I just bought the game a few hours ago, and I have been enjoying it immensely. I thought I’d go ahead and suggest a couple of ideas I thought up while playing.
A Forester Class – Having to assign my hearthlings to chop down trees makes me nervous when they’re working on a building; I don’t want them to cut down a tree then decide to leave my partially-finished building as an empty shell. For this reason (and for convenience) I think it would be cool to have a class that just automatically chopped down trees for you, within a specific area that you zoned. The class could start off with simply deforestation; your hearthling would chop down the trees within the area you designated. As the hearthling leveled up, they could also salvage saplings from the trees they cut down, and replant trees within that area. Maybe when they reached the master level, they could “commune” with the trees and allow you to have tree sentries by your city that acted like guards?
A Monarch/Leader Class – This isn’t a class that would be totally necessary at first, but could be an interesting end-game specialization. A master-level blacksmith could possibly create a crown of some sort, and you could choose your favorite hearthling to be the monarch/leader of your colony! The monarch could walk around your town and provide an AOE buff for the working villagers that would make them work harder/quicker/more efficiently as long as the monarch was close by. The leader could possibly also give a morale increase to nearby citizens. This class wouldn’t be a requirement, since some players might not want to have a monarch presiding over their town.
I did a quick search of these ideas, and the forester class exists in a mod from ~2014, and a similar leader suggestion was posted in 2013. Those ideas weren’t exactly like mine however, so I thought it would be okay to post this. Thanks for reading!!
Yesterday i thought exactly the same.
Especially other tree kinds in order to make nicer envirorment.
And dunno yet what we need with the leader class. But that came up to me aswell
The forester job is already performed by workers and farmers. Also, Tom said once that he is not a fan of seperate forester class.
I don’t like the idea of a monarch that don’t do anything except giving the buffs. I think it would be a waste of good worker which usually are very valuable.
Furthermore, I endorse egalitarian nature of hearthlings and their everybody-do-their-job mentality. In my opinion leisured class is something that completly don’t fit with this game.
The forester could possibly have a whole separate function too. Autonomously going around and replanting trees, herbs and fruits, scavenging loot (Since looting items is last on your villagers’ priority list for whatever reason) and alerting the town of baddies (future maybe). I could think of a few more things for the forester class but that’s the basics.
As for Monarch/Patriarch… They could do more than give buffs, for example craft special trophies and promote units to a special class after they have mastered their main class (i.e. turn warriors into knights/ herbalists into alchemists etc). Also if Radiant decides to add more, advanced classes and unique traits to each character the Monarch/Patriarch could embue them an explorer to scout out the area (Forester advanced or basic trait) and mark enemy camps, dungeons, special artifacts, animals, ores, clay etc. There are infinite possibilities. Just have to think about it.
What if I want my Hearthlings to live in an anarcho-syndicalist commune with an executive officer for the week where all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affair and by a two thirds majority in the case of external affairs?
How will you choose a monarch, through some farcical aquatic ceremony where a strange woman lying around in a pond distributes swords as the basis for a system of government?
Once you break 10 workers, I feel like there are diminishing returns for building, as when people have to swap resources, all the workers are directed to switch, leading to some workers who are trapped running back and forth switching between wood and stone, not actually getting to build. Big towns with 40+ hearthlings need more classes for diversity’s sake, it gets kind of redundant to have 20 military hearthlings, your crafters, and left over workers.
For woodcutting, I think perhaps we could start with a “lumberjack” class, or have it be part of the woodworking class tree, and then they could promote to a forester who plants saplings and cuts fully grown trees.
Alternatively, a tree planter could be a logical promotion from the farmer class or herbalist possibly
to the Forester:
and after the forester we add an “miner” and a “combat loot collector” and a “house builder”? I don’t like the idea to seperat the existing worker behavior in atom subclasses. Because it gives us no new gameplay.
This sounds like a good improvement for the existing gameplay and it is conveniend (as you say).
At the end i think the best way is to add more details to the “hearthling therapist” tool/ui-screen. Eg if worker should collect wood or constantly build. I mean we already have this and i think this feature works fine, but maybe we can improve this.
I prefer worker variation with maybe skills or items.
to the Monarch:
An autocrat class sounds very uncool straight forward but uncool.
The effect you descripe also fits to an musican.
At some point we have politics in the game (remember the “pirates, ninjas and politiks” milestone in the kickstarter campain). Speaking with nearby towns (goblin villages?) or maybe attract certain kind of citizens (not plain workers) or make extra deals / quests what ever.
Some of the Radiant team says in an other thread they prefer something like an “council” over an king. So i think we will get a kind of “Diplomat” or “wise old man” class later.
I thought I’d go ahead and suggest a couple of ideas I thought up while playing.
Thanks for reading!!
straight forward but uncool.