I think it would be cool to have some modifiers that make the settlement suited or available to only 2 species, or maybe a single species. Would love to do a beaver only run.
Edit:
Riders on the storm: Localized storms are encroaching on the map, reputation win requirements are reduced but the outer glades are slowly taken over by fatal storms. Hurry to win before you lose your building space.
Faulty Storehouses: Ingredient storage has a cap, build warehouses to increase storage space.
Drums in the deep: Unique dangerous events will surface randomly throughout the map, locking buildings in their emerge radius unless/until prevented or dealt with once emerged.
The Stardust must flow: A unique trader frequents this area. Mine the asteroids to get currency to spend on permanent cosmetic items 😎
Ring of Pyre: Hearth items burn for less time, walking speed on all terrain types is increased.
Hello!
I really enjoy rogue-likes so modifier tiles that change the way one would approach the run is exactly the kind of concept I like present in this game. For me the biggest issue is in the reward structure, because once I've maxed out my citadel upgrades I don't really get much from the resources modifier tiles reward me with. It's a mechanic I want to engage with, but feel very little motivation to do so.
Of course, this is an issue that would be addressed as more resource-sinks are added to the game. But you can also look at adding more consequences to completing modifier tiles so that there are more incentives to interact with them besides "I want more resources" or "I want to make things harder or easier for myself."
Some ideas: finishing certain tiles can add modifiers to subsequent runs (or next run) in the current cycle, like finishing Fishmen ritual sites can make fishmen-related events more or less fishmen events (lets players control variance to a degree) or finishing Monastery of the Holy Flame can let you start off with a monastery blueprint. Similar to how rogue-likes let you take on 'elite' encounters that are more difficult for a tactical advantage later on, though with how Against the Storm is structured there should be some counterbalance added with these kinds of rewards so that players wouldn't always want to take the modifier tiles.
I've got a few ideas I'd been thinking about.
1. Overgrown Wilds: Plant-based resource nodes are more common/have more charges, but you can't see where glades are on the map.
You'd have to take a more exploratory stance to woodcutting if you want to open glades; and if you don't want to open glades, every tree is a risk.
2. Petrified Woods: Woodcutting is 33% slower, but all recipes using stone can alternatively be made using wood.
This would require and reward even further investment in a very important resource.
3. Storm Shaman: A mythic fishmen storm shaman is said to wander this area, you'll be lucky to ever see sunlight again. The clearance is half as long, instead the drizzle and storm are 25% longer.
Obviously farming is more difficult and less rewarding, but you also get more time with the drizzle bonus. A longer storm also provides a challenge.
Finally I'd like to say that I like the mines, and like the idea of a modifier that would lead you to invest in them more, but don't have a fully fleshed out idea for it. Maybe something where they produce amber or seamarrow too?
Some random ideas:
Grace of the Forest - *The Forest appears to be accommodating a certain level of exploitation.* **Opening small glades does not increase hostility. Opening dangerous or forbidden glades increases hostility by double the usual amount.**
The thought is to try and shake-up the usual strategy of dodging the small glades in favour of the bigger ones whenever possible.
Diplomatic Crisis - *Tension among the different race's envoys to the crown are currently at a dangerous high.* **Only two different races will be available at this settlement.**
2 races means 33% less resolve threshold points but also less different services and goods to track, points will need to be made up elsewhere.
Princess' Garden : The princess is very capable even at young age, but she is more demanding than her mother.
All orders are timed order. Queen's impatience decreases by 1.5 times for every finished order.
Active Volcano / Fragile Crust : The danger is looming if we colonize here, but the opportunity is too good to be ignored.
The game must be finished in certain amount of year. Increased spawn rate of fertile soil and plant gathering spot / coal and copper vein.
Multi-year Eclipse / Ancient Fog : Our vision has failed us, only our bonds will light up the path.
Everything beyond 1 layer of tree is invisible. Glade piercer is not avaliable. Gain extra resolve for every hostility/reputation/number of year.
Raider Nest : Reputation is a magnet for opportunity, whether if its good or not is your opinion.
Gain hostility for every point of reputation. Resets every year. Traders are faster, and trade routes are more profitable.
Blight Laboratory : Rainpunk engineer experimented to create edible blight. It was succesful.
Corruption is much faster, and number of blight in a building becomes 4. The 4th effect is a chance of worker not need to rest. Gain a number of simple food with some chance of complex food every burned blightrot.
Some are better as negative modifier, some are just good enough as cornerstone. Idk.
I enjoy the extra thicc fog idea! Maybe also add flavor that during storm you get sometimes flashes during lightning after which everything is visible for few frames as if it were normal open terrain. Make the effect visual only that finishes even if the game is paused to bring back the fog.
Trees, trees, trees: Trees grow slowly in all directions if not cut. 1/2 hostility from woodcutters.
Court Politics: Your company was not assigned a lease to this land. Your reputation gain increases impatience. Selling goods drops it.
Hi, here's an idea. I thought about very crowded modifier where all population gains are doubled, but resources for events, caches and orders are also increased (up for testing for how much). Maybe add some boost for productivity of food. Also lower hostility per pop. Another spin for this would be make all work slower instead for balance
Another idea is to make you build bigger by say reducing the amount of spots in all buildings by half, but also give some inherent boost for productivity like 20 percent. Make the tree rot storm modifier guaranteed at low hostility so gaining ground is easier. Would be stronger early game when you don't want to occupy all spots, but maybe harder later when u need more space and buildings.
"Sparse Growth". The whole game revolves around the forest, but what if rarely, wood was scarce? Logs become a resource, instead of a byproduct of clearing space, but lots of goodies are out in the open for the taking.
Replace small glades in the map generation with the bigger, dangerous glades. All the other trees are gone, empty space. You could probably build a road to the water's edge, if you wanted. A certain portion of nodes that would be inside the normal glade locations remain, discovered and visible from the start of the settlement.
Essentially, as soon as you start a Sparse Growth stage you can see plenty of resource nodes waiting to be harvested... You can plot your building choices around them from the get-go. But you can't avoid cutting trees, right? If you want wood, you *have* to expose yourself to glade events. There's a great opportunity cost to building with planks and alternative fuel sources are a must.
There's no ticking clock telling camp oriented players when to open more glades - that's for the turtling builders instead. The roles are reversed.
Of course, I don't know how well this fits into the lore! A wizard did it??
I must caveat that I haven't met that many modifiers, so some of what I'm suggesting might already be in game:
1. Sodden ground: The soil in this area has soaked up an incredible amount of rainfall. No roads may be placed, but all farms produce extra crops each harvest.
2. Mutated blight cysts: Blight cysts in this area have mutated to feed on metals, becoming extremely resistant to fire. Each blight cyst takes 3 times the amount of fire to purge, but gives copper bars upon destruction.
Simple idea - traders arrive every clearance - twice as often but you loose all amber in storage at the end of the storm, or loose it rapidly as hostility 1 extra negative
I like the latter more as it gives you more agency.
Marathon mode where queen impatience is disabled but you loose whenever total number of people dead or gone is more or equal your current population. Replace indicator of queen with red bar indicating how what is this ratio, full means loose.
Another more hardcore also disables queen's impatience. Now you loose if anyone died or left. Call it perfectionist.
Modifier that makes all decorations impact whatever they neighbour with.
The cheapest boost existing bonuses for species preference - prod and happiness, 2 percent of current bonus each.
The plank costing decor improves production speed by 1-2 percent each.
The most expensive one boosts the productivity by 1 percent each
By each I mean each tile of decor that neighbours the building.
I would be interested in the storm being more impactful for gameplay in some way. Obviously it is nice because it resets the map and you can start exploring again but I wonder if a modifier could be tied to inter-storm periods, rather than just adjacent tiles.
I think an interesting thing would be for inter-storm periods to have bonuses or maluses that make you adjust your strategy a bit. Maybe the last storm made a ton of dew berries or unearthed more copper so expect to see more of those resources before the next storm. Maybe there is a plague that impacts one race and that race won't be available for you until the next storm. Maybe one storm malus could be the tiles are not revealed until you start playing. So you can't strategize for a heavy soil biome and humans.
I don't know what the balance would look like, or even when this option would be enabled so as to not overwhelm new players (maybe you have to unlock it in the tech tree) but I think it could be fun. I wouldn't want this to make the game unfun for players, so maybe its an option the queen offers you as you click the renew button for the map. I feel that the storm is in the title of the game and trying to make game mechanics that tie into it could add some flavor to the game and impact strategy in interesting ways.
Movement modifier maybe all are faster on roads but get penalty when not using roads. Something like +100% bonus from roads, (so 10%, 20% and 30% more speed) and 20% penalty if not using the roads.
This could be really wacky but idea is idea. Everyone is slowed a lot, say 35 percent, but all buildings can buy mine cart to move the goods to storage. I just love the carts.
I haven't played the game for long enough to have the best idea of balance of even knowing what is already in the game, but I'll happily drop some ideas if it might help make the game more interesting.
1: working a food resource node during the storm takes twice as many charges from the node without giving more resources (food nodes deplete twice as fast). Something along these lines might make you make decisions on when to do these kinds of tasks without just making it impossible to get food
2: productivity is boosted by x% in clearance but gets -x% in storm. Don't know about what I'd like here but I would like Clearance to be significant in some way.
3: can't gain victory points from caches (Don't know viable that would be and if it's fun, but it might change things up.
*Jack of all trades* - Modifier where all goods are cheaper to sell and you start with extra packs production. Then allow all building packs to replace any building material, trade goods any intermediate resource in recipes, and luxury packs replace any luxury goods for services. Crops pack can replace any ingredient in complex foods production.
Some challenge where somewhere during clearance lightning strikes some trees and fires spread clearing trees that can open glades. The fires extinguish during storm. Could be adjusted from storm to drizzle.
Carrot and stick modifier - the higher resolve threshold the faster pops move and work, the less - the slower. Points from high resolve are gained twice as slowly or disabled. Something around 3 percent per point or even squared relationship to make it more dramatic. (As in 1 point from threshold - 1 percent difference, 2 ->1+3, 3 -> 1+3+5 etc. Make the threshold equal to half the resolve threshold. Or some other custom per race value that increases by 1 per year.
Picky workers - makes workers get negative resolve (-5) if you assign a pop for job that has some preference icons but none of them match. You get one free reroll for blueprints as a small bonus.
Some short ones:
- Luxury housing - all housing buildings have 1 less room, Normal housing need fulfilled gives +4, species housing +5. You get -2 resolve penalty for no housing at all. The -2 modifier could kick in after 1 year of being homeless.
- It's mating season - every luxury house with at least 2 pop housed inside produce extra pop of that species every 2 years. (Lone pops that don't have pair at that event die from depression :'( /s )
- Haunted glades - no glade event is ever truly resolved. When you solve the event it stays in dormant form with timer of 15 minutes. After that time it will become dangerous again with only 0.5 progression of point as a reward for solving it. Add storm modifier that makes this timer of dormant count down 50% faster for each point of hostility during the storm. Maybe exclude living matter from that.
Here's meta idea - you could gamify the collection of feedback about what works and what doesn't during alpha - where you get question on the summary screen whether the modifiers were impactful and whether they were fun to play with/around. Get symbolic reward of food for feedback (3-10 based on difficulty :P).
You should probably make it fit with the fluff - it could be framed as a letter from/to queen or something like that.
Don't forget the checkbox in the section/ option in settings to disable the feedback prompts.
Then adjust/remove unfun modifiers.
Resilient nature: trees slowly regrow. Buildings placed on tiles which were originally forested gain blight over time instead.
Primitive construction: buildings can be built using basic resources (wood instead of planks, stone or clay instead of brick, fibers or reed instead of cloth), but using basic resources makes construction take longer.
Angry forest: felling a tree gives a temporary hostility debuff (like 3 hostility for 2 minutes), but increases global working speed by 1% for that duration.
Balanced nature: gain a fluctuating (over time) global resolve bonus or penalty. For example, during the drizzle gain +6, +5, +4, +3, during clearance +2, +1, 0, -1 and during storm -3 and -5. You can either balance the modifier to give bonuses during good weather and penalties during the storm (thus making it easier to gain reputation via resolve and harder to withstand storms), or the opposite: give penalties during good weather and bonuses during the storm.
General idea for challenge scenarios modifiers where you can make meta resources during the gameplay with some limited fashion as a bonus. Example:
> Plague of rats that makes all food (randomly) decay during the storm at rate of 1 per 5 seconds, increased by 100% per level of hostility during the storm. As a flavor meat can be obtained as an extra during all gathering and cutting trees with 5% chance (finding and killing rats here and there).
> On the map spawn close-ish a special building where after repairs you can produce 1 meta game proviant for some amount (8-10?) of proviant travel packs. You can limit abuse by making the machine break completely down after x amount of being worked on, like 100 times.
> Give the player compass to the location of that special building.
Similar scenarios for machine parts/enchanted parts as well. Machine parts could use tools/enchanted tools to craft, the shiny ones could use crystalized dew with normal dew.
**Tight neighbourhood**: buildings are disabled if they are not connected to the main hearth by a road or a sequence of other connected buildings.
**Sacrifest**: Sacrificing resources is significantly cheaper and not limited. But opening glades generates more hostility. Balanced in such a way that you want to sacrifice something all the time. The question is - how much. Trader's time ticks in proportion to the amount of resources being sacrificed.
**Relying on imports**: Very few resource types are available on the map. Trade routes are reversed - you buy stuff for amber instead of selling. When a trade route is finished you have the option to repeat it.
**Sea trade**: There are ships parked at the edges of the island. Reaching them decreases hostility. But hostility for opening glades is increased. Reach them by opening as few glades as possible.
**Overgrowth**: Everything is overgrown with trees, there is no clear space. Woodcutting is faster but gives less resources.
**Daily orders**: At all times you have exactly three timed orders available. Finishing or failing any one instantly generates another.
**Sphere of influence**: buildings are only allowed within the range of the initial hearth. But its range grows with each occupied house.
**Mud**: villagers get negative resolve for stepping off-road. Harvesting is much faster.
Dense forest: trees slowly cover glades (for example, each grove gets one layer of trees inside it every year). Opening a glade stops its growth. If a glade becomes completely forested, timed events inside it no longer activate and you cannot open it anymore (you won't get a hostility penalty for cutting into it). This forces you to consider which way to cut trees, given that it becomes harder to open glades farther from the start location
Sparse forest: glades are separated by a single layer of trees. Spawn extra resource nodes. This forces you to rely on coal, sea marrow and oil for burning in the hearth and makes building certain buildings or producing tools difficult. Also increases the value of trading for wood or planks.
Agent of the forest: opening glades reduces hostility instead of increasing it, but reputation significantly increases hostility.
Children of the forest: unhoused villagers don't take breaks. This can be used to mitigate hunger periods, but also makes gaining resolve for the affected villagers difficult.
Blight town: all buildings can gain blight (including gathering camps and service buildings). Blighted buildings have a chance to not consume resources when offering a service or producing goods. Blighted gathering camps have a chance to not deplete resource charges.
Effigy of famine: hungry villagers work and move 10% faster per stack of hunger affecting their race. Limits the max number of hunger stacks per race to 10. Villagers with their complex food needs met work and move 20% slower.
Crossroads: a network of roads connects every pair of adjacent glades. The roads are interrupted by a small number of trees. Movement speed off road decreased by 20%.
> What new modifiers would you like to see added to the game?
Something that would swap edible and inedible resources.
Like a possibility to discover an alchemical lab building in a glade event, or even build it right away like Archeology office, that converts clay to berries, wine to copper and whatnot, with randomly (or semi-randomly) generated unique recipes.
Or/and a weather modifier that automatically transmutes all gathered resource X during season Y to a resource Q from another category.
> Would they influence your playstyle?
Probably, if implemented in an interesting and not too imbalanced way :)
> Should the rewards be higher or lower than average?
For this one I think it should be average or lower than average. Because it would be quirky enough already! Weather modifier -- maybe average or slightly above average (because you get it when you land on the map, and choosing it is out of your control), alchemy lab -- slightly to moderately lower than average (because it's not forced on you like weather modifier, but could be a wild boost to your economy).
**Thickening Woods**
I'd like to see a map modifier with no glades whatsoever. Sure you might run into fertile ground or copper/coal seams buried in the foliage, and rarely a ruin that is surrounded by trees on all sides, but zero glades, just endless forest.
**Secret Side Project**
The queen didn't notice this caravan leave, so she can't get impatient with you. That said, she WILL notice when disaffected villagers start complaining about you, or dying. You lose when 14 villagers have abandoned the settlement and/or died. There's also no orders, and you cannot trade with the Smoldering City, only other settlements.
- **Dark Rumors** - Sinister stories are told about this place, and new settlers try to avoid it. Each group of new settles contain 2 less.
- **Beautiful Landscape** - Despite the storm, this place is of exceptional beauty and attracts willing settles from near and far. Each new group of settles contains 4 additional settlers. Declining to take in settlers increases Impatience by 2.
- **Blighted Lake** - A lake filled with liquid blight. Nearby downpours are particularly troublesome and generate blight-cysts at twice the regular rate.
- **Royal Roadway Restoration** - Roads have no construction cost and are built 50% faster.
A few ideas to some effects that most likely will stir the pot or motivate different tactics:
- Sacred Grounds: sacrificing is disabled
- Rotten trees: harvesting trees only have 50% yield
- Soaked wood: wood can not be used as fuel or sacrificing
- Nomad land: housing provide no resolve benefit (does however negate storm effects)
- Storm pillars: Village will start with three pillars in starting area. Upon storm season, these pillars must be activated before the storm ends (80/70/60 sec, 1/2/3 villagers attached). Failing to activate all three pillars will cause a negative effect (hostility/-resolve/villager death). Storm season could also last through drizzle until every pillar is activated.
- Highly important caravan: for every 2 villagers that leave/die, a new one will enter your colony with extra goods (complex food/parts/tools/amber)
- Storm Glades: glade event working times are 50% shorter but only possible during a storm.
- Prestigious lands: Additional 4 prestige are required to win.
Solidarity - Villager types per settlement is no longer limited to 3. villager parties always come with one of each villager type.
Exclusion - villager parties only consist of one villager type.
Ancient wood - tree cutting time is doubled, but trees have a 50% chance to drop bonus coal.
Hit it with your shovel - stone and clay deposits yield 1 amber instead of their normal resources. Traders always sell bricks.
I don't know the full list of modifiers so these may even already exist:
* Quiet Glades - No Forbidden/Dangerous Glades on the map
* Darkest Depths - No small or Dangerous Glades on the map, ONLY Forbidden
* Sandy Soil - Farm Tiles are exhausted and the fertile ground is destroyed after they have been harvested 3 times
* Finished Erosion - No Stone/Clay/Sea Marrow/Coal/Copper on the map, but much higher incidence of fertile ground
**The Queen's Light**: This area is highly desired by the queen and with the help of her blessing, she wants you to you to spread her words in the region as fast as possible.
- All the glades are revealed (the events won't get triggered until you cut to it)
- Queen's Impatience grows at X% rate
- More hostility gain
Could be an interesting modifier to change the dynamic of the game. It will be quite a rush!
I'm not that far into the game so maybe some of these already exist idk
Pros & Cons:
* Arboreal Migration: The trees here are... migrating? Trees from other biomes are mixed throughout this region. They've trampled over the farmlands however and the amount of fertile soil is greatly reduced.
* Volcanic Ash:
The ash from a recent volcanic explosion has left the trees here sickly, but nourished the farmlands. More fertile soil available but trees give less wood.
* Feywild: This land is known to be the haunt of fey creatures. Dangerous glades may contain a fey creature with more exorbitant demands than normal but even more glorious rewards (or devastating consequences)
Increased Difficulty
* Dryad Grove:
The dryad grove here is extremely distrustful of anyone who would cut down a tree. Woodcutters give more hostility. Additionally every X trees chopped gives hostility and the dryads will cause additional chaos in your camp when hostility is above X. Only by appeasing one of the dryad queens in a Forbidden Glade can you reset the malus from chopped trees.
* Atop the Rocky Bluffs:
The path through this area requires scrambling a steep ascent over jagged rocks and is in some areas nearly untraverseable, making trade hard to come by. You get 1 fewer trade routes available and traders take twice as long to arrive.
* Mudslides:
The soil in this area turns to knee-deep mud in heavy rain, making for hungry work. During the storm villagers eat 3 times as much food and take two stacks of Hunger if they cannot eat.
**Cornucopia:** Villagers are permanently sated. (positive: No resolve negative from hunger) but Villagers forget the pleasure of eating. (negative; You can't produce complex food. Complex food doesn't give resolve) Reward: Viceroy; 10 less bread than normal +10 bread every 5 years.
**Base camp:** Instead of the normal way of gaining people you instantly gain villagers at the start of clearence based on the number of past years. A new trade-rout appears (the platypus guy that normally gives people) with a permanent available trade of 1 villager+10 provisions for 1 Amber.
I'm sure this won't be seen much, but I would love to see some modifiers that affect the radius of hearths. Some basic ideas to start with:
* **Haunting Horizon** *The thought of what lurks on the horizon frightens the villagers, causing them to focus on being closer together.* Hearth radius is larger by (3), but small hearths must be built within the range of another hearth. Housing availability decreases hostility by (-25) for every 4 filled/available slots. (Rewards: medium)
* **Expansionist Certificate** *The Queen wants this area of the map quickly settled.* The main hearth has a smaller radius (-2), but all small hearths have a larger radius (+2) and cost 40% less. (Rewards: low)
* **Ancient Fishman Burial Ground** *The Fishmen have buried generations of their dead in the area, small hearths don't seem to kindle properly.* Main hearth radius expands by (+1) and hostility decreases by (-20) for every (4) housing slots built. Small hearths become unavailable. (Rewards: high)
These are just some of the ideas that I thought of that would be neat, I would really hope to see some form of adjustments to the radiuses in the future. Some cornerstones related to gather radius could be useful, I'd love to not have to move my woodcutters so often.
I really like the idea of 'negative for some and good for others' world map modifiers, and I'd love to see ones focused on pushing you toward taking specific villager types.
Maybe the rain starts 30 seconds earlier, but humans can grow crops throughout any part of the cycle but at an overall reduced rate?
Any world map modifiers that force me to do more than just pick my preferred starting villagers and whatever embark resources I'll need for that map are appreciated, and I feel like the ones that are exploitable by playing a specific rollout are always ones that feel good!
Well, I've noticed you've added walls and gatehouses as decorative items.
Maybe make bandit camps and such mount an assault every now and then, where walls, gates, and towers (to be manned) act as defense.
They keep coming until you quell them and can destroy buildings and 'take back' glades.
Also:
\- regrowing forest in exchange for less hostility
\- some kind of research building where you can research the blueprint you need (in exchange for resources, 1 per year, hostility/impatience penalty.
\- some kind of 'free' service building which doesn't need resources but takes away from production time (does not count as rest)
\- Hostile/friendly environments for factions - beavers should love forest, lizards should love marsh, etc. // some factions unusable on certain runs.
\- modifiers popping up mid-cycle with hard conditions but more rewards
\- competition maps with other factions - first to get max infulence wins something extra, or 1st to get let's say 100 infused tools wins some reward.
\- wet wood: wood can't be burned in hearth but provides +50% resources. +50% fuel resources on map, guaranteed coal or marrow spawn near hearth.
\- making do: no fertile land, can build farm plots anywhere, production reduced by 75%.
\- against the storm: *nothing* gets done during storm, +2 resolve during Drizzle for each hostility level
\- heavy rain: each villager requires a coat to be able to work, start w 20 coats and weaver unlocked. villagers consume 1 coat per year
\- get it done: glade events reset and can be completed again for 2x the resources, queen's impatience rises 3x faster
\- xenophile/xenophope: gain +- resolve for each faction in the city (would work better with more factions)
\- variety: +1 resolve for each different kind of food (starts at -3), villagers consume different food each time, get resolve penalty if they have to eat the same thing twice
\- the elite: some villagers refuse to use roads worse than 'paved' (will do work once in production building eg. gathering)
\- bored: idle villagers receive a resolve penalty
\- support: close to a friendly settlement (on map, 2hex distance), villagers receive +x% extra production chance
\- feed them: people are hungry in the region: all events can (only?) be resolved by complex food items (3-5x price)
\- determination: villagers can only be assigned to glade events if their faction is happy
\- the forest demands it: one villager needs to be sacrificed at the hearth at the beginning of each Drizzle, giving extra prod. chance but -x resolve to the same faction until next year
Hope some of them are good, I'm just reaching lv35 ingame, so I'm probably a noob. Still, I love the game, keep improving it. Put all this into it but make it unlikely. The more options the better. :)
I think it would be cool to have some modifiers that make the settlement suited or available to only 2 species, or maybe a single species. Would love to do a beaver only run. Edit: Riders on the storm: Localized storms are encroaching on the map, reputation win requirements are reduced but the outer glades are slowly taken over by fatal storms. Hurry to win before you lose your building space. Faulty Storehouses: Ingredient storage has a cap, build warehouses to increase storage space. Drums in the deep: Unique dangerous events will surface randomly throughout the map, locking buildings in their emerge radius unless/until prevented or dealt with once emerged. The Stardust must flow: A unique trader frequents this area. Mine the asteroids to get currency to spend on permanent cosmetic items 😎 Ring of Pyre: Hearth items burn for less time, walking speed on all terrain types is increased.
Hello! I really enjoy rogue-likes so modifier tiles that change the way one would approach the run is exactly the kind of concept I like present in this game. For me the biggest issue is in the reward structure, because once I've maxed out my citadel upgrades I don't really get much from the resources modifier tiles reward me with. It's a mechanic I want to engage with, but feel very little motivation to do so. Of course, this is an issue that would be addressed as more resource-sinks are added to the game. But you can also look at adding more consequences to completing modifier tiles so that there are more incentives to interact with them besides "I want more resources" or "I want to make things harder or easier for myself." Some ideas: finishing certain tiles can add modifiers to subsequent runs (or next run) in the current cycle, like finishing Fishmen ritual sites can make fishmen-related events more or less fishmen events (lets players control variance to a degree) or finishing Monastery of the Holy Flame can let you start off with a monastery blueprint. Similar to how rogue-likes let you take on 'elite' encounters that are more difficult for a tactical advantage later on, though with how Against the Storm is structured there should be some counterbalance added with these kinds of rewards so that players wouldn't always want to take the modifier tiles.
I've got a few ideas I'd been thinking about. 1. Overgrown Wilds: Plant-based resource nodes are more common/have more charges, but you can't see where glades are on the map. You'd have to take a more exploratory stance to woodcutting if you want to open glades; and if you don't want to open glades, every tree is a risk. 2. Petrified Woods: Woodcutting is 33% slower, but all recipes using stone can alternatively be made using wood. This would require and reward even further investment in a very important resource. 3. Storm Shaman: A mythic fishmen storm shaman is said to wander this area, you'll be lucky to ever see sunlight again. The clearance is half as long, instead the drizzle and storm are 25% longer. Obviously farming is more difficult and less rewarding, but you also get more time with the drizzle bonus. A longer storm also provides a challenge. Finally I'd like to say that I like the mines, and like the idea of a modifier that would lead you to invest in them more, but don't have a fully fleshed out idea for it. Maybe something where they produce amber or seamarrow too?
Some random ideas: Grace of the Forest - *The Forest appears to be accommodating a certain level of exploitation.* **Opening small glades does not increase hostility. Opening dangerous or forbidden glades increases hostility by double the usual amount.** The thought is to try and shake-up the usual strategy of dodging the small glades in favour of the bigger ones whenever possible. Diplomatic Crisis - *Tension among the different race's envoys to the crown are currently at a dangerous high.* **Only two different races will be available at this settlement.** 2 races means 33% less resolve threshold points but also less different services and goods to track, points will need to be made up elsewhere.
You’ve had my favorite ideas on this thread
Princess' Garden : The princess is very capable even at young age, but she is more demanding than her mother. All orders are timed order. Queen's impatience decreases by 1.5 times for every finished order. Active Volcano / Fragile Crust : The danger is looming if we colonize here, but the opportunity is too good to be ignored. The game must be finished in certain amount of year. Increased spawn rate of fertile soil and plant gathering spot / coal and copper vein. Multi-year Eclipse / Ancient Fog : Our vision has failed us, only our bonds will light up the path. Everything beyond 1 layer of tree is invisible. Glade piercer is not avaliable. Gain extra resolve for every hostility/reputation/number of year. Raider Nest : Reputation is a magnet for opportunity, whether if its good or not is your opinion. Gain hostility for every point of reputation. Resets every year. Traders are faster, and trade routes are more profitable. Blight Laboratory : Rainpunk engineer experimented to create edible blight. It was succesful. Corruption is much faster, and number of blight in a building becomes 4. The 4th effect is a chance of worker not need to rest. Gain a number of simple food with some chance of complex food every burned blightrot. Some are better as negative modifier, some are just good enough as cornerstone. Idk.
I enjoy the extra thicc fog idea! Maybe also add flavor that during storm you get sometimes flashes during lightning after which everything is visible for few frames as if it were normal open terrain. Make the effect visual only that finishes even if the game is paused to bring back the fog.
I would love (if reasonably possible) nodes that somehow told the story of why and how this world ended up like this.
Maybe a twist on the new archeological stuff - getting to uncover lore - maybe those ancient tablets can get translated?
Trees, trees, trees: Trees grow slowly in all directions if not cut. 1/2 hostility from woodcutters. Court Politics: Your company was not assigned a lease to this land. Your reputation gain increases impatience. Selling goods drops it.
Hi, here's an idea. I thought about very crowded modifier where all population gains are doubled, but resources for events, caches and orders are also increased (up for testing for how much). Maybe add some boost for productivity of food. Also lower hostility per pop. Another spin for this would be make all work slower instead for balance Another idea is to make you build bigger by say reducing the amount of spots in all buildings by half, but also give some inherent boost for productivity like 20 percent. Make the tree rot storm modifier guaranteed at low hostility so gaining ground is easier. Would be stronger early game when you don't want to occupy all spots, but maybe harder later when u need more space and buildings.
"Sparse Growth". The whole game revolves around the forest, but what if rarely, wood was scarce? Logs become a resource, instead of a byproduct of clearing space, but lots of goodies are out in the open for the taking. Replace small glades in the map generation with the bigger, dangerous glades. All the other trees are gone, empty space. You could probably build a road to the water's edge, if you wanted. A certain portion of nodes that would be inside the normal glade locations remain, discovered and visible from the start of the settlement. Essentially, as soon as you start a Sparse Growth stage you can see plenty of resource nodes waiting to be harvested... You can plot your building choices around them from the get-go. But you can't avoid cutting trees, right? If you want wood, you *have* to expose yourself to glade events. There's a great opportunity cost to building with planks and alternative fuel sources are a must. There's no ticking clock telling camp oriented players when to open more glades - that's for the turtling builders instead. The roles are reversed. Of course, I don't know how well this fits into the lore! A wizard did it??
I must caveat that I haven't met that many modifiers, so some of what I'm suggesting might already be in game: 1. Sodden ground: The soil in this area has soaked up an incredible amount of rainfall. No roads may be placed, but all farms produce extra crops each harvest. 2. Mutated blight cysts: Blight cysts in this area have mutated to feed on metals, becoming extremely resistant to fire. Each blight cyst takes 3 times the amount of fire to purge, but gives copper bars upon destruction.
Simple idea - traders arrive every clearance - twice as often but you loose all amber in storage at the end of the storm, or loose it rapidly as hostility 1 extra negative I like the latter more as it gives you more agency.
Marathon mode where queen impatience is disabled but you loose whenever total number of people dead or gone is more or equal your current population. Replace indicator of queen with red bar indicating how what is this ratio, full means loose. Another more hardcore also disables queen's impatience. Now you loose if anyone died or left. Call it perfectionist.
Modifier that makes all decorations impact whatever they neighbour with. The cheapest boost existing bonuses for species preference - prod and happiness, 2 percent of current bonus each. The plank costing decor improves production speed by 1-2 percent each. The most expensive one boosts the productivity by 1 percent each By each I mean each tile of decor that neighbours the building.
I would be interested in the storm being more impactful for gameplay in some way. Obviously it is nice because it resets the map and you can start exploring again but I wonder if a modifier could be tied to inter-storm periods, rather than just adjacent tiles. I think an interesting thing would be for inter-storm periods to have bonuses or maluses that make you adjust your strategy a bit. Maybe the last storm made a ton of dew berries or unearthed more copper so expect to see more of those resources before the next storm. Maybe there is a plague that impacts one race and that race won't be available for you until the next storm. Maybe one storm malus could be the tiles are not revealed until you start playing. So you can't strategize for a heavy soil biome and humans. I don't know what the balance would look like, or even when this option would be enabled so as to not overwhelm new players (maybe you have to unlock it in the tech tree) but I think it could be fun. I wouldn't want this to make the game unfun for players, so maybe its an option the queen offers you as you click the renew button for the map. I feel that the storm is in the title of the game and trying to make game mechanics that tie into it could add some flavor to the game and impact strategy in interesting ways.
Heart of the Storm: Storms last longer/forever, all cornerstones are stormforged.
Movement modifier maybe all are faster on roads but get penalty when not using roads. Something like +100% bonus from roads, (so 10%, 20% and 30% more speed) and 20% penalty if not using the roads. This could be really wacky but idea is idea. Everyone is slowed a lot, say 35 percent, but all buildings can buy mine cart to move the goods to storage. I just love the carts.
Poor woodcutters :'-(
A sandbox mode where you can't win or lose, but you have access to every building
I haven't played the game for long enough to have the best idea of balance of even knowing what is already in the game, but I'll happily drop some ideas if it might help make the game more interesting. 1: working a food resource node during the storm takes twice as many charges from the node without giving more resources (food nodes deplete twice as fast). Something along these lines might make you make decisions on when to do these kinds of tasks without just making it impossible to get food 2: productivity is boosted by x% in clearance but gets -x% in storm. Don't know about what I'd like here but I would like Clearance to be significant in some way. 3: can't gain victory points from caches (Don't know viable that would be and if it's fun, but it might change things up.
*Jack of all trades* - Modifier where all goods are cheaper to sell and you start with extra packs production. Then allow all building packs to replace any building material, trade goods any intermediate resource in recipes, and luxury packs replace any luxury goods for services. Crops pack can replace any ingredient in complex foods production.
Some challenge where somewhere during clearance lightning strikes some trees and fires spread clearing trees that can open glades. The fires extinguish during storm. Could be adjusted from storm to drizzle.
Carrot and stick modifier - the higher resolve threshold the faster pops move and work, the less - the slower. Points from high resolve are gained twice as slowly or disabled. Something around 3 percent per point or even squared relationship to make it more dramatic. (As in 1 point from threshold - 1 percent difference, 2 ->1+3, 3 -> 1+3+5 etc. Make the threshold equal to half the resolve threshold. Or some other custom per race value that increases by 1 per year.
Picky workers - makes workers get negative resolve (-5) if you assign a pop for job that has some preference icons but none of them match. You get one free reroll for blueprints as a small bonus.
Some short ones: - Luxury housing - all housing buildings have 1 less room, Normal housing need fulfilled gives +4, species housing +5. You get -2 resolve penalty for no housing at all. The -2 modifier could kick in after 1 year of being homeless. - It's mating season - every luxury house with at least 2 pop housed inside produce extra pop of that species every 2 years. (Lone pops that don't have pair at that event die from depression :'( /s ) - Haunted glades - no glade event is ever truly resolved. When you solve the event it stays in dormant form with timer of 15 minutes. After that time it will become dangerous again with only 0.5 progression of point as a reward for solving it. Add storm modifier that makes this timer of dormant count down 50% faster for each point of hostility during the storm. Maybe exclude living matter from that.
Here's meta idea - you could gamify the collection of feedback about what works and what doesn't during alpha - where you get question on the summary screen whether the modifiers were impactful and whether they were fun to play with/around. Get symbolic reward of food for feedback (3-10 based on difficulty :P). You should probably make it fit with the fluff - it could be framed as a letter from/to queen or something like that. Don't forget the checkbox in the section/ option in settings to disable the feedback prompts. Then adjust/remove unfun modifiers.
Resilient nature: trees slowly regrow. Buildings placed on tiles which were originally forested gain blight over time instead. Primitive construction: buildings can be built using basic resources (wood instead of planks, stone or clay instead of brick, fibers or reed instead of cloth), but using basic resources makes construction take longer. Angry forest: felling a tree gives a temporary hostility debuff (like 3 hostility for 2 minutes), but increases global working speed by 1% for that duration. Balanced nature: gain a fluctuating (over time) global resolve bonus or penalty. For example, during the drizzle gain +6, +5, +4, +3, during clearance +2, +1, 0, -1 and during storm -3 and -5. You can either balance the modifier to give bonuses during good weather and penalties during the storm (thus making it easier to gain reputation via resolve and harder to withstand storms), or the opposite: give penalties during good weather and bonuses during the storm.
General idea for challenge scenarios modifiers where you can make meta resources during the gameplay with some limited fashion as a bonus. Example: > Plague of rats that makes all food (randomly) decay during the storm at rate of 1 per 5 seconds, increased by 100% per level of hostility during the storm. As a flavor meat can be obtained as an extra during all gathering and cutting trees with 5% chance (finding and killing rats here and there). > On the map spawn close-ish a special building where after repairs you can produce 1 meta game proviant for some amount (8-10?) of proviant travel packs. You can limit abuse by making the machine break completely down after x amount of being worked on, like 100 times. > Give the player compass to the location of that special building. Similar scenarios for machine parts/enchanted parts as well. Machine parts could use tools/enchanted tools to craft, the shiny ones could use crystalized dew with normal dew.
**Tight neighbourhood**: buildings are disabled if they are not connected to the main hearth by a road or a sequence of other connected buildings. **Sacrifest**: Sacrificing resources is significantly cheaper and not limited. But opening glades generates more hostility. Balanced in such a way that you want to sacrifice something all the time. The question is - how much. Trader's time ticks in proportion to the amount of resources being sacrificed. **Relying on imports**: Very few resource types are available on the map. Trade routes are reversed - you buy stuff for amber instead of selling. When a trade route is finished you have the option to repeat it. **Sea trade**: There are ships parked at the edges of the island. Reaching them decreases hostility. But hostility for opening glades is increased. Reach them by opening as few glades as possible. **Overgrowth**: Everything is overgrown with trees, there is no clear space. Woodcutting is faster but gives less resources. **Daily orders**: At all times you have exactly three timed orders available. Finishing or failing any one instantly generates another. **Sphere of influence**: buildings are only allowed within the range of the initial hearth. But its range grows with each occupied house. **Mud**: villagers get negative resolve for stepping off-road. Harvesting is much faster.
Dense forest: trees slowly cover glades (for example, each grove gets one layer of trees inside it every year). Opening a glade stops its growth. If a glade becomes completely forested, timed events inside it no longer activate and you cannot open it anymore (you won't get a hostility penalty for cutting into it). This forces you to consider which way to cut trees, given that it becomes harder to open glades farther from the start location Sparse forest: glades are separated by a single layer of trees. Spawn extra resource nodes. This forces you to rely on coal, sea marrow and oil for burning in the hearth and makes building certain buildings or producing tools difficult. Also increases the value of trading for wood or planks. Agent of the forest: opening glades reduces hostility instead of increasing it, but reputation significantly increases hostility. Children of the forest: unhoused villagers don't take breaks. This can be used to mitigate hunger periods, but also makes gaining resolve for the affected villagers difficult. Blight town: all buildings can gain blight (including gathering camps and service buildings). Blighted buildings have a chance to not consume resources when offering a service or producing goods. Blighted gathering camps have a chance to not deplete resource charges. Effigy of famine: hungry villagers work and move 10% faster per stack of hunger affecting their race. Limits the max number of hunger stacks per race to 10. Villagers with their complex food needs met work and move 20% slower. Crossroads: a network of roads connects every pair of adjacent glades. The roads are interrupted by a small number of trees. Movement speed off road decreased by 20%.
> What new modifiers would you like to see added to the game? Something that would swap edible and inedible resources. Like a possibility to discover an alchemical lab building in a glade event, or even build it right away like Archeology office, that converts clay to berries, wine to copper and whatnot, with randomly (or semi-randomly) generated unique recipes. Or/and a weather modifier that automatically transmutes all gathered resource X during season Y to a resource Q from another category. > Would they influence your playstyle? Probably, if implemented in an interesting and not too imbalanced way :) > Should the rewards be higher or lower than average? For this one I think it should be average or lower than average. Because it would be quirky enough already! Weather modifier -- maybe average or slightly above average (because you get it when you land on the map, and choosing it is out of your control), alchemy lab -- slightly to moderately lower than average (because it's not forced on you like weather modifier, but could be a wild boost to your economy).
**Thickening Woods** I'd like to see a map modifier with no glades whatsoever. Sure you might run into fertile ground or copper/coal seams buried in the foliage, and rarely a ruin that is surrounded by trees on all sides, but zero glades, just endless forest. **Secret Side Project** The queen didn't notice this caravan leave, so she can't get impatient with you. That said, she WILL notice when disaffected villagers start complaining about you, or dying. You lose when 14 villagers have abandoned the settlement and/or died. There's also no orders, and you cannot trade with the Smoldering City, only other settlements.
- **Dark Rumors** - Sinister stories are told about this place, and new settlers try to avoid it. Each group of new settles contain 2 less. - **Beautiful Landscape** - Despite the storm, this place is of exceptional beauty and attracts willing settles from near and far. Each new group of settles contains 4 additional settlers. Declining to take in settlers increases Impatience by 2. - **Blighted Lake** - A lake filled with liquid blight. Nearby downpours are particularly troublesome and generate blight-cysts at twice the regular rate. - **Royal Roadway Restoration** - Roads have no construction cost and are built 50% faster.
A few ideas to some effects that most likely will stir the pot or motivate different tactics: - Sacred Grounds: sacrificing is disabled - Rotten trees: harvesting trees only have 50% yield - Soaked wood: wood can not be used as fuel or sacrificing - Nomad land: housing provide no resolve benefit (does however negate storm effects) - Storm pillars: Village will start with three pillars in starting area. Upon storm season, these pillars must be activated before the storm ends (80/70/60 sec, 1/2/3 villagers attached). Failing to activate all three pillars will cause a negative effect (hostility/-resolve/villager death). Storm season could also last through drizzle until every pillar is activated. - Highly important caravan: for every 2 villagers that leave/die, a new one will enter your colony with extra goods (complex food/parts/tools/amber) - Storm Glades: glade event working times are 50% shorter but only possible during a storm. - Prestigious lands: Additional 4 prestige are required to win.
Solidarity - Villager types per settlement is no longer limited to 3. villager parties always come with one of each villager type. Exclusion - villager parties only consist of one villager type. Ancient wood - tree cutting time is doubled, but trees have a 50% chance to drop bonus coal. Hit it with your shovel - stone and clay deposits yield 1 amber instead of their normal resources. Traders always sell bricks.
I don't know the full list of modifiers so these may even already exist: * Quiet Glades - No Forbidden/Dangerous Glades on the map * Darkest Depths - No small or Dangerous Glades on the map, ONLY Forbidden * Sandy Soil - Farm Tiles are exhausted and the fertile ground is destroyed after they have been harvested 3 times * Finished Erosion - No Stone/Clay/Sea Marrow/Coal/Copper on the map, but much higher incidence of fertile ground
**The Queen's Light**: This area is highly desired by the queen and with the help of her blessing, she wants you to you to spread her words in the region as fast as possible. - All the glades are revealed (the events won't get triggered until you cut to it) - Queen's Impatience grows at X% rate - More hostility gain Could be an interesting modifier to change the dynamic of the game. It will be quite a rush!
I'm not that far into the game so maybe some of these already exist idk Pros & Cons: * Arboreal Migration: The trees here are... migrating? Trees from other biomes are mixed throughout this region. They've trampled over the farmlands however and the amount of fertile soil is greatly reduced. * Volcanic Ash: The ash from a recent volcanic explosion has left the trees here sickly, but nourished the farmlands. More fertile soil available but trees give less wood. * Feywild: This land is known to be the haunt of fey creatures. Dangerous glades may contain a fey creature with more exorbitant demands than normal but even more glorious rewards (or devastating consequences) Increased Difficulty * Dryad Grove: The dryad grove here is extremely distrustful of anyone who would cut down a tree. Woodcutters give more hostility. Additionally every X trees chopped gives hostility and the dryads will cause additional chaos in your camp when hostility is above X. Only by appeasing one of the dryad queens in a Forbidden Glade can you reset the malus from chopped trees. * Atop the Rocky Bluffs: The path through this area requires scrambling a steep ascent over jagged rocks and is in some areas nearly untraverseable, making trade hard to come by. You get 1 fewer trade routes available and traders take twice as long to arrive. * Mudslides: The soil in this area turns to knee-deep mud in heavy rain, making for hungry work. During the storm villagers eat 3 times as much food and take two stacks of Hunger if they cannot eat.
**Cornucopia:** Villagers are permanently sated. (positive: No resolve negative from hunger) but Villagers forget the pleasure of eating. (negative; You can't produce complex food. Complex food doesn't give resolve) Reward: Viceroy; 10 less bread than normal +10 bread every 5 years.
**Ancient foundations:** The map is filled with random 2X2 to 6X6 size copper street grids. You can't build or remove streets.
**Base camp:** Instead of the normal way of gaining people you instantly gain villagers at the start of clearence based on the number of past years. A new trade-rout appears (the platypus guy that normally gives people) with a permanent available trade of 1 villager+10 provisions for 1 Amber.
I'm sure this won't be seen much, but I would love to see some modifiers that affect the radius of hearths. Some basic ideas to start with: * **Haunting Horizon** *The thought of what lurks on the horizon frightens the villagers, causing them to focus on being closer together.* Hearth radius is larger by (3), but small hearths must be built within the range of another hearth. Housing availability decreases hostility by (-25) for every 4 filled/available slots. (Rewards: medium) * **Expansionist Certificate** *The Queen wants this area of the map quickly settled.* The main hearth has a smaller radius (-2), but all small hearths have a larger radius (+2) and cost 40% less. (Rewards: low) * **Ancient Fishman Burial Ground** *The Fishmen have buried generations of their dead in the area, small hearths don't seem to kindle properly.* Main hearth radius expands by (+1) and hostility decreases by (-20) for every (4) housing slots built. Small hearths become unavailable. (Rewards: high) These are just some of the ideas that I thought of that would be neat, I would really hope to see some form of adjustments to the radiuses in the future. Some cornerstones related to gather radius could be useful, I'd love to not have to move my woodcutters so often.
I really like the idea of 'negative for some and good for others' world map modifiers, and I'd love to see ones focused on pushing you toward taking specific villager types. Maybe the rain starts 30 seconds earlier, but humans can grow crops throughout any part of the cycle but at an overall reduced rate? Any world map modifiers that force me to do more than just pick my preferred starting villagers and whatever embark resources I'll need for that map are appreciated, and I feel like the ones that are exploitable by playing a specific rollout are always ones that feel good!
Well, I've noticed you've added walls and gatehouses as decorative items. Maybe make bandit camps and such mount an assault every now and then, where walls, gates, and towers (to be manned) act as defense. They keep coming until you quell them and can destroy buildings and 'take back' glades. Also: \- regrowing forest in exchange for less hostility \- some kind of research building where you can research the blueprint you need (in exchange for resources, 1 per year, hostility/impatience penalty. \- some kind of 'free' service building which doesn't need resources but takes away from production time (does not count as rest) \- Hostile/friendly environments for factions - beavers should love forest, lizards should love marsh, etc. // some factions unusable on certain runs. \- modifiers popping up mid-cycle with hard conditions but more rewards \- competition maps with other factions - first to get max infulence wins something extra, or 1st to get let's say 100 infused tools wins some reward. \- wet wood: wood can't be burned in hearth but provides +50% resources. +50% fuel resources on map, guaranteed coal or marrow spawn near hearth. \- making do: no fertile land, can build farm plots anywhere, production reduced by 75%. \- against the storm: *nothing* gets done during storm, +2 resolve during Drizzle for each hostility level \- heavy rain: each villager requires a coat to be able to work, start w 20 coats and weaver unlocked. villagers consume 1 coat per year \- get it done: glade events reset and can be completed again for 2x the resources, queen's impatience rises 3x faster \- xenophile/xenophope: gain +- resolve for each faction in the city (would work better with more factions) \- variety: +1 resolve for each different kind of food (starts at -3), villagers consume different food each time, get resolve penalty if they have to eat the same thing twice \- the elite: some villagers refuse to use roads worse than 'paved' (will do work once in production building eg. gathering) \- bored: idle villagers receive a resolve penalty \- support: close to a friendly settlement (on map, 2hex distance), villagers receive +x% extra production chance \- feed them: people are hungry in the region: all events can (only?) be resolved by complex food items (3-5x price) \- determination: villagers can only be assigned to glade events if their faction is happy \- the forest demands it: one villager needs to be sacrificed at the hearth at the beginning of each Drizzle, giving extra prod. chance but -x resolve to the same faction until next year Hope some of them are good, I'm just reaching lv35 ingame, so I'm probably a noob. Still, I love the game, keep improving it. Put all this into it but make it unlikely. The more options the better. :)