itch.io

Just a quick question: do you get these issues at all when you run the game? I really can't for the life of me seem to supply the mines with metal tools. The weird thing is I seemed to be able to get tools to them sometimes in some earlier playthroughs (on this version) but now it just seems impossible.

I've grown a love/hate relationship to the game's overworld supply mechanics.

As I mentioned before, tools just won't arrive at resource camps and the camps shut down waiting for them. But there's also starving armies sitting in provinces that actually do have the surplus production (and warehouse) to supply them, but still starving to death, because the game's quirks make it arrive too late.

Now, as such, it's not necessarily a bad game mechanic. Sometimes logistics fail. The lesser bugs could be a feature (even tho tools not arriving at a res camp forever should be fixed). What makes it frustrating and silly is it puts logistics completely out of your control. Silly, because as a despot you ought to have a little more control over affairs than that.

So, my "solution": the supply convoy. It's a unit that has a supply storage much like a trade unit implicitly has, but whose movement you control by command just like your military units. You can order it to deliver and then you can choose the resource camp or settlement or any unit of yours in the same tile. You can then transfer the goods. Or just supply the unit for that amount of resources. You could perhaps even do that in a different province, even in one not controlled by your tribe.

What makes this a nice mechanic imho is, if you invest the time and resources, you get to decide exactly how and when your people get supplied. Of course this becomes redundant if the implicit transport handled by the current trade and supply system becomes bugless and instantaneous, except you still might wanna send supplies into enemy territory (at the risk of the convoy being killed).

hmm I must say I find that a bit arbitrary of a system lol, that you just couldn't do the upgrade even if you wanted to, rather than you just deciding to make villages subsidiary to big cities because that'd be useful, or that you couldn't decide what happens in some small village as their overlord, but okay, it's good to know it's just the rule of the game and not some kind of bug or a thing I couldn't get to work.

Well, as I mentioned in the other thread, I am unsure how warehouses actually work. I can see how they offer extra room for storage, but I'm not sure how they directly or indirectly are supposed to influence how things are run. Like, is it for some reason more plausible that resources will be distributed to demands if there's a warehouse? How does it work?
Also, I guess it's interesting that some worker actually has to move the goods physically to the map edge.
About that (I guess it's a different topic altogether): to what extent are good moved around physically in settlements like you see the wheelbarrow guys if you actually check in a city screen? Is this actually done that way in all settlements including computer ones? I also seem to run into performance issues (basically FPS death on quite a new computer) when I get to a later game with bigger cities and computer factions being very busy. Including when on overworld view. Is it actually actively rendering all the particular good transports moving over the settlement maps of all the settlements in the world or something? I can see how that would cause fps death.

By the way, how exactly does attrition work? It seems attrition persists even if the units end up in a region where I have the surplus resources that ought to cover their supply. I think - not entirely sure - I get scenarios where some supply resource ended up negative because of city growth, but the army just keeps starving when that is fixed, leading to stuff like an army of nobles just starving to death on my capital tile that's pouring over with resources.

Okay, then what is required for me to be able to upgrade a village to a city? Is it simply disallowed for villages in regions right next to that of a city? Because I seem to have to settle in a region not next to one already having a city of mine in it to be able to upgrade.

It oftens seems impossible to get tools to resource camps.

Sometimes the tools arrive after a while, sometimes they don't. It seems to happen more when the tools have to come in by trade (I'm pretty sure they do come in by trade). What makes it really bad (and which is IMHO quite unnecessary) is that a resource camp seems to just shut down while it waits for the new tools, rather than at least work at the level of the best tools available (e.g. stone tools which are available by default). Can we please just have such camps at least running at stone tool levels while it waits for tools?

The combination of these facts make this one a real economy-wrecker. I had a case where I finally get hold of a single tin mine. Okay, I start creating bronze tools in the very same province, which luckily is a city... I set the tin mine to bronze tools. However, turns out my serfs just sort of aren't feeling it that year, or any year, and the mine just sits there waiting for its bronze tools whenever I set it to bronze tools. So whenever I even try, it shuts down the entire production chain leading up to my bronze tools! I mean, really...

This persists when I disable any other demands for bronze tools, and make sure there's available workers, so it isn't even a priority issue, I'd imagine.

These are things that definitely frustrate me playing the latest version, top of the head I can think of 3 (EDIT added 4th):

1. I cant get land trade routes going. As I understand it one "overworld map" building sends and another receives, because that's what the game seems to be telling me, i.e. the yard resp the depot. I tried building one on one side of a province border and the other on the other, connected by roads (and bridges if necessary) but it says no destinations are available when I actually try to create the route. I'm not sure what's wrong here, the naval trade ports seem to work.
2. I cant seem to upgrade villages to settlements, so I can't manage them at the city map level. I did get to actually turn it into a city once, but I cant recall how exactly that happened. Again I have no idea if I'm just missing something what it's supposed to be.
3. I don't think I understand what warehouses do. I guess goods are stored there under some conditions, like if some other buildings are full. Is it also supposed to widen distribution ranges of some goods?
4. What exactly determines how settlers become available for recruiting? What about it is random, what isn't? Actually what does it even mean with any recruitment type for there to be like e.g. "2/5" available? Like 2 actually available out of 5 what? They are sort of available, but not quite? Anyways, the availability of settlers is a HUGE part of what makes you successfull, as honestly I just sit around waiting for the next settler to report to the reception so I can expand. Maybe it would be more interesting if it was just more expensive or hands-on-but-involved to settle a new region, the price perhaps being dependent on conditions, but technically available all the time?

You know imho generally it would help if things were clarified a little, by being explained a bit better, I guess you intend to do that as there is a "help" button that doesn't do much yet. Or by just sort of "streamlining game mechanics", the game sort of suffers a little bit from "Dwarf Fortress Syndrome", where it feels everything works by some exception to an imaginary general rule in a way that's hard to pin down. It makes it so you're always struggling to learn to play rather than with actual in game problems like building a state and fighting enemies.

It's a great game tho, don't get me wrong, I was sceptical about the shift to multilevel maps at first but I see the point of it now.

EDIT: Okay as to point 1. I think I get the issue, it seems city-provinces share the same resource pool with village-provinces right next to them, which are considered tributary to the city I guess. So in that sense trade isn't needed. How exactly this city vs village province mechanic works exactly I'm not sure.

The problem was on my end.
Sorry about that.
For some complicated reason a program was masking my graphics card, using a bit of software that acts like a driver, which would confuse my system for some programs trying to use the graphics card. I uninstalled the program and I can now run the game.
I'm now having a lot of fun playing your game.

Still doesn't work.
Now at the same place it says "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException: Adapter 'NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M  ' does not support the Reach profile."
The full text output of the error file is here:
https://pastebin.com/ZMsZLwSa
It seems that indiegames like this have issues with my graphics card quite often, is there some setting I can change on my side, either with my system or with game configs, that will make it easier? For this game, specifically? Am I supposed to conclude that my graphics card is too outdated to run specifically games with pixellated 2D graphics? I mean idk

My game won't launch.

Yes I've downloaded the .net frame thing.

I've created a pastebin of the error report given by itch.io launcher. It's a bit long.
But I suspect what's on line 228 has something to do with it, involving my graphics card not recognizing hidef profile, or whatever?
https://pastebin.com/D9A4V6VE

If I can configure my game differently to not have this issue somehow, please let me know. Or whatever solution you can think of.