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Quackles posted:Also: I do love how it carries your city over between missions in the same place. That was an issue with Pharaoh's Cleopatra DLC, even if it did keep the monuments. That's kind of an issue with Pharaoh and to some extent Emperor as well : the games are really bad at making the average player understand the full scale and span of time. In Pharaoh, you'd come back to the same city some generations down the line - in that sort of timeframe it was really not out of the ordinary for small villages to be swallowed by the sands or abandoned because the houses were turning to poo poo or the soil was getting poor. But it's OK because this was before landlords so you'd just pick up sticks and build a whole new village from scratch a few kilometers up or downriver - take about a summer to do so, while nobody's working too hard. In Emperor you sometimes pop back into your old cities and outposts entire *dynasties* down the line... and nothing has changed, everything's still there. The architecture of whatever New Stuff you've unlocked since fits right in with the Old Stuff that's literally centuries old at that point. My point is : history is very, very long and humans (or at least their fashions) change very, very fast in comparison. But you couldn't really tell playing those games. That's one thing Ancestors does better - between your starting hunter-gatherers in leather tents & lean-tos and your bronze age fortified farmers armed to the teeth, it's night and day both visually and in terms of gameplay/strategy/primary concerns. Although IIRC there is one pair of missions in Emperor that does convey Time better. The Great Wall saga. Your first effort is to build a giant ditch & wall of rammed earth. By the time you come back, this time to build a section of the Great Wall proper, all that remains of your original effort (and it was a monument that took ages to build !) is a few sections of vaguely elevated mud.
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Jan 3, 2021 11:52
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This is one of the reasons I prefer Zeus. You would spend a string of like 5 to 8 missions in the same city, interrupted by founding one or two colonies, and it was really nice to see your small town grow to one of Greece's famous city states. In general, I found the flow of missions worse in Pharaoh and Emperor.
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Jan 3, 2021 12:17
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Kobal2 posted:That's kind of an issue with Pharaoh and to some extent Emperor as well : the games are really bad at making the average player understand the full scale and span of time. To a point, but you need to combine the game with history somehow. I absolutely abhor building the same basic, often cookie cutter poo poo every start of the mission. If there's a challenge involved in the set-up, perhaps, but going "here build a pyramid you start with two sticks and a rock" for the 10th time irks me to no end - it's why I completely dropped They are billions campaign mode, for example. I don't care how thematically appropriate it is. I don't want to spend an hour of afking my brain putting down copy-pasted optimal grid designs on a slightly different canvas, I'm here for the mission challenge. Giving your old city back unchanged is a gameplay concession of both letting you see how much you've grown (or not) your skill and giving you a (hopefully) solid base to actually start playing the mission and not putting down housing squares mindlessly for an hour before even bothering to read mission requirements.
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Jan 4, 2021 13:42
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 The Good Things (15:34) More city services, industry, and some more important tools for keeping everything running smoothly with the populace. In particular, I like the appropriate importance placed on ceramics here. I mess around a bit with the whole wage rates mechanic. Also Heroes and a bit of what they can do. A couple loose threads that I plan on getting to later; what happens if you don't keep Ancestral Heroes happy, and the basically accidental evolution of our water supply. A later Xia Tutorial map makes a point out of showing you how to do that so I'll hold off on getting into how that works for now.
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Jan 7, 2021 15:12
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I prefer using gatehouses instead of roadblocks inside my housing blocks. Does the same job, but can be adapted and increases desirability. And yeah, it's nice to have some logic about which walls you use where. It genuinely helped me figure out my cities when I load the game after a while.
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Jan 7, 2021 15:58
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Does the 400 people sustained by a hunter's hut get doubled since it's part of plain food? Or are you about to have food troubles?
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Jan 8, 2021 01:59
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We'll be fine there. It effectively is doubled; the more food sources you have the less you need from each one individually.
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Jan 8, 2021 02:47
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Looks interesting, but something's bothering me. In Caesar III and Pharaoh, walkers from buildings looking for houses wouldn't pass roadblocks. (Well. CIII didn't have roadblocks, but you get the picture.) Does Emperor implement a global labor force? You've built houses far away from industries, yet the industries are supplied with workers.
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Jan 11, 2021 06:21
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Yes, people are able to commute just fine. But doesn't Caesar 3 fake it and it's enough for all the worker walkers to reach one tent and suddenly they have access to the entire workforce of the city anyway?
Poil fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 11, 2021 09:04
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Torrannor posted:This is one of the reasons I prefer Zeus. You would spend a string of like 5 to 8 missions in the same city, interrupted by founding one or two colonies, and it was really nice to see your small town grow to one of Greece's famous city states. In general, I found the flow of missions worse in Pharaoh and Emperor. Same, after Zeus/Poseidon I couldn't really go back to the other city-builders because of this reason. Emperor is fun but the chore of rebuilding your city over and over again meant I couldn't finish all the scenarios.
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Jan 11, 2021 09:06
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Quackles posted:Looks interesting, but something's bothering me. Zeus implements a global labor force, and Emperor inherits that. It's unrealistic, but feels better when playing the game.
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Jan 11, 2021 09:18
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Torrannor posted:Zeus implements a global labor force, and Emperor inherits that. It's unrealistic, but feels better when playing the game. Ah, got it. Poil posted:Yes, people are able to commute just fine. But doesn't Caesar 3 fake it and it's enough for all the worker walkers to reach one tent and suddenly they have access to the entire workforce of the city anyway? Yes. Yes they do. I just suggested implementing a local labor force (where only workers from nearby houses could be hired) to the team of the Augustus fan remaster.
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Jan 11, 2021 09:27
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Are the cities really big enough for it to be unrealistically long walking distances for workers? Except for the most remote things?
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Jan 11, 2021 10:11
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Poil posted:Are the cities really big enough for it to be unrealistically long walking distances for workers? Except for the most remote things? Not really. But it's more for the strategic challenge.
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Jan 11, 2021 10:37
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my dad posted:A nice thing about the way agriculture works in the game is that you have a sort of an organic transition between low and high intensity farming. Early on, when you have the entirety of the map to use, but labor is precious, you place down farms with max arable land assigned to each, getting the highest amount of crops per worker. As you start to run out of usable land, you can start doing more intensive farming, replacing some cropland with extra farm buildings and using more workers to increase your yields per tile until you eventually reach a point where you're squeezing out everything you can out of your available arable land. I haven't gotten far enough into the game to see this come into play yet. I'll have to experiment when that happens. Kobal2 posted:history is very, very long and humans (or at least their fashions) change very, very fast in comparison. But you couldn't really tell playing those games. That's one thing Ancestors does better - between your starting hunter-gatherers in leather tents & lean-tos and your bronze age fortified farmers armed to the teeth, it's night and day both visually and in terms of gameplay/strategy/primary concerns. Can't comment on the later ones, but it seems to me there's a reasonable progression in the early dynasties in terms of the different buildings you get access to, what needs to be done for victory, etc. Torranor posted:You would spend a string of like 5 to 8 missions in the same city, interrupted by founding one or two colonies, and it was really nice to see your small town grow to one of Greece's famous city states. In general, I found the flow of missions worse in Pharaoh and Emperor. I'll have to render an opinion on this later after I see more of it.
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Jan 11, 2021 19:22
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Strategic Sage posted:I haven't gotten far enough into the game to see this come into play yet. I'll have to experiment when that happens. With food farms, it's usually better to just do a good spread of multiple different crops, but increasing density helps when you only have 1 or 2 available. It's quite noticeable with hemp and other specialty farms etc though.
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Jan 11, 2021 20:10
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How did I miss this LP
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Jan 11, 2021 21:40
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AtomikKrab posted:How did I miss this LP Because you don't have the New LPs thread bookmarked?
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Jan 11, 2021 23:44
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We are still really, really early in this. There'll be plenty more to follow along with.
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Jan 12, 2021 19:00
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Hopefully there will be another episode of this up at some point. It was planned for tomorrow. Still is, if YouTube ever decides to process it properly. I have uploaded it three times, and a fourth is in process. The first three are all in 'SD fine, HD version processing' limbo. One has been there for almost a day if not longer. So go YT go, and ya know this will continue whenever it decides to work the way it's supposed to.
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Jan 14, 2021 01:24
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Eeepies posted:Same, after Zeus/Poseidon I couldn't really go back to the other city-builders because of this reason. Emperor is fun but the chore of rebuilding your city over and over again meant I couldn't finish all the scenarios. There's also the map design. There are some cool maps in Emperor, but can anything really compete with Plato's Atlantis, with a big central island, and two island rings around that central island, that you work very hard to have a full, looping hippodrome on there?? I think not!
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Jan 14, 2021 10:12
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Quackles posted:Yes. Yes they do. I just suggested implementing a local labor force (where only workers from nearby houses could be hired) to the team of the Augustus fan remaster. I wonder what kind of algorithm would make for fun gameplay. First labour seeker claiming all the available workers from the first houses they meet would be unpredictable mess.
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Jan 14, 2021 10:50
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Banemaster posted:I wonder what kind of algorithm would make for fun gameplay. Ideally, you'd want to allocate it so that the labor seeker tracked all the houses it met, then employment was updated on a set of global 'phases', where the most recent complete labor recruiter run would be used. Ideally, the algorithm would arrange things such that the labor seekers would coordinate their efforts to try and allocate as much of the workforce to businesses as possible, with as few conflicts as possible. (Maybe if a business is closer to a house it gets a higher likelihood of employing workers from there? That could handle houses at the end of roads...) To code this would probably require someone who's really good at graph theory, though.
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Jan 14, 2021 11:19
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Banemaster posted:First labour seeker claiming all the available workers from the first houses they meet would be unpredictable mess. 
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Jan 14, 2021 11:58
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Trade and Commerce (22:09) For the first time, we look beyond the borders of Banpo. Trade with other cities can be very lucrative, and is our first way of making a profit; I also wax on about the pitfalls if you don't manage your commodities well. Wheat also is now available, allowing us to explore the rewards of combined farming alongside millet. This concludes the first tutorial city, but we are not yet done with the Xia; the next scenario in particular is longer and more involved than anything we've encountered so far. Before that, we will be heading to Egypt to get initiated in the origins of that civilization however.
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Jan 14, 2021 15:17
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I'm a little bit irritated that you didn't catch your one house not evolving, probably because of too low appeal. One question, did those roughly 300 units of plain food get transformed into appetizing food once you brought in the better food from the millet? By the way, I'm fairly certain that you can dismiss messages by right clicking anywhere on the screen, or at least anywhere on the message, no need to click the ok button every time I think? Trade is a really important part for this series, this is a nice introduction to how it works in Emperor. Of course it's always been profitable to import raw materials and export finished products, as can be seen with the jade carvings here,
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Jan 14, 2021 17:01
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For diplomatic gifts you do pay exactly the number it says, 1000 in this case, its just not taken out of your treasury until the emissary leaves your city. The 100 taken immediately was the cost to make the emissary himself. You pay this cost for any diplomatic action. Also, is there a reason you are playing on the default resolution? WSGF has a patch to increase it and essentially zoom out. https://www.wsgf.org/dr/emperor-rise-middle-kingdom/en Xenoborg fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 17:34
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Ahh, thanks for that. Pinning a comment on the video with that correction, that is in fact how it was working. Makes more sense now.
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Jan 14, 2021 17:39
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Xenoborg posted:is there a reason you are playing on the default resolution? WSGF has a patch to increase it and essentially zoom out. Yes, I think there's value in showing games as they were originally made. Also, the widescreen patch causes some funkiness on some of the screens, makes the fonts appear smaller since like most resolution-increasing mods for old games it can't scale them up so it's harder to see interface elements in video esp. for people on mobile devices. It's a good accomplishment for what it does, but I think it would hurt the presentation more than it would help it. Torranor posted:One question, did those roughly 300 units of plain food get transformed into appetizing food once you brought in the better food from the millet? Yes, the power of the wheat compelled them (or whatever) I guess I needed MOAR GARDENS. Keeping all the houses evolved will get even more interesting at Erlitou.
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Jan 14, 2021 17:49
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Also playing on a high resolution makes the game very zoomed out and difficult to watch videos of. I've spent a ridiculous amount of hours playing this game but I couldn't tell you the optimal way to mess with trade prices because I always leave them at default (except for an awful mission or two). Not like you need to. 
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Jan 14, 2021 17:56
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Torrannor posted:Trade is a really important part for this series, this is a nice introduction to how it works in Emperor. Of course it's always been profitable to import raw materials and export finished products, as can be seen with the jade carvings here, Yeah, you want a city to grow like a mushroom after the rain ? Set taxes to zero, import EVERYTHING (</Gary Oldman>), use the huge unemployed population your no tax policy netted you to turn your imported raw mats into all kinds of geegaws and export them right back. Redistribution schmedistribution, something something don't tread on me. EDIT : OMG watched the video, you're a field war criminal. Who divides their twin millet/wheat fields like that ?! A satanic cthulhu cultist, that's who. Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 18:30
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Having higher appeal than the minimum needed to evolve housing to the next level also increases tax income.
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Jan 14, 2021 18:46
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Kobal2 posted:EDIT : OMG watched the video, you're a field war criminal. Who divides their twin millet/wheat fields like that ?! A satanic cthulhu cultist, that's who. Ok, I'll bite. What is the 'right' way? I'm also amused that I thought I was being fairly extreme in doing the rules I started out with, and then it's all 'your houses didn't evolve on schedule, you divided your fields in half but did it the wrong way, your industry is too far from your housing, etc'. 
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Jan 14, 2021 19:18
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Strategic Sage posted:Ok, I'll bite. What is the 'right' way? City builders probably always attract more people who are rather particular about how they want things organized, so this doesn't surprise me this much. As another of your viewers pointed out, it makes little sense to set storage limits that are not multiples of 4, since one field or storage space can only take 4 of the same goods. I think it was this way since Pharaoh, but I know it was this way from Zeus at the very least. This makes a certain kind of sense, there are goods that take up a whole field in the storage facility, taking up space like 4 regular goods. If you have technically 4 spaces available, but they are divided among half filled fields, you can't fit say a big statue in there.
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Jan 14, 2021 19:47
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Strategic Sage posted:Ok, I'll bite. What is the 'right' way? Well *obviously* you separate like this : OOOXXX OOOXXX OOOXXX not like this OOOOXX OOOXXX OO0XXX The second one is just chaos, anarchy, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. (  of course)
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Jan 15, 2021 03:20
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Erlitou's Elite (1:05:05) What's this, an hour-long tutorial mission? Well, returning to the Xia - in a more appropriate time and place - we have new concepts to deal with and this settlement needs to be large enough, trade partners bribed enough, etc. that the economy is much tighter. I actually think this scenario, at least with the settings and rules I'm using, is more challenging than most of the next not-a-tutorial dynasty. We do eventually get a thriving, bustling, currency-printing city out of it but it takes some time and micromanagement to get there. Elite Housing and Silk are the primary new attractions. I'm also curious about some of the commodities. I know we'll be able to cultivate Rice at some point, but for those who know, do we ever get to acquire our own raw jade?
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Feb 11, 2021 15:30
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Strategic Sage posted:I'm also curious about some of the commodities. I know we'll be able to cultivate Rice at some point, but for those who know, do we ever get to acquire our own raw jade?
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Feb 11, 2021 15:42
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That's sad, but thanks. I want to do a deeper dive on jade, so I would have been waiting for something that's not coming otherwhise. Probably as part of the next scenario, since it's a shorter one.
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Feb 11, 2021 16:02
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There are times where it's very useful to just places two gates in a row, like you could have done to deal with the herbalist walker spawning in that one tile between the gate and the market. The gray and red ones look nice for that. It's also worth always plugging both ends of a market with a gate as soon as you build it, because entertainer pathing. Gates and the pathing management they allow you are very useful once you get the hang of it. e: I forgot, can you do the import jade -> export jade trick for extra income in this game? I remember you could do it with certain goods in other games when you have both a buyer and seller for it but can't make any on your own. my dad fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Feb 11, 2021 |
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Feb 11, 2021 16:47
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Or just never placing service walker buildings next to a road leading away from the loop.
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Feb 11, 2021 16:52
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