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 Before Total War, there was Lords of the Realm, a series of three medieval strategy titles combining turn-based campaign map strategy with real-time tactics battles. It's a strategy game series that holds a special, nostalgic place in my mind. We'll be looking at all of them: - Lords of the Realm (1994) - Winning accolades from PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World among others, the first offering in the series was definitely a success. It has an 80% positive review rate on Steam, and while it leaves a great deal to be desired by the standards of two decades ago nevermind now, at the time of it's release strategy games were still in their infancy and Lords was definitely much better than most. - Lords of the Realm 2 (1996) - An improvement on it's predecessor in almost every way, Lords 2 is the pinnacle of the series nearly without dispute. A sparkling 96% rate according to Steam is an indicator of the high regard in which it is held by most, including myself. Not without flaws, but it got an awful lot of things right. - Lords of the Realm 3 (2004) - The reason why there were only three of these games, Lords 3 is a cautionary tale of what happens when you change the formula too much. In fairness, I think the second game really made it pretty difficult to make a sequel that would work really well, but this was definitely not it. 45% Steam, 2.6/5 on GoG. It might have done better as an independent release rather than being part of the Lords series; some people who came into it without knowing the previous games weren't nearly as hard on it as the existing fans of the franchise. LP Style Screenshot, but with some videos of battles & cinematics. I thought about doing a series on this a couple years ago, but I don't think it really fits well for a dedicated video playthrough; too many things are repetitive. The first two games in the series have been done once on SA by Spermy Smurf, in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Those were audience-participation, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants runs and didn't actually touch the campaign for the second game. Nothing wrong with that, but this is going to be more along the lines of a thorough, taking the game's best shot and breaking it in half approach. At least for the first two, Lords 3 may just be something we suffer through.  Map of the Realm (England + Wales) in Lords 1 for reference. Tales of Medieval Lords Lords of the Realm Intro Getting Started: Farming Well Is Hard To Do The Early Years: Stabilizing Gloucestershire Seeking Prosperity: Spring 1270-Autumn 1272 Scouting & Happiness Abuse: Autumn 1272-Summer 1273 The Art of Being a Nuisance: Summer 1273-Winter 1273 Harrassment Tactics & Other Matters: Spring 1274-Winter 1274 Pushing the Nobles Around: Spring 1275 - Winter 1275 This Realm Blows: Spring 1276 - Winter 1276 Expansion At Last! Spring 1277 Castle Design & Other Frivolities We're #1! Summer 1277 - Winter 1277 Lords of Micromanagement: Spring 1278 - Summer 1278 A Proper Slaughter ... I Mean, Battle: Autumn 1278 - Winter 1278 Clearing out the Chaff: Spring 1279 - Autumn 1279 Closing In: Winter 1279 - Spring 1280 The Baron (and Knight) Breaks: Summer 1280 - Winter 1280 Consolidating the West: Spring 1281 - Winter 1281 Consolidation Continues: Spring 1282 - Spring 1283 Pushing Eastward: Summer 1283 - Summer 1284 The Bad Joke of Siege Warfare: Summer 1284 - Autumn 1284 Let the Siege Times Roll!: Winter 1284 - Winter 1285 Enough Already!: Spring 1286 - Summer 1288 Lords of the Realm II Lords of the Realm II: A Sequel Introduces Itself Quaintville A Quaint Beginning Events Move On Apace: Conquering Quaintville Rose Rose: Exploring the UI Economic Matters Rosy Beginnings: Winter 1268 - Autumn 1269 County Differences Finishing Up Rose Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 22:52
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Intro Lords of the Realm begins with a simple premise: it is 1268 A.D., and there is no King in England. Six nobles vie for the throne, and they won't resolve their differences over tea and crumpets. - Historical Note: We're in alternate history here, as Henry III was nearing the end of a very long reign in 1268, and was succeeded by Edward I. Perhaps what is in view here is a somewhat different version of the Second Barons War (1264-1267). More likely they just wanted a generic conflict between nobles that they could 'color in' as desired, and chose a time period when there was some turmoil to latch onto. - Fun Fact: There was a CD and a floppy disk version of the game, and the CD version included the possibility of playing in Germany. We'll be doing the default map, which is England + Wales. Intro Cinematic (1:19)  Heralds trumpeting.   Nothing says 'medieval' like an unfurling scroll of a castle diagram.   Step by step, the castle is erected.  Finished, with banners flapping in the breeze, a few small structures and farmland are developed outside.  The drawbridge is lowered and a red rider departs, doubtless on some vital errand for his lord.  He disappears between the hills, and night falls.  Various siege equipment is built near the castle, and dozens of figures scurry around near them, but nobody fires.  After this, the picture from the box art actually briefly flashes on screen, but it's too fast in the modern version for you to actually see it.  After this fades, we get credits flashing quickly by, and then we're into the first interactive screens of Lords 1.  In addition to the modem option, hotseat multiplayer is a thing.  There are five difficulty levels for the first two settings, Novice through Expert. Economy impacts the starting food situation and how often good or bad events happen; Warfare is how much resistance there is from the other nobles in terms of armies and castles. Limited Visibility means vision is only available near your armies & castles or in counties you control. It's definitely funky in how it works, but we'll get to that. Full Visibility is the other option, allowing you to see everything. The next screen asks how many human players, and then:  I'll be playing with the black shield.  Order of play is of very little importance, but this is our first introduction to the cast of contenders. They have a bit more personality than you might expect from the generic titles given.  This is the Realm Map, which marks the point at which we can actually start playing. The starting locations noted by the flags are always the same, the map is always the same, and the opposing nobles are always the same if you are playing solo. Which noble is where is at least partly random though, as is the order of play. This map is provided in the documentation, and may be useful for reference: I'll put it in the first post if anyone wants to refer back to it. This screen is quite useful for seeing the status of the campaign against the other nobles at a glance, but it will get quite busy over time and the names are too long to fit. If I mention our starting county of Gloucestershire or another one and you don't remember where it is, this may help. You've probably noticed that we're in the realm of pretty early sprite graphics & cinematics here. The back of the box lauds such features as 'exquisite 256 color graphics and extensive animations'. Gaming graphics technologies made a lot of big advances in the years right after Lords of the Realm came out, as will be demonstrated in the sequel. The visuals are usable, but some are borderline painful from my perspective. It is almost 30 years old though, and generally quality for it's time. For that and other reasons, I'm playing this game largely to get to the next one - but it's part of the story of the franchise and I'll be giving it it's proper due. Next Up: actual gameplay begins. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 01:53 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 22:55
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Oh man I remember playing this as a kid and understanding nothing and getting my rear end kicked by the AI. Good times.
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May 4, 2023 23:13
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This is a blast from the past. I remember playing the first game but I have virtually no recollection of it apart from being terrible at it.
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May 4, 2023 23:21
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I played the second game as a kid and adored it though I was pretty bad at it.
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May 4, 2023 23:22
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I remember loving LOTR2 so I'm quite excited!
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May 4, 2023 23:29
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I never played this game, but I did play Castles: Siege and Conquest, which was fun. Looking forward to this.
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May 4, 2023 23:44
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Oh, this looks slightly more eye searing than crusader kings 1, are you gonna wipe the floor with it like you did with Imperium Galactica?
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May 5, 2023 00:15
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FORWARD.... MARCH!
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May 5, 2023 01:34
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I played this game a bunch as a kid. The pace could be slow at times especially early on, but I do remember enjoying it a fair bit, even more so when hot seating with friends. Looking forward to seeing how this goes
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May 5, 2023 01:53
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PurpleXVI posted:I remember playing this as a kid and understanding nothing and getting my rear end kicked by the AI. Good times. RocketBabyDolls posted:This is a blast from the past. I remember playing the first game but I have virtually no recollection of it apart from being terrible at it. silvergoose posted:I played the second game as a kid and adored it though I was pretty bad at it. It's an easy game to have that happen on. Managing the economy is a bit more involved most other strategy games, and it's not hard at all to screw it up. SIGSEGV posted:this looks slightly more eye searing than crusader kings 1, are you gonna wipe the floor with it like you did with Imperium Galactica? Yes, for the most part and on the first two games at least. As one example, there's an exploit that allows you to get free castles in Lords 2 and a few others that allow you to circumvent the intended mechanics. I won't be doing things like that which overtly break the intended rules of the game. Within the mechanics though, I'm going to do my best to give the opposing nobles a right and proper merciless thumping.
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May 5, 2023 02:33
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Lords 2 was the poo poo and tons of lines from it still live rent-free in my head.
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May 5, 2023 03:03
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Lords of the Realm 2 was one I played a ton of when I was younger, looking forward to you breaking the game.
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May 5, 2023 03:21
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I still go back and poke at LOTR2 every now and then. Will be nice to see how the original plays.theshim posted:Lords 2 was the poo poo and tons of lines from it still live rent-free in my head. HEAVY RAINS have...
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May 5, 2023 03:23
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Ah, games from my childhood. Never played LOTR1, but 2 was, alongside Warcraft, my introduction to strategy gaming. I may have relied a bit overmuch on mercs and maces (and, of course, mercenary macemen) when I played, though. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the line the thread's named after is "We'll be chopped to pieces!" (/pedant) Don't blame you for making that mistake, though; that's how I heard it at first, too.
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May 5, 2023 03:47
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theshim posted:Lords 2 was the poo poo and tons of lines from it still live rent-free in my head. The long spell of hot- The long spell o- The long sp- The long spell of hot weather
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May 5, 2023 05:03
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Never played it, but it does seem to wear the inspiration from Defender of the Crown proudly.
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May 5, 2023 08:55
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VictualSquid posted:Never played it, but it does seem to wear the inspiration from Defender of the Crown proudly. This was one of my favourite games when I was a kid, I played a ton of this on my Atari ST.
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May 5, 2023 09:12
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Now this really brought back memories, those shields especially are something that I didn't realise were still in my head until I saw this LP. The only other thing I remember was brought on by the poster who mentioned macemen (apparently a spoiler?), which must have been important because as soon as they were mentioned I was nodding along.
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May 5, 2023 10:01
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CptWedgie posted:Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the line the thread's named after is "We'll be chopped to pieces!" (/pedant) Don't blame you for making that mistake, though; that's how I heard it at first, too. You're right, now that I think about it. If any mods are reading this, I'd like to have the word 'shot' changed to 'chopped' in the thread title. If not, I'll get around to pinging someone appropriate eventually.
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May 5, 2023 13:25
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theshim posted:Lords 2 was the poo poo and tons of lines from it still live rent-free in my head.  ”Destroy these crops?” “Slaughter these villagers?”
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May 5, 2023 13:25
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Felinoid posted:HEAVY RAINS have... How dare you invoke that? Have you no sense of decency?? Cool to see this many people with fond memories of the game.
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May 5, 2023 13:27
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Strategic Sage posted:How dare you invoke that? Have you no sense of decency?? ARRRCHERS, HO!
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May 5, 2023 15:26
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BOWMEN READY
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May 5, 2023 15:27
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Title should have been "You are ugly, and your mother dresses you funny."
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May 5, 2023 18:25
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I forget which enemy leader had the best taunts in 2. I do remember cheating like a bastard to finally start winning because younger me was all about making the biggest castles and not being too smart about how to actually attack.
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May 5, 2023 20:08
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Yes, Yes, Yes These two (and lords of magic) were my jam when I was a younger person.
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May 5, 2023 20:22
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Lords of the Realm, Quest for Glory II, and Railroad Tycoon made me the man I am today. Also, most of the battle sound effects for Sierra's Birthright are identical to Lord of the Realm's.
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May 5, 2023 22:55
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Getting Started: Farming Well Is Hard To Do As noted previously, this is the Realm Map. We don't take any actions here; it's the birds-eye strategic level which exists for you to identify where you want to take actions. The square buttons at the left allow us to change whether we want to display, in order from top to bottom: - Flags which indicate the owner of a particular county. This one actually has three states; off, small flags as shown, or garishly large/tall ones. 26 of the 32 counties are not owned by any major noble, but neutral at game start - presumably under the control of a noble with no serious ambitions for the crown. The Realm is truly in chaos. Every last county must be subjugated to achieve victory, it's all or nothing. - Armies - Recent Battle Locations - Castles - Traders The ships and compass are there just for show; there is no naval component to Lords of the Realm. There are none of the last four items at game start, only the Flags, but this will get much busier over time and we'll be thankful for the filters when the action heats up. For now, we want to dive in closer and take a look at our starting county of Gloucestershire.  Clicking on any location on the Realm Map zooms in on that location to the Kingdom Level, where strategic movements take place. This view scrolls but does not zoom. We'll look at what can move around and how later; for now we'll note the static elements. - Our Flag is located on the Town Cross. This is the capture point for the colony. Whoever controls the Town Cross owns the county. If there is a Castle present, that must be defeated first. - Roads are used for almost all movement, and are by far the fastest way to travel. They cannot be built, removed, or otherwhise altered; they just are present as pre-set map features. - County Borders are delineated by the tan squiggly lines. Note that to the east, all we see is open fields a brief bit past our border. That's due to Limited Visibility. We will need to move an army out that way at some point to see what's going on in that county. - Water and Forests, the latter being represented by the green clumps such as the one by the road going south as it exits the map, are also pre-set map features. They are impassable obstacles and serve no other gameplay purpose. Visual variety and realism of course as well. - Open Countryside - my term for it - is the green and bluish splotched territory covering most of Gloucestershire. Travel across these areas is a third as fast as travel along roads. This is also a pre-set map feature that cannot be altered, aside from the fact that each county has a pre-set location somewhere set aside for a castle. - Arable Fields, or just fields in game terms are the squarish plots north and south of the road heading east. Their existence on this screen, along with visual variety, gives us an indication of the county's economic activity. Every county has exactly 16 fields, and the location only matters for being targeted by marauding armies. There are five possible activities for a field: Barren - Most of the fields here including all of the ones south of the road are barren, i.e. useless until reclaimed. They cannot be used for any purpose. When you see a lot of barren fields like this, you immediately know that the county is on hard times. Fallow - The field northwest diagonally from the cow is lying fallow, meaning it's a usable field that is not actively being used. There are good reasons to do this as we will soon observe. Grain - The field directly north from the cow is planted with grain. Cow/Sheep - Lifestock can be grazed & bred on a field as well. We have no sheep here, but they look similar to the cow field. This picture of economic activity can be quite useful. Importantly though, we can't tell from this how well these fields are being used. There could be no actual grain or cows present, and the graphic would look the same. It's just a depiction of what purpose each field is dedicated to. Any field with livestock or grain farming is susceptible to having that crop destroyed by invading armies, though I've never seen opposing lords do this.  - Villages. This view is a bit south and west from where we were. Notice the houses, one on the west just inside Gloucestershire, and the one in the south just outside it. These are villages. They also can be destroyed by hostile armies, resulting in the wanton slaughter of a portion of the county's population, but again this is not something other nobles do in my experience. They are also a visual indicator of the population in a county. The more villages there are, the larger the population. There are a few basic animations on the Kingdom Level; cows moving their legs/head, grain waving around a bit, smoke coming out of the villages, the flags waving flapping in the breeze, and others for the mobile units.  Clicking on open area anywhere on the Kingdom Level brings up the County Level - if it is a county you control. If it isn't, this message comes up to tell you to bugger off. We'll come back to the buttons along the bottom of the Kingdom Level.  The County Level is where we see and adjust details of what each county does. It's the lowest of the three strategic levels in Lord of the Realms - Realm, Kingdom, County - and the most important. Pro Tip: Managing the County economy well is the difference between a successful lord and one who is swiftly defeated. It's a somewhat tricky matter and there aren't any options to simplify it. You learn or you lose. Each turn covers one season; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, then a new year begins. When visiting a county for the first time in the current season, this screen pops up showing the two events for the county this season. Some are benign, some are not. The information is available in briefer form without this screen, which can be turned off in options, but I'm leaving it on so I can show the different events as they come up. There is rain animation on the lower image, and dogs frolicking in the front yard on the other one. Note on the Heavy Rain description, the ripening or ready crops description. This actually has no effect in this particular case because ripening is Summer, ready is Autumn, and we're in Spring which is the growing season. Neutral news in this case. It could have been worse.  This is the General view, the first of six county displays. They are arranged on the right-side buttons from top to bottom in roughly their order of importance. For the moment we'll only concern ourselves with the first two of them. The seventh button, the archway at the lower-right, leaves to go back to Kingdom Level, as does right-clicking anywhere. Fun Fact: Lords of the Realm does not have tooltips. Figuring out what a button does is a matter of deciphering the icon, guessing, or reading the manual. That's not bad in this part of the game, but when we get to siege warfare - well, let's just say it would be very painful to figure that part out without documentation. We'll go through this bit by bit from the top down. County name and date are as basic as it gets.  This section gives us the three vital factors of the county's economic life. Everything else we do will be in service to these. - Population is given in terms of the available work force. Available to be taxed, to be conscripted into the military, or to work in a handful of specific professions. Available also to throw a fit if we don't supply their needs, and in worst-case scenarios revolt and throw us out of power. Population of a county can range from less than a hundred to the low thousands. - Happiness is the single most important number, represented by hearts. It ranges from 0 to 40, but anything less than 5 triggers a countdown to a revolt. A major factor in population growth or decline is people immigrating from or emigrating to nearby counties. They gravitate to high happiness counties and away from those with low happiness, which in general tends to make prosperous counties moreso, and struggling counties spiral downwards. Happiness is boosted and damaged by some random events, but also by factors in your control. Specifically, it can be improved by keeping the population well-fed, keeping the population healthy which is also mostly about keeping them well-fed, lowering taxes, avoiding large conscriptions to the military, and buying ale from traders. Yep, the 'just get 'em drunk' policy is viable to a degree. - Health controls direct population growth or decline via birth and death rates. There's a significant random factor for what happens each season, but over time there will be a consistent trend. Plagues will occasionally strike and kill a bunch of people as well as lowering health, but other than that it's about keeping them fed. Since low health leads to more people dying and also lowers happiness which leads to more people leaving the county, low health is a major concern and can very easily lead to a downward spiral. There are 10 health states from Perfect Health on the high end to Diseased on low end. The current status of Unhealthy is 3rd I think, maybe 4th on that scale; poor but not terrible.  The rest of the screen, aside from the location of the county shown in the lower-left, is all about Rations; feeding the population. We observed above how vital this is; it's the foundation of economic viability. It's also an area where we need to blend multiple factors together.  Ration Achieved determines what is shown for food consumption. There are six possible ration levels, all of which do what they say on the tin; No Ration, Quarter Ration, Half Ration, Normal Ration, Double Ration, and Triple Ration. Half and below are color-coded red and damage health and happiness directly in increasing amounts as you go lower. Normal gives a small boost to health and happiness and is displayed as blue, Double and Triple give larger boosts and are displayed purple. The arrow buttons change which level is wanted, but the achieved one can be lower if you don't have enough food.  This shows the current status of food resources. Now is what is available at the start of the season; Store is what will be left after the season if no factors besides consumption affect it; Eat is what we are consuming. In other words, Now-Eat = Store. Dairy is a special case, and is the only primary food resource. It is always used first, before Sheep, Grain, or Cattle - secondary food resources. The 60 listed here assumes Normal ration and doesn't change based on the ration level you have set. 10 people are fed with Dairy on normal rations per head of Cattle, and then the rest eat something else. If you have enough Dairy to feed everyone, then nothing else will be consumed. Since we are set to Half rations though, we are actually feeding 120 people with Dairy. That means 94 people need to eat something else. A sack of Grain feeds 10 people for a season, slaughtering a head of Sheep feed 20 people, a head of Cattle 40 people. So doing the math in this case, we are eating 5 sacks of Grain, enough for 50 people normally but at Half rations it stretches to 100 people, and we had 94 to feed.  This is a slider bar that we can click and drag in both directions and from any point. That sounds confusing but it's basically just determining which of the three secondary food sources people eat: Cattle, Grain, or Sheep. If we wanted them to eat Cattle instead of Grain for example:  I've dragged from the Cattle end mostly to the right, as seen by the red on the bar. The people will eat 1 Cattle and only 1 Grain. Pro Tip: If you really want to optimize here, you need to be very careful where you leave it. Rounding inefficiency can happen because each food type supplies a different number of people, and we're dealing in whole numbers only here. There's no such thing as having a partial head of Cattle or sack of Grain. If you stop in the wrong place, you can end up with things like eating 2 Cattle and 1 Grain even though that's more consumption than is needed. For most players and playstyles this doesn't really matter; most of the time you'll be dealing with far larger numbers so one either way isn't huge, and you're also going to leave the slider in one position most of the time. When dealing with a county that is in bad shape though, it's worth paying attention to. With all that said, why am I using Half rations given the importance of doing at least Normal if possible for health and happiness? The simple fact is that we can't afford it. Our grain harvest won't be available until Winter, three seasons from now. Eating cattle means less dairy available in future seasons, making the problem worse. There are no traders available to buy more from and won't be for a few seasons also. We need to subsist on dairy from our few cattle and the amount of grain we have at least until winter arrives, so Half is the highest ration we can actually sustain. Normal rations would result in eating almost half our grain this season, or eating cattle, neither of which are acceptable. It's back to Half rations and consuming 5 Grain. I could try to push my luck and go with Normal rations for a season, but if a negative event strikes or we get particularly unlucky in other ways that would backfire.  This is the Fields view, accessed by the second button on the right, the 'farmland' image. The weather event is repeated at the bottom if we need it, but otherwhise we're allocating field usage at the top, and labor at the bottom.  'Click on a field for information'. If you try that right away, you're likely to think something is broken. 13 of 16 fields are barren. Clicking on those does nothing. But any field that isn't barren brings up something like this ...  We can change the activity there to whatever we like. Grain, Fallow, Cattle, or Sheep from left to right. All that matters is the total number of fields assigned to an activity; you can swap them without penalty, with one exception; don't touch fields already planted with Grain. If you change those, even if you change them back immediately, all the work will be lost and you'll get no harvest from that field this year. Changing the amount of grain fields is an activity for Winter only, when sowing activity is allocated.  Click on a field that's actually being used, and you'll get detail such as how many cows, sheep, or sacks of grain are present. This isn't really particularly needed though, as you can see enough info from field layout if you pay attention to it. The '36' on the grain field tells us how many sacks of grain are there; for livestock grazing we get a general picture based on the number of animals. Only 1 for now, but it can be up to 4 depending on how crowded the fields are. The more spread out they are the better the herds will do in terms of growing. 2 is best in a prosperous county as a balance between fields required and reproduction. Below the fields, observe the Fertility and Crop Rotation. The red square button to the right of them brings up an explanation of how those work, without actually saying that's what it does:  It took me a bit to figure out how all this works. Some players sadly never did. - Fertility affects only Grain; Cows or Sheep could care less. It also only changes over time. There's nothing you can do to increase Fertility for the current season. It does however have a dramatic impact on the potential yield for Grain. - Crop Rotation is a measure of how much Fertility will be gained or lost the next season. Positive if the plants are healthy, negative if they are unhealthy, and 1-4 are displayed to show the magnitude of the trend. As the in-game explanation kind of says, grain has a larger negative impact on crop rotation than livestock does.  With all three fields dedicated to Grain it looks like this; two unhealthy plants, a moderate amount of fertility decline rather than the small positive we had initially with the one healthy plant.  We don't actually want to change the initial layout for the moment, as we can't improve on it. Time to look at the labor side. - Need is the number of workers for maximum benefit from a category, Now is what we have currently working, and Stored refers to the resource itself i.e. how many sheep/cattle/grain we will have going into the next season. Think of Need as something like 'Best' instead. These numbers of course change with the field allocations done above. Effect does what it says it does. - Serfs are an exception. The Need number refers only to the number of workers required to maintain the existing fields. If you don't have enough you'll eventually see fields degrade to Barren status. However, putting extra in the Now for Serfs is how we reclaim fields, changing them from Barren to Fallow eventually. The exact number is hard to pin down, but it takes roughly 350 worker-seasons to reclaim a field. Doing the math, you can see that it will take a few thousand worker-seasons to turn this disaster of a county into one in which we can use all of our arable land. We have ... work to do. The amount of serfs required to maintain the fields depends on what they are being used for. Fallow fields require only 2 Serfs, Sheep require 7, Cattle require 9, and Grain requires 11. - Sheep and Cattle labor varies some but tends to be fairly consistent. Cattle reproduce consistently each season, and each field can only support half as many along with having twice the food value of sheep when eaten. Cattle have the advantage of producing dairy which can only be consumed in the season it is produced, never stored/sold. Sheep are sheared for wool at the end of every Winter; the only purpose of wool is to be sold to traders. Sheep also only reproduce at the end of every Winter. Pro Tip: Both Cattle and Sheep have a curve in terms of how much they reproduce, growing slowly when the herd is too small. The game doesn't tell you how much is good. Cattle need about 30, preferably 35 to grow quickly. 20 is enough for Sheep. - Grain is highly variable in labor from season to season. Autumn harvest is the largest amount, followed by Winter sowing. Summer and Spring are much lower. This can be a challenge for managing the labor pool well, and it also means Grain farming is not viable for a small, struggling county such as Gloucestershire. You just don't have the labor pool to pull it off. The reason we have so many 'extra' workers in the grain field right now is because last season they planted it. Note that there are other industries your workers can be involved in as well, we just don't care about those yet. The first phase of the game is about making our starting county not suck, stabilizing our field situation and food supply. The rest is irrelevant until we do that. Pro Tip: Assuming high fertility for the Grain side of the comparison, Grain is more space-efficient for feeding people while Cows are the most labor-efficient and also labor-consistent. These factors will play heavily into decisions later when we get into controlling multiple counties. It's tempting to go all-Grain or all-Cattle and many players do, but a wise ruler knows when to use each of the three food resources effectively. Pro Tip; The arrows work for increasing and decreasing workers in a category, but most of the time you just want to satisfy the Need value. That can be done quickly by just clicking on the number in the need column.  Here's how it looks after doing that, and putting all of the Idle workers into reclaiming fields. About two-thirds of the people are occupied doing that. Observe that since we now have all the workers in Cattle that are required, we will actually see the herd grow. When you only have 6, even a gain of 1 is significant, and growth every season is not guaranteed for a herd this small.  This is the Trade screen, fourth one down, the button with the two figures shaking hands. We'll come back here later, the only reason to look at it now is to confirm that there are no traders available. Strategically, our first order of business is to buy more Cattle as quickly as we can and move towards a viable herd that can sustain even a small population. Usually there will be at least a handful of traders in the Realm, but even if they are all around most counties won't have one, and they do travel back and forth from Abroad as well.  Returning to Kingdom level, we're looking here at the bottom button bar. Third from the left, the gold coins is where we're headed.  This is the Treasury. Our only interest here at the moment is what is termed 'Seasonal Tithe' at the top. That means Taxes, and I'm not really sure why it isn't just called that. 20 Crowns is the default amount, and they are levied equally on all counties in your Kingdom. Crowns of course are the cold hard cash - literally - currency, required for conducting business with traders, and later paying wages for armies. Pro Tip: Taxes above 20 decrease happiness in every county by 1 for every 5 they are increased. Lowering them also increases happiness at the same rate. You can set the 'tithe' to any number, but there's no reason not to have it as a multiple of 5. We're in a tough spot here. We need Crowns to buy Cattle to get on our feet, but the health and rations we can currently afford are pushing our happiness down which will keep our population low as well. I'm going to split the difference at this point, lowering taxes to 15. That will slow, but not stop, Gloucestershire's happiness decline while still bringing in some income. The trick in this early phase on Expert economy is to walk this tightrope until we can stabilize the situation. Up Next: Advancing time/turns, and gradually sorting out this mess. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 02:13 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 6, 2023 00:54
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I was going to say that cows sounded like the optimal option because of the passive food generation from dairy and the not resistance to fertility changes.
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May 6, 2023 08:46
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When is the right time for allocating serfs to reclaim fields?
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May 6, 2023 09:35
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Oh dear Lord, the country is going to be taken over by Bristolians! Now every day is going to be talk like a pirate day!
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May 6, 2023 10:21
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A Lord of the Realms LP? Excellent! We'll enjoy this!
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May 6, 2023 12:48
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All of this economy must have passed over my 8 year old head when I was playing, all I remember is buying and selling things from the merchants in order to equip my armies and I suspect that isn't a viable long-term strategy to win. The actual farming mechanics are any interesting mathematical challenge to optimize, and a lot closer to real life medieval logistics than other strategy games.
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May 6, 2023 13:03
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I used to play LotR II a lot as a kid. I was pretty good at it too. Instead of rushing for maces I prefered to use pikemen, though. Why are we even spoilering unit names? I never played LotR I and only played LotR III for like 15 minutes before giving up in disgust. I will be eagerly following this thread .
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May 6, 2023 14:03
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Kanthulhu posted:I used to play LotR II a lot as a kid. I was pretty good at it too. Instead of rushing for maces I prefered to use pikemen, though. Why are we even spoilering unit names? Oh, that abbreviation messes with my head.
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May 6, 2023 14:11
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PurpleXVI posted:I was going to say that cows sounded like the optimal option because of the passive food generation from dairy and the not resistance to fertility changes. In the second game, at least, careful management of your grain fields can pretty quickly lead to absolutely massive stockpiles, unless your population grows to a point that you are mathematically incapable of feeding it.
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May 6, 2023 14:12
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Kanthulhu posted:Why are we even spoilering
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May 6, 2023 14:46
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When I was little I was differently in the bucket that either didn't figure out fertility/crop rotation or was put off by the micro and just went 100% cows.
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May 6, 2023 15:04
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I'm removing the spoiler policy from the first post. At this point I'd have to box half the posts and I don't really want to do that; people enjoying discussing the franchise is a good thing. Whenever I do a spoiler thing it always seems to end up in a situation where there's just no good place to draw the line, and it becomes 'why did you remove this but not that'. So bah; just talk about whatever you want while we work our way into things.
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May 6, 2023 16:03
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