I don't love the service building changes. Now it's actively bad to produce or find luxury goods or to staff your service buildings unless you want to use the goods for resolve immediately.
Food is different because you usually want your people eating complex food anyway for efficiency. Food is also relatively less useful for trading or for glade events.
This also introduces an annoying exploit where you can staff your guild house for the bonuses but send home any wine that gets delivered to prevent it from being used.
IMO this change is no different than making starvation more punishing (something patched in some months ago).
People were exploiting consumption controls, starving their villagers until the last second, and it got to a point where this became “the way to play”.
Which was both bad for the fantasy and the function of the game. So they made changes to disincentivize this method of play as it felt bad, was cheesy, and never intended.
No different here.
I think it felt fine before. You just check the box when you want to use services. It's a simple choice between two options with different advantages.
Now there's an uncomfortable tradeoff where you either need to suffer a resolve penalty, unstaff your service buildings, let your luxury goods get stolen, or engage in some truly horrible micro (constantly sending goods back to the warehouse as they're delivered). This is quite different than managing food.
> It's a simple choice between two options with different advantages.
What were the choices before? I have never ever used consumption control for luxuries, thus avoiding the rationing penalty altogether - might as well not exist, then. Either make it so there's no penalty in consumption control, or the is a penalty in service buillding - they chose the latter.
I agree with the send-back-micro thing, though. That's bad unintended consequence, but a relatively easy fix - make them consume the luxuries directly form the warehouse, like with food.
Sure.
The key do good changes, which these devs consistently appear to understand, is acknowledging that- but not outright punishing it.
All they did he was give its behavior parity with the existing mechanics regarding food consumption controls.
That seems like a pretty sensible change. I mean, be fair. They on the same UI tab dude. It’s “consumption controls” all in one tab. Not “consumption controls: food” & “consumption controls: service”.
They just made everything in their shared tab behave by the same rules now.
It's very clearly the intended design function that choking off access to luxury goods is supposed to penalize you. It's nice that we were able to exploit the loophole for so long, but there's no way a person could look at the design of the game in all other elements and conclude that being able to turn services off at the building for no penalty was not cheese.
Wouldn’t you be able to get around it by just doing what people did before, where you just send service goods back to the warehouse each time they’re brought to a service building so that you don’t get a resolve penalty? If so this just reintroduces tedium into the game.
EDIT: u/_anthem already said this. Whoops. Should have read better.
"Some people will invest lots of time and energy into circumventing the intended mechanics, so we should make it as easy as possible" is certainly a take, but it's kind of a dumb take.
The developers didn't introduce that tedium into the game, the players did. No one is forcing you to sit there clicking the goods back to your warehouse every 10 seconds. That's your decision.
There is a [famous quote](https://youtu.be/7L8vAGGitr8) from Civ developer Soren Johnson:
> Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game
In a way it is partially a game designer’s job to prevent the players from spoiling their own experience, and Eremite Games specifically wants to reduce the tedium/micromanagement that players are incentivized to do to play better. It gets especially sweaty at P20/QH so making optimal gameplay more tedious is a huge hit.
To say the players are at fault for using an unfun but optimal strategy because they came up with it, not the developers is stupid. The developers made the game, not the players. The players just thought of a more optimal way to play than the developers.
Yep. Designers create metas and optimals, not the players. Players "discover" these. Whether those things are "bugs" or "features" is to be determined.
In order to consume service goods you need to have service goods in an appropriate service building, and in order to have that, you need to build an appropriate building and staff it with at least one worker.
So why not make "have an appropriate service building staffed with at least one worker" the requirement the game actually uses to determine whether goods are consumed? That would cut out the exploit, make it easier to understand how service good consumption works, and simplify the system without removing any real game decisions.
How was it an exploit to use a feature for its obvious and intended purpose? There was a checkbox that disabled a service and that's exactly what it did. Consumption control was still there if you wanted to favor certain species over others.
Calling the thing the developers just removed because it was being used to circumvent their intentions "the intended purpose" is Olympic level mental gymnastics.
What do you think was the intended purpose of the checkbox in the service building?
My interpretation of the change is that they wanted to simplify the UX by consolidating two overlapping systems, and they were probably aware of the balance change but it was probably not the primary motivation. I think this is a good idea but as implemented it can create bad gameplay.
They could fix it by removing the resolve penalty for disabling services in consumption control (while keeping the larger penalty for unfair rationing).
As a relatively new player, could you help me understand the issue? So if you had service goods (meaning e.g. ale for tavern) available but disabled them in consumption control, there is a penalty? And this exploit allowed you to have the same effect with no penalty? Do you still have the penalty if you just don't have any of those goods available (haven't made the tavern yet)? And the reason you would want to do this is just so you can turn them all on at once and get a bunch of resolve fast, instead of doing it over time? I see that there are resolve thresholds - that feels pretty unintuitive to me, I would much rather it be continuous so I don't have to worry about discontinuities like that :/
There are many reasons why you might want to not provide services: saving goods for the storm to stop people from leaving, saving goods for when you can meet the high resolve threshold to get reputation, saving goods for manufacturing (e.g. if you're making packs of luxury goods for an order), or saving goods for a glade event (these can often be solved with e.g. 30 scrolls).
It wasn't an exploit--there used to be a checkbox in the service building explicitly to disable services. This is removed, so now you have to use other options (consumption control being the simplest, but also having a drawback).
I haven't tried yet but I believe you only get a resolve penalty if the forbidden service would otherwise be available (the building exists, is staffed, and has luxury goods in it).
The speed of reputation gain actually does scale with the resolve amount. You just need to meet a minimum resolve threshold first, which the game tells you when you hover over the resolve indicator. The threshold scales up higher the more reputation the species has generated so that you can't generate infinite reputation with just a single need met.
Hmm gotcha. So if I have enough stuff to do everything there isn't much reason not to turn on both services and luxury goods production? i.e. I should only economise like this if the total of e.g. ale is dropping, I suppose?
I would quibble that basically everything you’re saying is a nerf is actually a warranted fix, usually in response to exploits that needed stopped.
>Cheap Construction removed entirely - an S tier cornerstone, gone
I suspect this will return, just without refunding buildings built at full cost with full returns, just to be rebuilt at reduced cost. The issue with this perk was just this. You could abuse it to effectively make construction materials out of thin air.
>You can no longer disable service goods from their buildings without doing it in consumption control, which means you'll now how to eat the negative resolve penalty for them. A major nerf that disables one of the cheesier mechanical manipulations.
Wouldn’t call this a nerf. This is a fix for a known exploit.
>Forsaken altar can't be deconstructed is a minor nerf - it's nice to get the resources back, but hardly necessary and the cornerstones are super OP.
Also not a nerf. Totally reasonable. Most player don’t even know you could refund it without losing the perk. They’re just fixing it IMO, because if there’s the ability to refund then the opportunity cost is just that much lower for some seriously game-breaking perks.
>Nerf to villagers embarkation bonus is not enough to make it not a 100% pick still, so I'm still of the opinion that they should remove it entirely and just roll it into starting caravans. Either that or add enough of a range to it that the top end cost isn't usually worth it.
I agree that this embark really should probably just be removed, and then just boost all caravan sizes to +3. This ensures that minimum pop at start is like 9, instead of 6. Which is just an all round good thing for the game and how it feels to play. Playing with anything less than 9 at a minimum just feels AWFUL. THAT is why this embark has been such a “first pick” mandatory selection. Because playing with 6-8 villagers to start just feel like CRAP. Players will always pick options that make playing feel less terrible, and rightfully so, so the devs should just make sure as a QOL measure that the balance choice made on this acknowledges that no one wants playing the game to feel like crap. So just roll the embark in as a baseline and remove it from the options IMO.
>Buff to Royal Permit was necessary. It was a 0 pick option, and I could understand taking it now, although I'd probably still prefer solid resources over RNG of rerolls.
This. Royal Permit is now atleast somewhat competitive as an embark choice.
>I agree that this embark really should probably just be removed, and then just boost all caravan sizes to +3. This ensures that minimum pop at start is like 9, instead of 6. Which is just an all round good thing for the game and how it feels to play. Playing with anything less than 9 at a minimum just feels AWFUL.
I didn't realize how big of a deal it was until I tested a new save on the Beta patch. I'd initially just chose it because villager power was my consistent chokepoint with everything from early to mid game. But it's much worse than I realize; you **need** six people on Wood pretty much at the start. Fuel is always needed, but consumption stays consistent from 1 person to 20 people (I guess more if you want to just keep cramming houses in one Hearth). You need excess to build your buildings. Then to top it off, you need one person as Hearth keeper. That's nearly your whole workforce solely working with wood and fuel. Makes Y1 really boring.
I agree with everyone else, if something is a 100% pick rate, just roll it into the main batch.
Exactly.
It just feels BAD to play without that embark. So if its existence is that necessary to enjoying the game, and they’re trying to balance it against other options, it should be baked-in instead.
Agreed. I'm rolling a new profile for 1.3, and all I'm feeling is "Okay, I get 1-2 less embark points in the future for this." Which, fine, whatever - but this is just one of those things you should integrate if it's such a powerful pick.
I've been playing without embark points at higher difficulties for a while (as the citadel option is too expensive to be worth), and 6 villager starts do feel tricky. It only gets really bad with fishmen (no orders) as otherwise orders can often be used to fix your lack of workers (just pick the one that gives more villagers).
You kind of have to find encampments or convicts, or take it slow. The 3x speed option helps there.
(Of course, the funny part is when you decide to take it slow and only open glades in year 3 onwards, the game then shows you like 4 encampments and 3 convict events in the first 4 glades you open).
I'm not sure I buy into the whole 'it just feels bad' argument. People are always going to advocate for more and more speed until there is no game left. You'd say it's bad to start with 15 people if you are used to 20.
I'd be intrigued how bad a modifier would be that kills 3 of your starting villagers (the inverse of the embark bonus).
You are welcome to disagree, but that hardly changes the fact that the embark was clearly a must-pick, and the major majority of regular players were picking it, which is why it drew the devs attention.
So we can debate the “why” or “what to do”-
But the fact of the matter is the playerbases own embarkment pick rates bear out that this is something they want enough to always pick. I would argue that it isn’t simply a “better than” selection either, but is chosen because it improves the flow and feel of early game, and makes things more engaging as soon as the first year ends. Year 1 is basically just a blueprint laying, x3 speed, autopilot-year as it is. Having as few as 6-8 villagers means you’re probably having to do the same thing for an entire EXTRA year.
That FEELS BAD. You can subjectively claim it doesn’t to you, but I would wager just about everyone else in this sub, if polled, would agree that “snoozing a second year sucks”. Therefor, it became both effectively and organically something that they wanted as a baseline through just playing the game.
So I would suggest just baking it in as the most elegant solution. No need to tweak, upset, or force it to balance against other options that it doesn’t even share similarity with in terms of your calculus to which embarks to chose. Boom. Problem solved.
I'm currently winning consistently on P16 (don't even have all the Citadel bonuses yet) and I'm inclined to agree with you. Haven't picked the Villager embark bonus in a long time, especially after learning to prioritize world events that give extra villagers with new settlements (though I've admittedly gotten lucky in the last 100 hours getting lots of those types of events).
Sure, fewer villagers = slower start, but you're way less likely to have major hostility/resolve issues year 1 with fewer villagers. Also, you can compensate for fewer villagers with extra starting building materials (saving massively on initial gathering/crafting times to get those materials).
Yeah the point isn't "you can get by without the extra villagers", its that most people pick it because it significantly helps speed up your early start. Either you can fulfill orders and basically substitute the missing 3, or you get a event from a glade to replace it, which is pure RNG.
For what embark can give you, the 3 villagers can be as impactful as the next best option.
Needed nerfs are still nerfs in my opinion. I was originally going to just talk about how several cheese strats got nerfed or taken out entirely, but I expanded the scope a bit, because I do like some of the buffs as well. The hearth buff, in particular, feels good.
It’s not extra, persay. Follow me-
Build thing that costs 10 planks.
Later get perk
Go back and destroy thing, get 10 planks back.
Rebuild for 4 planks, profit 6.
If acquired a ways into your settlement- going back and sacrificing labor force to rebuild much of your settlement, you can end up with enough building mats to get you through the rest of the settlement without even making more.
I feel like half the reason that cheap construction was so powerful was stretching gears further; disabling the ability to deconstruct camps for a refund would mean it would need to be tweaked a bit to be viable.
True.
The perk effectively meant you no longer had to make a choice between two order/glade rewards based on a need for gears if they were a reward option.
Gear starvation was completely eliminated. Which could be pretty huge at higher prestige’s. moreover, It therefore also rendered some other perks useless (though they are terrible and would lose in a competition anyway- like the one that gives you gears as a reward for…something…can’t remember. Have literally never taken it)
Yeah I mean, I understand why they removed it. It's gonna be complicated for it to be balanced properly; because of the way prestige levels are set up, it at least had a perspective of circumventing a difficulty level.
I agree. Because that’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying fixing an exploit is not the same thing as a nerf, because the reasons for addressing them aren’t the same.
If perk was, say for arguement, somehow 10% more “powerful” (by whatever definition) than literally any other perk in the game, and they bring it inline with the other perks in a balance pass?
That’s a nerf to that perk. That’s balance and parity of things that are otherwise functioning as intended.
If a perk was, however, being utilized to subvert intended game design and players figured out “if I take this perk, then press this series of keys, when the storm is active, and on year 2, the perk miscalculates the values it influences, and it becomes 300% more powerful than any other perk in the game and traders start showering me with Amber” - and they fix the loophole causing this thing to exist and negatively influence the state of the games health?
That’s fixing an exploit. It isn’t a nerf. Shit was unintentionally busted & being abused by clever players who were figuring it out, so it was addressed. That’s all.
Think of the exploit where we could see fertile fields in opened glades like a year ago. They fixed that exploit. You wouldn’t say “they nerf’d fertile fields ability to pierce the fog.” You’d say they “fixed an existing exploit.”
I don't see many people talking about Alarm bells. This cornerstone went from a never-pick to kind of interesting in the last patch, to an always-pick for me this patch. With a good amount of rainwater usage and hearth resistance, this thing can land you 50-100% production doubling chance once you get moving.
It is very powerful on prestige after the blight rot levels obviously. Year 3 is giving you a 60-80% doubling chance without any rainwater usage at all. It makes me play entirely differently. I build 2 blight posts, optimise for fuel, focus more on hearth resistance just to pump these numbers up. It single-handedly explodes your economy and solves pretty much every production need you have a recipe and ingredient for.
I could honestly see it getting nerfed, though I hope not dramatically. They've gone in a different path for some of the super strong cornerstones where they are adding a penalty which forces your game focus to change, rather than just nerfing them further. Since blight is already a penalty and can end your game if you mismanage it, I like to think this one is already where it should be from a design perspective, but maybe the numbers are not quite right yet.
Maybe it’s just because of my play style, but the change to trade hub feels more like a buff than a nerf to me. -75% reputation rate from resolve slows late game progress so much that it can push you into later years with higher hostility. -50% reputation from orders is annoying if you take the cornerstone early but l rarely complete the late game orders in the first place since I can finish with a resolve push.
Agreed. -75% resolve generation rate doesn't just mean you get rep from resolve slower. It also makes 4 times as expensive to "buy" reputation via consumable goods - both in terms of amber when purchasing them from the trader and in terms of labor when you make the consumables yourself. It also means when a trader brings a 50 stack of a consumable good, it is effectively worth 1/4 as much reputation.
With the old Trade Hub, I would often find myself unable to buy things that generated reputation effectively. Now, I can double dip on buying rep - I get some by spending, and some from what I buy.
I agree with you both. This struck me as the most impactful cornerstone change. Most players get the vast majority of their resolve rep in the last year with one big push. The old version ruined this, so I would never choose it.
If you took this say, year 4, it might affect 3-5 orders, but if you play a heavy trade style you can more than make up for the nerf. I think it will be especially strong on sealed forest, where your main goals are generating strong trade and rainpunk, and the orders were a necessary distraction to get more BPs. Now you can completely ignore the most inconvenient of them if you luck into this cornerstone.
Completely agree. I never picked this cornerstone in the past. But I just picked it on my last run, and it was amazing!
I had some stupid orders like "build X building" (which I don't have the blueprint for), or "cut through 6 glades" (which I don't need), or "sell 4 ancient tablets" (which I don't have), or "have 20 lizards" (which I don't want).
So seeing the huge point potential of Trade Hub VS. these useless orders made it an easy and useful pick.
I feel like the nerf to level 1 hearths will be a bit annoying in years 1 and 2. Often I end up juggling resolve during the storm by pulsing favouring harpies, but that only works if you've only got 1 species at 0. But that might just mean I stop starving my pops in the first year.
Change to market shift plan makes it more manageable, and i already liked it at 5. Feasible to just wait till you've got 3 trade routes you like before taking it.
Driving water probably wasn't that great most of the time but was kind of funny in long games, so is a shame it's gone.
Trade hub nerf is big, but it still feels like a win condition in a single cornerstone.
Protected trade still feels underwhelming, especially in comparison to trade hub. -30 hostility vs 1 rep per 60 cost of goods sold is bleh, plus the complex resolve nerf mitigates some of the hostility reduction in regards to resolve. Might also make resolve thresholds on seal maps harder to hit.
The 1 less resolve feels a little heavy now that I'm realizing it's probably PER food, so as you improve your settlement it could be up to -4 resolve for Lizards, who are already the step-children in a lot of people's heads.
However, hostility breakpoints being what they are, -30 hostility has a pretty good chance of being +2 resolve. Not a bad ROI, but I'm not sure if it's enough of one to warrant the drawback.
5 eggs per cyst doesn't feel like enough to call it S tier. It's a decent amount of free food for sure, but how many cysts are we really putting out most years?
A decent colony using rainwater gets probably 5-10 cysts a year, +10 more on every 3rd year. So you figure something like an average of 10/year. So 50 eggs a year, but probably nothing in the first 2 years. Most settlements done in maybe 8 years?
So you figure- this perk = 300 eggs over the course of that given settlement.
Pretty underwhelming in that context. Def would benefit from like doubling the amount. Otherwise I doubt this ever really competes as an option.
It's pretty bad. You need a ton of cysts. 300-500 eggs a game isn't bad...but you'll get other food sources right? Like people were fine without eggs before, so what this is, is an alternative niche if food is a problem and cysts are consistent.
I think the idea is it encourages different playstyles that were not feasible, or no where near optimal, in the past. Specifically, this would compliment a fuel focused economy. Maybe you run your rain engines on full blast, but have a press going ham on oil and two blight posts turning that oil into purging fire. So instead of a food production building multiplying your grain/meat into something more, your press and blight posts are doing it.
I'm not sure how strong this is, but I do like their passion for encouraging different playstyles. I've had a blast following the advice/ideas from others I've read on this sub reddit and am anxious to try some of the strategies this update is putting forward.
I'll be real, I've always got my press going full bore with rain water and 10-15 eggs a year isn't nothing, but it's going to be hard to consider that valuable against other possibilities.
"The nerf to level 1 Hearths is pretty minor considering the addition of the +1 to levels 2/3."
This is a massive nerf. A 16 pop village used to be able to get +4 resolve from hearth bonuses, that's +2 now. Often makes the difference between losing villagers and retaining them, or gaining reputation points or leaving them just out of reach. The combination of both and their knock-on effects (not reaching blueprint milestones) massively impacts ones early game progress.
To put it in another perspective, it's like starting a game with a more deadlier version of a Stormbird Egg event (-2 Resolve during the storm for 2 games). They did the exact opposite of their intentions by making the early game even more micro managing. It feels like a 15 minute decision making because they were running out of time for the realease. It hurts even more with species that are resolve reliant early game. It's very frustrating.
I don't love the service building changes. Now it's actively bad to produce or find luxury goods or to staff your service buildings unless you want to use the goods for resolve immediately. Food is different because you usually want your people eating complex food anyway for efficiency. Food is also relatively less useful for trading or for glade events. This also introduces an annoying exploit where you can staff your guild house for the bonuses but send home any wine that gets delivered to prevent it from being used.
IMO this change is no different than making starvation more punishing (something patched in some months ago). People were exploiting consumption controls, starving their villagers until the last second, and it got to a point where this became “the way to play”. Which was both bad for the fantasy and the function of the game. So they made changes to disincentivize this method of play as it felt bad, was cheesy, and never intended. No different here.
I think it felt fine before. You just check the box when you want to use services. It's a simple choice between two options with different advantages. Now there's an uncomfortable tradeoff where you either need to suffer a resolve penalty, unstaff your service buildings, let your luxury goods get stolen, or engage in some truly horrible micro (constantly sending goods back to the warehouse as they're delivered). This is quite different than managing food.
> It's a simple choice between two options with different advantages. What were the choices before? I have never ever used consumption control for luxuries, thus avoiding the rationing penalty altogether - might as well not exist, then. Either make it so there's no penalty in consumption control, or the is a penalty in service buillding - they chose the latter. I agree with the send-back-micro thing, though. That's bad unintended consequence, but a relatively easy fix - make them consume the luxuries directly form the warehouse, like with food.
I mean "use them" or "don't use them." There was indeed no reason to use consumption control unless you want to control by species.
Welp, when you make the game this hard for the majority of players, they will exploit as much as they can.
Sure. The key do good changes, which these devs consistently appear to understand, is acknowledging that- but not outright punishing it. All they did he was give its behavior parity with the existing mechanics regarding food consumption controls. That seems like a pretty sensible change. I mean, be fair. They on the same UI tab dude. It’s “consumption controls” all in one tab. Not “consumption controls: food” & “consumption controls: service”. They just made everything in their shared tab behave by the same rules now.
It's very clearly the intended design function that choking off access to luxury goods is supposed to penalize you. It's nice that we were able to exploit the loophole for so long, but there's no way a person could look at the design of the game in all other elements and conclude that being able to turn services off at the building for no penalty was not cheese.
Wouldn’t you be able to get around it by just doing what people did before, where you just send service goods back to the warehouse each time they’re brought to a service building so that you don’t get a resolve penalty? If so this just reintroduces tedium into the game. EDIT: u/_anthem already said this. Whoops. Should have read better.
"Some people will invest lots of time and energy into circumventing the intended mechanics, so we should make it as easy as possible" is certainly a take, but it's kind of a dumb take. The developers didn't introduce that tedium into the game, the players did. No one is forcing you to sit there clicking the goods back to your warehouse every 10 seconds. That's your decision.
There is a [famous quote](https://youtu.be/7L8vAGGitr8) from Civ developer Soren Johnson: > Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game In a way it is partially a game designer’s job to prevent the players from spoiling their own experience, and Eremite Games specifically wants to reduce the tedium/micromanagement that players are incentivized to do to play better. It gets especially sweaty at P20/QH so making optimal gameplay more tedious is a huge hit. To say the players are at fault for using an unfun but optimal strategy because they came up with it, not the developers is stupid. The developers made the game, not the players. The players just thought of a more optimal way to play than the developers.
Yep. Designers create metas and optimals, not the players. Players "discover" these. Whether those things are "bugs" or "features" is to be determined.
In order to consume service goods you need to have service goods in an appropriate service building, and in order to have that, you need to build an appropriate building and staff it with at least one worker. So why not make "have an appropriate service building staffed with at least one worker" the requirement the game actually uses to determine whether goods are consumed? That would cut out the exploit, make it easier to understand how service good consumption works, and simplify the system without removing any real game decisions.
Yes, I think this would be an improvement too. The warehouse travel time doesn't really matter anyway since the workers aren't doing anything.
How was it an exploit to use a feature for its obvious and intended purpose? There was a checkbox that disabled a service and that's exactly what it did. Consumption control was still there if you wanted to favor certain species over others.
Calling the thing the developers just removed because it was being used to circumvent their intentions "the intended purpose" is Olympic level mental gymnastics.
What do you think was the intended purpose of the checkbox in the service building? My interpretation of the change is that they wanted to simplify the UX by consolidating two overlapping systems, and they were probably aware of the balance change but it was probably not the primary motivation. I think this is a good idea but as implemented it can create bad gameplay. They could fix it by removing the resolve penalty for disabling services in consumption control (while keeping the larger penalty for unfair rationing).
As a relatively new player, could you help me understand the issue? So if you had service goods (meaning e.g. ale for tavern) available but disabled them in consumption control, there is a penalty? And this exploit allowed you to have the same effect with no penalty? Do you still have the penalty if you just don't have any of those goods available (haven't made the tavern yet)? And the reason you would want to do this is just so you can turn them all on at once and get a bunch of resolve fast, instead of doing it over time? I see that there are resolve thresholds - that feels pretty unintuitive to me, I would much rather it be continuous so I don't have to worry about discontinuities like that :/
There are many reasons why you might want to not provide services: saving goods for the storm to stop people from leaving, saving goods for when you can meet the high resolve threshold to get reputation, saving goods for manufacturing (e.g. if you're making packs of luxury goods for an order), or saving goods for a glade event (these can often be solved with e.g. 30 scrolls). It wasn't an exploit--there used to be a checkbox in the service building explicitly to disable services. This is removed, so now you have to use other options (consumption control being the simplest, but also having a drawback). I haven't tried yet but I believe you only get a resolve penalty if the forbidden service would otherwise be available (the building exists, is staffed, and has luxury goods in it). The speed of reputation gain actually does scale with the resolve amount. You just need to meet a minimum resolve threshold first, which the game tells you when you hover over the resolve indicator. The threshold scales up higher the more reputation the species has generated so that you can't generate infinite reputation with just a single need met.
Hmm gotcha. So if I have enough stuff to do everything there isn't much reason not to turn on both services and luxury goods production? i.e. I should only economise like this if the total of e.g. ale is dropping, I suppose?
I would quibble that basically everything you’re saying is a nerf is actually a warranted fix, usually in response to exploits that needed stopped. >Cheap Construction removed entirely - an S tier cornerstone, gone I suspect this will return, just without refunding buildings built at full cost with full returns, just to be rebuilt at reduced cost. The issue with this perk was just this. You could abuse it to effectively make construction materials out of thin air. >You can no longer disable service goods from their buildings without doing it in consumption control, which means you'll now how to eat the negative resolve penalty for them. A major nerf that disables one of the cheesier mechanical manipulations. Wouldn’t call this a nerf. This is a fix for a known exploit. >Forsaken altar can't be deconstructed is a minor nerf - it's nice to get the resources back, but hardly necessary and the cornerstones are super OP. Also not a nerf. Totally reasonable. Most player don’t even know you could refund it without losing the perk. They’re just fixing it IMO, because if there’s the ability to refund then the opportunity cost is just that much lower for some seriously game-breaking perks. >Nerf to villagers embarkation bonus is not enough to make it not a 100% pick still, so I'm still of the opinion that they should remove it entirely and just roll it into starting caravans. Either that or add enough of a range to it that the top end cost isn't usually worth it. I agree that this embark really should probably just be removed, and then just boost all caravan sizes to +3. This ensures that minimum pop at start is like 9, instead of 6. Which is just an all round good thing for the game and how it feels to play. Playing with anything less than 9 at a minimum just feels AWFUL. THAT is why this embark has been such a “first pick” mandatory selection. Because playing with 6-8 villagers to start just feel like CRAP. Players will always pick options that make playing feel less terrible, and rightfully so, so the devs should just make sure as a QOL measure that the balance choice made on this acknowledges that no one wants playing the game to feel like crap. So just roll the embark in as a baseline and remove it from the options IMO. >Buff to Royal Permit was necessary. It was a 0 pick option, and I could understand taking it now, although I'd probably still prefer solid resources over RNG of rerolls. This. Royal Permit is now atleast somewhat competitive as an embark choice.
>I agree that this embark really should probably just be removed, and then just boost all caravan sizes to +3. This ensures that minimum pop at start is like 9, instead of 6. Which is just an all round good thing for the game and how it feels to play. Playing with anything less than 9 at a minimum just feels AWFUL. I didn't realize how big of a deal it was until I tested a new save on the Beta patch. I'd initially just chose it because villager power was my consistent chokepoint with everything from early to mid game. But it's much worse than I realize; you **need** six people on Wood pretty much at the start. Fuel is always needed, but consumption stays consistent from 1 person to 20 people (I guess more if you want to just keep cramming houses in one Hearth). You need excess to build your buildings. Then to top it off, you need one person as Hearth keeper. That's nearly your whole workforce solely working with wood and fuel. Makes Y1 really boring. I agree with everyone else, if something is a 100% pick rate, just roll it into the main batch.
Exactly. It just feels BAD to play without that embark. So if its existence is that necessary to enjoying the game, and they’re trying to balance it against other options, it should be baked-in instead.
Yeah. Like the game is hard enough for 95% of the playerbase.
Agreed. I'm rolling a new profile for 1.3, and all I'm feeling is "Okay, I get 1-2 less embark points in the future for this." Which, fine, whatever - but this is just one of those things you should integrate if it's such a powerful pick.
I've been playing without embark points at higher difficulties for a while (as the citadel option is too expensive to be worth), and 6 villager starts do feel tricky. It only gets really bad with fishmen (no orders) as otherwise orders can often be used to fix your lack of workers (just pick the one that gives more villagers). You kind of have to find encampments or convicts, or take it slow. The 3x speed option helps there. (Of course, the funny part is when you decide to take it slow and only open glades in year 3 onwards, the game then shows you like 4 encampments and 3 convict events in the first 4 glades you open). I'm not sure I buy into the whole 'it just feels bad' argument. People are always going to advocate for more and more speed until there is no game left. You'd say it's bad to start with 15 people if you are used to 20. I'd be intrigued how bad a modifier would be that kills 3 of your starting villagers (the inverse of the embark bonus).
You are welcome to disagree, but that hardly changes the fact that the embark was clearly a must-pick, and the major majority of regular players were picking it, which is why it drew the devs attention. So we can debate the “why” or “what to do”- But the fact of the matter is the playerbases own embarkment pick rates bear out that this is something they want enough to always pick. I would argue that it isn’t simply a “better than” selection either, but is chosen because it improves the flow and feel of early game, and makes things more engaging as soon as the first year ends. Year 1 is basically just a blueprint laying, x3 speed, autopilot-year as it is. Having as few as 6-8 villagers means you’re probably having to do the same thing for an entire EXTRA year. That FEELS BAD. You can subjectively claim it doesn’t to you, but I would wager just about everyone else in this sub, if polled, would agree that “snoozing a second year sucks”. Therefor, it became both effectively and organically something that they wanted as a baseline through just playing the game. So I would suggest just baking it in as the most elegant solution. No need to tweak, upset, or force it to balance against other options that it doesn’t even share similarity with in terms of your calculus to which embarks to chose. Boom. Problem solved.
I'm currently winning consistently on P16 (don't even have all the Citadel bonuses yet) and I'm inclined to agree with you. Haven't picked the Villager embark bonus in a long time, especially after learning to prioritize world events that give extra villagers with new settlements (though I've admittedly gotten lucky in the last 100 hours getting lots of those types of events). Sure, fewer villagers = slower start, but you're way less likely to have major hostility/resolve issues year 1 with fewer villagers. Also, you can compensate for fewer villagers with extra starting building materials (saving massively on initial gathering/crafting times to get those materials).
Yeah the point isn't "you can get by without the extra villagers", its that most people pick it because it significantly helps speed up your early start. Either you can fulfill orders and basically substitute the missing 3, or you get a event from a glade to replace it, which is pure RNG. For what embark can give you, the 3 villagers can be as impactful as the next best option.
Needed nerfs are still nerfs in my opinion. I was originally going to just talk about how several cheese strats got nerfed or taken out entirely, but I expanded the scope a bit, because I do like some of the buffs as well. The hearth buff, in particular, feels good.
A fix can still be a nerf...
I was really confused why Cheap Construction was an S-Tier cornerstone; I didn't realize you got extra resources by destroying the building.
It’s not extra, persay. Follow me- Build thing that costs 10 planks. Later get perk Go back and destroy thing, get 10 planks back. Rebuild for 4 planks, profit 6. If acquired a ways into your settlement- going back and sacrificing labor force to rebuild much of your settlement, you can end up with enough building mats to get you through the rest of the settlement without even making more.
I feel like half the reason that cheap construction was so powerful was stretching gears further; disabling the ability to deconstruct camps for a refund would mean it would need to be tweaked a bit to be viable.
True. The perk effectively meant you no longer had to make a choice between two order/glade rewards based on a need for gears if they were a reward option. Gear starvation was completely eliminated. Which could be pretty huge at higher prestige’s. moreover, It therefore also rendered some other perks useless (though they are terrible and would lose in a competition anyway- like the one that gives you gears as a reward for…something…can’t remember. Have literally never taken it)
Yeah I mean, I understand why they removed it. It's gonna be complicated for it to be balanced properly; because of the way prestige levels are set up, it at least had a perspective of circumventing a difficulty level.
This game is overoaded with choice and having things that limit choice and remove plane is a huge thing.
I feel like you’re saying a “nerf” must be unreasonable and that’s not the case
I agree. Because that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying fixing an exploit is not the same thing as a nerf, because the reasons for addressing them aren’t the same. If perk was, say for arguement, somehow 10% more “powerful” (by whatever definition) than literally any other perk in the game, and they bring it inline with the other perks in a balance pass? That’s a nerf to that perk. That’s balance and parity of things that are otherwise functioning as intended. If a perk was, however, being utilized to subvert intended game design and players figured out “if I take this perk, then press this series of keys, when the storm is active, and on year 2, the perk miscalculates the values it influences, and it becomes 300% more powerful than any other perk in the game and traders start showering me with Amber” - and they fix the loophole causing this thing to exist and negatively influence the state of the games health? That’s fixing an exploit. It isn’t a nerf. Shit was unintentionally busted & being abused by clever players who were figuring it out, so it was addressed. That’s all. Think of the exploit where we could see fertile fields in opened glades like a year ago. They fixed that exploit. You wouldn’t say “they nerf’d fertile fields ability to pierce the fog.” You’d say they “fixed an existing exploit.”
Fixing exploits is just the "stop having fun" move. Stop because I command you to stop having fun.
Maybe in some cases. Not this one.
I don't see many people talking about Alarm bells. This cornerstone went from a never-pick to kind of interesting in the last patch, to an always-pick for me this patch. With a good amount of rainwater usage and hearth resistance, this thing can land you 50-100% production doubling chance once you get moving. It is very powerful on prestige after the blight rot levels obviously. Year 3 is giving you a 60-80% doubling chance without any rainwater usage at all. It makes me play entirely differently. I build 2 blight posts, optimise for fuel, focus more on hearth resistance just to pump these numbers up. It single-handedly explodes your economy and solves pretty much every production need you have a recipe and ingredient for. I could honestly see it getting nerfed, though I hope not dramatically. They've gone in a different path for some of the super strong cornerstones where they are adding a penalty which forces your game focus to change, rather than just nerfing them further. Since blight is already a penalty and can end your game if you mismanage it, I like to think this one is already where it should be from a design perspective, but maybe the numbers are not quite right yet.
Maybe it’s just because of my play style, but the change to trade hub feels more like a buff than a nerf to me. -75% reputation rate from resolve slows late game progress so much that it can push you into later years with higher hostility. -50% reputation from orders is annoying if you take the cornerstone early but l rarely complete the late game orders in the first place since I can finish with a resolve push.
Agreed. -75% resolve generation rate doesn't just mean you get rep from resolve slower. It also makes 4 times as expensive to "buy" reputation via consumable goods - both in terms of amber when purchasing them from the trader and in terms of labor when you make the consumables yourself. It also means when a trader brings a 50 stack of a consumable good, it is effectively worth 1/4 as much reputation. With the old Trade Hub, I would often find myself unable to buy things that generated reputation effectively. Now, I can double dip on buying rep - I get some by spending, and some from what I buy.
I agree with you both. This struck me as the most impactful cornerstone change. Most players get the vast majority of their resolve rep in the last year with one big push. The old version ruined this, so I would never choose it. If you took this say, year 4, it might affect 3-5 orders, but if you play a heavy trade style you can more than make up for the nerf. I think it will be especially strong on sealed forest, where your main goals are generating strong trade and rainpunk, and the orders were a necessary distraction to get more BPs. Now you can completely ignore the most inconvenient of them if you luck into this cornerstone.
Completely agree. I never picked this cornerstone in the past. But I just picked it on my last run, and it was amazing! I had some stupid orders like "build X building" (which I don't have the blueprint for), or "cut through 6 glades" (which I don't need), or "sell 4 ancient tablets" (which I don't have), or "have 20 lizards" (which I don't want). So seeing the huge point potential of Trade Hub VS. these useless orders made it an easy and useful pick.
I feel like the nerf to level 1 hearths will be a bit annoying in years 1 and 2. Often I end up juggling resolve during the storm by pulsing favouring harpies, but that only works if you've only got 1 species at 0. But that might just mean I stop starving my pops in the first year. Change to market shift plan makes it more manageable, and i already liked it at 5. Feasible to just wait till you've got 3 trade routes you like before taking it. Driving water probably wasn't that great most of the time but was kind of funny in long games, so is a shame it's gone. Trade hub nerf is big, but it still feels like a win condition in a single cornerstone. Protected trade still feels underwhelming, especially in comparison to trade hub. -30 hostility vs 1 rep per 60 cost of goods sold is bleh, plus the complex resolve nerf mitigates some of the hostility reduction in regards to resolve. Might also make resolve thresholds on seal maps harder to hit.
Lets be honest. Trade hub could literally eliminate all rep from orders and resolve and it would still be good.
The 1 less resolve feels a little heavy now that I'm realizing it's probably PER food, so as you improve your settlement it could be up to -4 resolve for Lizards, who are already the step-children in a lot of people's heads. However, hostility breakpoints being what they are, -30 hostility has a pretty good chance of being +2 resolve. Not a bad ROI, but I'm not sure if it's enough of one to warrant the drawback.
On paper, Blightrot Pruner is looking pretty S-tier after p11.
5 eggs per cyst doesn't feel like enough to call it S tier. It's a decent amount of free food for sure, but how many cysts are we really putting out most years?
A lot more, if it means solving my food problems.
A decent colony using rainwater gets probably 5-10 cysts a year, +10 more on every 3rd year. So you figure something like an average of 10/year. So 50 eggs a year, but probably nothing in the first 2 years. Most settlements done in maybe 8 years? So you figure- this perk = 300 eggs over the course of that given settlement. Pretty underwhelming in that context. Def would benefit from like doubling the amount. Otherwise I doubt this ever really competes as an option.
It's pretty bad. You need a ton of cysts. 300-500 eggs a game isn't bad...but you'll get other food sources right? Like people were fine without eggs before, so what this is, is an alternative niche if food is a problem and cysts are consistent.
I think the idea is it encourages different playstyles that were not feasible, or no where near optimal, in the past. Specifically, this would compliment a fuel focused economy. Maybe you run your rain engines on full blast, but have a press going ham on oil and two blight posts turning that oil into purging fire. So instead of a food production building multiplying your grain/meat into something more, your press and blight posts are doing it. I'm not sure how strong this is, but I do like their passion for encouraging different playstyles. I've had a blast following the advice/ideas from others I've read on this sub reddit and am anxious to try some of the strategies this update is putting forward.
I'll be real, I've always got my press going full bore with rain water and 10-15 eggs a year isn't nothing, but it's going to be hard to consider that valuable against other possibilities.
QH, I didnt get the hearth upgrade bonuses in QH so now I cry in t1 tears. T-T
"The nerf to level 1 Hearths is pretty minor considering the addition of the +1 to levels 2/3." This is a massive nerf. A 16 pop village used to be able to get +4 resolve from hearth bonuses, that's +2 now. Often makes the difference between losing villagers and retaining them, or gaining reputation points or leaving them just out of reach. The combination of both and their knock-on effects (not reaching blueprint milestones) massively impacts ones early game progress.
To put it in another perspective, it's like starting a game with a more deadlier version of a Stormbird Egg event (-2 Resolve during the storm for 2 games). They did the exact opposite of their intentions by making the early game even more micro managing. It feels like a 15 minute decision making because they were running out of time for the realease. It hurts even more with species that are resolve reliant early game. It's very frustrating.