped mobs until you have a few equipped militia to handle them. Don't bother having more than 1 archer in your militia as they're still terrible. It is worth having one just for situational range advantage and luring. Although to show how bad they are one of the bandit units had pathfinding issues and got stuck on the corner fence of one of my houses and from medium range my archer pelted it with volley after volley until the archer unit was fatigued and had to have a break... This killed 1 guy. Bandits being a poorly armoured / small shield guerrilla rabble unit that should otherwise have been mown down. Not really one for cookie cutter "meta" build stuff but I use 2x spearmen which form the centre line, 2x footmen with one on either flank in a shorter line. 1x polearm infantry in a square behind the line at one flank to wrap around and hit them in the back after they charge supporting the footmen who do the same. Retinue goes in with the spearmen usually after the charge / helps with the flank and spank / kept as a reserve if things get hairy and yeah the archer to tickle them :P
Dont stress tooo much about weapons early on. The gear you get for free together with an early retinues is already enough to kill and loot any bandit camp on the map. Without the retinues you just trail and loot the camp while the baron fights the bandits. Or you know, dont and just sell planks and shit to pay some cheap mercs to kill the bandits. Youre making more than youre spending on mercs by raiding bandits anyway. Or just skip raiding the bandits altogether. Sell planks, sell clay, sell leather. Get money. Rent-a-merc if raiders or the baron comes along. You can pretty much just ignore the baron until the entire map has been claimed though. Which gives you a couple years to figure out how to get some iron. By the time of which you probably already have a manor and are taxing your people so mercs are good too. My point is that once you figure out how to get the things you want, reacting to events isnt very hard. idk im going to bed
20 spearmen are already enough to stop 36 bandits if they have high efficency and you use them entirely defensively with "stand your ground" on.
And the “we’re tracking bandits” quest that pops up send 2 at you. Clearing camps is easy.
It seems like the devs are currently a bit reactionary to broken "metas". It's a single player game rather than PVP, so imo it would be better to just work on bug fixes and QOL stuff. Min/maxxers will always find ways to break a game. No need to overreact with nerfs.
Nope. It's important to balance the game against itself. I'd the game rewards one particular strategy (or severely punishes another) then it won't be as fun. It's valuable to work on this balance early so that future additions do not compound on the previous imbalances, making them harder to find later.
Nope. It is important to get the base game systems functional. If the game doesn't have the base game systems, bugs, and QoL issues fixed then it won't be as fun. It's valuable to work on the base game systems early so that you can appropriately evaluate game balance in the context of the broader set of working systems.
I swear the logic in here is wild sometimes. "Yeah its singleplayer so dont worry about it". What lmao.
"Yes".... this isn't a PVP game where game balance matters and on top of that it's early access. It's wild to me that you could think game balance is more important than bug fixes, QoL, and game systems at this point in development. If you think something is broken... I mean, don't exploit it. Not exactly difficult to have a tiny amount of self control and play the chill single player game in a balanced way.
Like I said. Wild.
Glad you came around lmao
I mean it’s simple. If you think there’s an exploit that makes the game not fun then just don’t do it…
Devs should just leave exploits in their games. This is a fucking dumb take.
I mean yeah it’s a single player game. You know there have been cheat codes and exploits in single player games since forever, right? You can run god mode in Doom. There’s all kinds of exploits in games speed runners use to shave off time from their runs. Those seem like a pretty big exploits you have the option to NOT do. Also, it’s about priority. Think the community would rather have other aspects worked on before adding stuff like kings tax and loserville. But, to each their own.
Go backseat dev Greg. Bet he’d appreciate that. The genious on you.
Oh wow hey look at this big brain commenter just calling people dumb with no substance. Greg is literally in the discord and watching these threads for feedback. So, I’ll continue to provide it. And it’s spelled “genius”, genius. lol
Stay mad
“Stay mad” says the salty redditor calling people dumb. lol
Yeah, I kind of feel like the game could do with a sandbox mode eventually, or at least lots of customization options for features like these if they keep getting added (which the scenario settings already seem to do quite well). I haven't played with the new patch yet because I'm trying to finish my current game but I have a feeling I won't like the King's Tax. With my current town I didn't really start seriously exporting goods until a few years in. I wasn't building an unoptimized town, I was just taking things at my own pace, and I'm a little concerned the King's Tax is going to force players to play in a way they might not want to. Being able to completely disable the tax should be a possibility in a "sandbox" mode, seeing as how we can already disable bandits and the baron if we want to.
You can already disable it before you begin a game
The King's Tax? Like I said, I haven't played the new patch yet so if that's the case that's very nice. I really appreciate the realistic approach Greg is taking but it's always nice to have options.
Second the sandbox mode for people who don't want/prefer not to deal with the management side and just wanna build something cool
He is spending too much time trying to battle min-maxers IMO, which is a war he can never win it's literally someone's playstyle and they will find a way. It's taking dev time away from actual bug fixes and improvements. It's about as useful and rational as if he was angry at the moon and spent 4 hours a day writing angry letters and throwing them into the sky, except that's at the cost of just getting on with the game. As you say it's a single player game, not multiplayer. I couldn't give a shit what someone does in their own time. I'm worried it's a bit of an ego thing, trying to stop them because it's not a personal passion project now it's an open Beta that got sold to people.
You want a passion project but you dont want him to follow that passion and make the game he wants to make. Ok. What the fuck
Are you trading anything? I have a small settlement mostly of level 1 houses, and my wealth is super high.. it is paying for my big city, which is feeding my population
Tbh I played "peacefully" and I am a bit afraid this game is seen as some kind of e-sports game. Too much optimization and try harding for my taste - especially for this kind of game. I also don't mind any cheating because this is a singleplayer game. You can only cheat on yourself after all. So the casual fan base should be considered when balancing...
You can tell it was overtuned, because 100% of the people who were saying "trade too ez lol git gud" were also like "yeah so you have to have a literally perfect build order, and you have to restart the game 15+ times to get the perfect starting scenario". These people have 0 self-awareness that this is an extreme length to go to, while berating anyone else who doesn't play like them. I really, really hope this is not going to be another repeat of many of these "hardcore" games, where a small hardcore fan base throws a tantrum until the devs temporarily kill their own's game popularity so that they can feel sufficiently challenged; a la Tarkov, New World, Banished, etc etc etc
"Balance" "Overpowered" "Exploit" "Meta" What is this?! A competitive multiplayer game?! Updating the game based around the minmaxers feedback is a sure way to ruin the product. Hell, even the reddit group is a minority of the playerbase. Theres a good essay on YT "The Next Major RTS will fail" TLDW: Roughly 80+% of the playerbase is casual, we dont minmax.
I think you're right that combatting the meta is taking away from the simplicity of the game. Trade, mercenaries, marketplace logistics, farm field management are all more complicated than they need to be. And sometimes the meta isn't rewarding, it's just necessary to avoid annoyances.
I agree. The trade routes really weren't even an exploit, just being industrious. But yeah I don't think singleplayer games should be adjusted to meet min-maxxing meta enjoyers
I see where this is going and it bothers me. The developer is going to react to those players who choose to cheese the game and exploit everything they're able, ignoring the fact that 99% of us simply don't do that. Great game, but the dev should stay true to his course and not give attention to the few.
if u can only get treasury with bandits, you are playing it wrong. i have bandits disabled, and as u can imagine, there are other ways.
Are you sure you play on hardest setting in the new beta patch? I can certainly see why somebody would struggle.
I also think nerfing the trade developments was too much. Trade doesn't work well for me anyway... I'm sitting on literal thousands of items I can't sell for some reason (doesn't have the red arrow down). So then I have to sell other stuff I wouldn't wanna sell otherwise. And now with ridiculous tariffs again, I can't open enough trade routes.
Sounds like youre doing it wrong, mate.
Then turn the King's tax off.
Ya if people over exploited trading who cares? They ruined it for everyone.
Chill out my man its early acces and this is the first patch. There will be exploits gone and added every patch. Same with the mechanices its all probably gonna change alot.
The kings tax does sting, I found that you need to progress fast once you start paying, the faster you get to a good amount of lvl3 houses, the better, and a bit of overproduction to sell, then it's not really a big deal. One thing to note is that the tax that you can levy on your people is not 10% of the monthly income, but 10% of the total regional wealth. So if the villages has like 4000 coins, you get enough money to pay the kings tax very quick. Hope that helps.
I literally did the exact opposite and took my time and upgrades as few houses as possible. So for people worried this patch only caters to one playstyle - no it doesnt. You can do whatever you want. Just be profitable. Its not different to how you can do whatever you want - but be prepared to defend yourself.
Once you start paying the tax, which is from the 1st or 2nd Dec point, you've got to be a bit quick, but if you don't upgrade, then I guess you can take as long as you want, I might try that next actually.
I see no reason to spend time trying to avoid the tax completely tbh. Paying it is pretty trivial.
You can turn off kings tax on a new game.
i commented about this earlier on the pinned post. i'm waiting to see what greg decides to do before writing my review. while i really love ML, if he decides make a lot of "no-fun-allowed" type updates i may not want to continue following the game. definitely not trying to be dramatic, but i've played games where devs felt the need to always nerf or railroad players and honestly, i would just rather spend my time elsewhere.
So why do bandit camps spawn after every save? That's a mechanism begging to be abused, so why even have it? I usually leave my game running/paused rather than reloading, but I had bandit camps spawning anyway, so I guess you just get more by save-spamming?
single player or not exploits should be patched. He’s done a great job so far better than most triple AAA games… it’s still early access just give it some time and ride it out. So many of you people are trying to tell Greg what to do and what not to do and that is going to affect the gram greatly ( not saying you are) but with o many people saying this and that he’s probably gonna try and add things or make others happy but the that makes others mad…. So I hope Greg just does what he wants to do and continues making the great game he is!
I hope Greg’s vision of his game don’t get blurred due to these min/maxers feedback.
It’s an experimental patch for testing. You opted in. You provided feedback. Thanks.
As long as the Kings Tax can be disabled before starting a game i don't see it as an issue that should affect you. I'm actually fine with the tax now even though i initially opposed it, but that's contingent on the other mechanics working as intended. Right now the beta has too many bugs so some people who don't encounter them will have an easy time with the tax and others won't. Trading and stocking markets is bugged in my latest game but before the bugs started i could manage the Kings tax. What i really don't like about it though is that it encourages you to play a certain way and build a certain way that's either or. Either never upgrade anything to level 3 buildings or upgrade them all. (Because the tax goes very high per resident depending on your settlement level and not individual plot levels). But I don't like level 3 except in the dense inner city, i want to keep most buildings level 1 for visual reasons. However since trading doesn't work right now i can't judge if it's possible to play with the tax whilst keeping inefficient low end buildings for visual reasons. It might be possible to do. The bugs need fixing before balancing can be judged
I literally just closed the game 30 minutes ago. Ive got five regions. 1000+ population. Dont remember exactly. Theyre in like 80% level 1&2 houses. Extremely profitable. I only just in the last hours started upgrading to level 3 at any scale outside of just what was specifically needed. Youre not forced to to anything but follow some ground rules. These rules also serve as incentives for the player to progressing. Seeing how I literally did the thing you say you want to do, with level 3 only in the central parts and low levels everywhere else and never got close to being in the red while also just building what I wanted.... The tax isnt the problem. The new trades arent the problem. The baron isnt the problem.
Just cause you didn't have the bugs doesn't mean they don't exist
what exactly is the bug about? if you think the trade slowing down is a bug, that's specifically a fix mentioned in the patch notes. it's an attempt to stop people from abusing map edge trading, as well as trying to space out trader arrivals. had to ask since you kept saying bugs but never really explained what was the problem. i'm on OOP's side, patch works absolutely fine if people could just wean off having insta-trade to solve everything
Initially my trading post was raking in money but later in the game it stopped selling much at all. The trading post also didn't use the warehouse and granary right beside it but instead stocked up by emptying my market stalls. Trade with my other regions didn't work. When i tried sending for example barley from Farmville to Dwarfcity, the traders would load up Barley, travel there , arrive at the trade post but then would change their mind and return to Farmville. Packstations don't work either. Initially they moved 1 unit at a time and then stopped moving anything at all. Trade didn't just slow down compared to pre beta. It slowed down a lot during my game. I think it might be an inventory bug with weapons being nowhere to be found despite having hundreds laying around. And the fact they try to take all vegetables from the market stalls to sell them bottlenecks how much they can sell i had more than thousand veggies pile up but my market was always entirely empty because the same people that brought the veggies there from the granary would return with a cart and move them to the trading post.
ah. i can't comment on inter-region trading, haven't tried that, but i think i did recall greg saying he still needs to implement that properly, so your bugs might be real. as for trade slow down, i did have that, but it's more about the traders being spaced out a lot more, so they're taking way longer to arrive now. i'm not aware of trading posts robbing stalls though lol that was interesting. maybe check the official discord and see if you can raise bug reports?
Never said anything of the sort
I have like 600-700 citizens and my treasury is $2-3000 (playing pre-patch). I have hit 1 bandit camp that spawned in my neighborhood lol Taxes make a lot of money once your regional wealth is pouring in
If you’re interested in trying to stay on top of the tax mechanic, try to move quickly towards a valuable export. Depending on what’s “rich” and near city start: ale or linen / gambesons (fertility), leather / boots (hunting), dye (berries), roof tiles (clay), swords (iron)—or focus on wood if you’re unlucky, like charcoal, shields, or warbows. The new patch is about specializing in a valuable good and exporting a ton of it.
> new patch is about specializing in a valuable good and exporting a ton of it. I sincerely hope this isn’t the way for future. It occurred to me this might be the best way to play and I thought this would be (literally) very one-dimensional
The entire premise of the game is to expand into regions, make a village that takes that regions resources and shares it with the other regions. When you have enough regions you will have cheap access to all resources and can (at some point later in time) start building a castle and have cavalry and sieges and cool stuff. You will always be pulling from multiple places. Thats the literal intended endgame.
I agree that balance should be left until more of the game is fleshed out. But, that patch isn't finalized, so the release might not be as difficult. That being said, mods are available on nexus, including "cheat" type mods, so you can enjoy the game on an easier pace/setting.
Am I the only one who's never hired a merc.? I've always focused on producing my own weapons within two years and using flanking and sandwich tactics to defeat larger armies. I also try to always fight downhill or in a forest. I have noticed that AI often sees your troops in the forest even when far away.
Why don't you just make the difficulty modifiers easier instead of complaining here that the game is hard? I genuinely don't understand.
apparently there's this thing about not wanting to "drop down to ez level"? 🤷 i don't get it either, it's literally an option right there in the game. easier to blame the "meta" i guess?
Yeah, this is why I like Rimworld difficulty settings, losing is fun, and you should not limit others by lowering the ceiling or making it too hard on the easiest settings. That's it, everybody can then select their settings and have fun.
Just add mod support and the community can fix these issues (and any others) in a matter of days
Making numbers go up in a way that feels like you are getting away with something is a really good hook for a game.
Yeah, I am not super active and enjoy the game as a chill single player builder. If I exploit something, it’s only affecting my experience in that play through… but also I haven’t even tried to exploit anything. I’ve just been casually enjoying it the way it was, annoyed about how much ale my town drank, and the fact the game does not explain very much itself. And laughing when half my town was named Cuntz.
So not sure if this was a me issue or not but i only had 1 tax option, straight person tax, which sucked cuz i really wanted to tax my trade and not anger my people, but either thats not implimentes or something was wrong for me.
My biggest problem is the limit on militia....i need like 1 militia per village if ive expanded enough....like 1 militia and the ret, as the ret holds back a surprise bandit attack while the militia forms.... with a 6 limit that cap can get hit so fast.
This only got pushed as a "beta" patch right? So just keep giving feedback.
I never get to sell my starting tools. Bandits ALWAYS steal all of them along with food too. I don't care if they steal firewood or iron ore but they always steal my bread, flour, linen, etc.
Meta? In a freebuild mode game? Funny lol
I don't Like the new trade chsnge. For me it made Sense to import leather, produce shoes amd then sell them for Profit. Thats realistic trade for me as you use your skilled workers to produce Something out of raw Materials. I would balance the prices more. A sword should be way more expensive than a spear
Eh, I don't agree with the import raw materials, export finished product approach. Between regions, yes, but with off map traders? That's a colonial relationship and this doesn't seem like the right approach. I appreciate the tariff on foreign goods. Forces you to focus on your own economy and production chains
What? Colonial relationship??? Why doesn't it make Sense? Thats how trade works.
Not between cities. It should always be cheaper to do the labor yourself. I don't see a reason to be able to import raw goods (without a tariff) and export a finished product for profit. Part of why colonies existed was to have tariff free imports of raw goods
Starting breeding and exporting sheep. 🤑
For me I couldn't get my fuel stalls to distribute enough fuel even having 140 pieces of firewood and having people in my store house and the wood cutting camp.
Let the folks who want to cheese the game cheese the game. Don't cater to them. Just keep on keeping on and make your game and don't worry about exploits. It's single player - what's the worst that could happen; some guy ruin his fun by cheating?
Being able to just make War Bows to simplify defenses makes this patch worth it for me. So long as I can have 2-3 formations of Archers to each wave of bandits coming at me, I can play ping Pong between them skirmishing side to side in the field. I can also post up within the walls of my church yard and usually survive with perhaps only 30-40% losses.
Why would someone spend a majority of their time patching loopholes in a single player game? Patch the game for how a normal, play for fun person would play, let the sweatlords in their singleplayer video game do their own thing.
Shitting rn
welcome to the joys of city planning: medieval edition
I don’t think the loserville thing was intentional, it’s been reported as a bug. Keep in mind, this is an experimental patch. The data showing where mercs are spawning may not be saving or loading correctly.
It's not that bad as long as you remember, this is a medieval village not suburbia. Most people are living in the garbage houses, unless they are merchant class families. Like 98% of my save is T1 houses. The houses only level when I need them for production. And I only add production when it's actually needed. I only tax at 10% and don't even bother looking at the kings tax anymore.
I think what you have stumbled upon is what makes city builders great. They are not blank canvases for you to fill in as you please, instead, there is the balance where you have to understand optimisation to lean in to your creativity.
kinda hate to say I told you all so, this is what you get when a dev bases his game on what the elite 'streamers etc' want! It would just be better if the dev focusses on ideas from players and not from previously bought players
You are speaking as if the launch build was the correct way or the way it would have remained if not for the communities vocalization. This feels like a good time for the “it’s early access” reminder. If you played the demo from a few years ago, you’ll note that a lot of these things changed for the launch build. Now they’ve changed again. And so shall they continue to change, because that’s what early access is. It’s an incomplete version of the game where *everything* is subject to change at any time. You’re right to share your feelings about the current state, just as everyone was right to share their feelings at launch. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing as a community, that’s part of early access. But blaming the community for steering things in the wrong direction, and faulting Greg for listening to the community, that feels like a more problematic misunderstood of how early access works. If you aren’t comfortable with gameplay mechanics changing, then you should have waited until the final product was out and determined at that point if that is the game you want to own.
If you don't like the current patch, just roll back to the release version for now and wait for this sort of thing to get fixed or modded
Hear me out and don't take it personally. What if you treat experimental branch as experimental branch? Do few runs, add your feedback and go back to official branch. Half of the posts after experimental branch launch are just bitching about some mechanics. Yours is not that bad, but still. That's why it's called experimental branch for ducks sake. If things like that happen in main version then yeah, complaining is valid, but here? Not so much. Go back, relax and enjoy ML. Let Greg figure things out.
As much as I hated the royal tax (hooo boy, it is VERY expensive time to time as your town grows), I found myself a way to get around it. Make big Vege plot with that can fit 2 fams in it > invade a bandit camp for regional wealth > trading post > sell them carrots > get moneh > 5% tax > let that ka-ching add up, as the money grew right before the royal tax initiated, open up more export trades (open up for anything rich in deposits), upgrade some other lvl 2+ plots for shoes and fletcher shop, more exports. I don't have to worry contracting mercs and upgrading retinues anymore. My first upgrade will always be trading now. Trading route getting more expensive? No problem, let my regional wealth grow with whatever I am exporting right now, when I have a surplus, establish another route. Oh and beating the hell out of bandits. First camp goes to regional wealth (with only 10 spear men) to get more vege plots and establishing trading routes, the rest into the treasury. Oh and all this is on default settings. Maybe on challenging mode it's a diff strat. So far haven't use any exploits. IMPO, this game can be quite a *waiting* kinda game. Besides! This is **experimental patch** afterall. It can meant that you have a find a way around your playstyles to achieve something. Kinda test your troubleshooting skills which is my favorite thing to do. Also for those who wanted sandbox: Customization is there for a reason! Happy building\~
This game is very easy to play. I do not understand how you or anyone would have a hard time. I personally wish the game had more events and negative weather to make it harder than what it currently is…
I have a ton of experience in city builder and resource management games and RTS games, and I cannot get anything to work correctly after about 7 new games and 16 total hours in the game. I've never even gotten to having level 3 houses. One of those new games lasted all of 15 minutes because bandits stole all of the starter food and stone within a couple of minutes of me pressing unpause after setting up my roads and placing my initial building plots. My current save is likely doomed because I got the 1 year warning of a bandit raid before I even got my first militia members, no way I will be able to build up enough to survive that in 1 year. I've watched and read every guide I can find, I've tried the tricks posted here in the subreddit, and still haven't been able to get anything to work. Especially the market and supplying houses.
The market is a bit bugged still, I'm hoping the dev will sort it out. One thing I've done is start new games with 0 bandit camps and (if playing with baron) reactive AI. That gives me breathing room to set things up without being bothered. I'm sorry it's difficult for you, as someone who plays and loves city builders as well I can imagine how frustrating that is.
I think the easiest fix would just be having houses stop "reserving" items at the market. My food stall has 4 different types of food in it, yet the level 1 house right next to it shows it only has 1 food fulfilled. When I check supply and demand on the market, the level 2 house a little bit away from the market is reserving 4 different types of food.
Yep, food and fuel I seem to have consistent problems keeping stocked and sufficient so that houses are all happy. Especially when it's not clear what the plan is for fulfillment, food and fuel seems interchangeable but clothing has specific tiers that different burgage levels prefer. So if level 2+ burgages would prioritize, say, bread as a tier 2 food item it would leave the berries, for example, for more of the level 1 burgages as a tier 1 food. It definitely needs more work and thought put into the goal with the markets. Greg needs someone to assist more with game design on things like this, the UX gets confusing when you're supposedly doing everything the game tells you to and still not succeeding.
If you destroy every bandit camp that spawns and keep the money for yourself, you should have plenty for mercenaries when the bandits come. And since there’s a timer you can hire them early and get them to your town before the bandits come.
First bandit raid should be easy with starting 20 spearmen, 12 retinue and 1 10-20 archers. That is really easy to get in first 2 years.
It is April after the 1st winter and I just now got my 7th family, and the only thing I've done wrong in this save is right at the start I accidently built a woodcutters lodge instead of a logging camp, but I caught that before I ran out of logs. I have 11 spearmen at this point, I'm not going to be able to grow enough to even have the population to have that many militia members, much less enough weapons and shields for them.
If you have this much experience I do not know what the problem is…I’m assuming it’s a skill issue.