Been playing Rayya’s Children for the past week or so and have some thoughts & feedback.
Overall I like the aesthetic and I like the changes it forces in gameplay. They’re slower off the ground but late game they play well (possibly stronger than Ascendancy once you have a carpenter and adequate wood supplies).
I’d suggest letting them farm silkweed. Silkweed grows on desert maps, but to harvest it they have to manually move the silkweeds into place then click-harvest manually. It’s just tedious.
The lack of wood makes a certain amount of sense BUT it becomes a major issue if you’re planning large-scale construction. Scaffolding costs generally need to be looked at but it’s an especial issue for Rayya’s. Alternatively, it may be valid to let Rayya’s Children plant acacias, just require them to take up a lot more room than normal trees do and have them grow more slowly (perhaps as a level 6 farmer perk?)
For some reason Rayya’s masons can’t make some items, like stone chairs, that Ascendancy masons can, which seems like a weird choice.
Rayya’s Children have to rely on the carpenter to make basic inn signs; the potter can’t do it. This seems like something that should be within the potter’s wheelhouse (so to speak).
This is cosmetic, but it would be nice if the various non-worker uniforms – footman, etc. – had red colors as well, instead of just looking the same and only the Worker outfit getting the change.
I know there were more I’m forgetting; I’ll add as I think of them.
edit: never change this flavor text, it’s too perfect:
i dont know if its true, but someone did post awhile ago, here on the discourse, saying that the team left them the same blue colors on purpose, so that they stand out more from the normal workers…
but as i said, i personally did not hear the team say that, its just what a user said awhile ago…
I think rayya and ascendants need 2 different design/style and the color should be chosen by the player… similar to settler 3-4 etc. especially if you think about the planned multiplayer, it makes sense to have player bound colors…
This seems like a bug. There’s nothing that prevents the rayya’s children mason from making stone chairs. Do you have a save file where this is happening? I would love to take a look.
Thanks
-Yang
Ok, that one was me being a dumbass. For some reason I thought there was a high-backed throne-style stone chair (like the wooden “cathedral arch” style chairs). Did maybe that exist in earlier alphas or something? When I didn’t see it on the Rayaa mason I assumed it was due to the different kingdom.
Why are the Rayya’s clay roofs see-through? It doesn’t seem very – “roofy” ? It seems like the empty spaces should be filled in with clay tiles of whatever color, at least going by what I’m reading online (Preservation Brief 5: Preservation of Historic Adobe Buildings, etc.)
Perhaps it is because of the high heat in the desert, so Rayya’s Children decided to leave the roof open so heat could escape? On second thought, then during mid-day the sun could come right through. I don’t know then.
I’d actually like to see more ornate furniture and decorations to make use of the ingots in the late game. After my blacksmith has hit level 6 and outfitted my footmen with full armor and weapons and built enough vaults to store all my inventory items, I just end of creating stuff to sell like fancy vases or expensive armor. It’d be nice to have a golden throne or gold-lined tapestry or silver candlebras
That’s one area where I wish they would take a big cue from Dwarf Fortress and allow at least semi-procedurally generated art objects like statues. It’d be hopefully fairly easy to alow the making of “Statues” out of gold bars, stone, etc., and just ahve the statues be randomly shaped like various in-game things (your hearthlings, monsters, etc.)
My guess is that sort of thing is probably planned for late-game and they’re working on midgame now.
There are sources of wood in many deserts. They are called thorn trees usually found in thorn forests and scrub woods. You have Acacia which is found all over the world. Baobab, Ocotillo, Bottle Tree which are found in Madagascar and parts of Africa. And Desert Bamboo varieties like Mexican Weeping Bamboo which would be perfect for scaffolding. And there’s Palm trees which superficially resembles Bamboo and are found everywhere, source of rattan.
As for signs. in a desert environment would’t the Weaver be making those? They don’t have to be wood, they could easily be woven wool, or any other cloth/fiber. Palm based rattan signs and rattan furniture also exist in desert communities, as do woven pillows and hammocks which are used instead of chairs and beds.
One more thing, Sweet Sorgum is also called Desert Sugarcane. Easy to grow big yields. Maybe the Children trade sugar and salt with desert traders for the things they need? The other factions are growing beets so they already have access to sugar. Before Europeans discovered sugarcane they used sugar beets.
Would it be possible, because Rayya’s children can’t plant trees, to use something else as a fuel to make ingots and stuff? cause I know theres plenty of plant matter that could suffice as fuel, and I feel like it would be kind of a waste to use scarce wood as a fire source.
I’ve seen other suggestions for using Coal as an alternate fuel source, but that feels a bit more Dwarfy… if we ever get the promised Dwarves, anyway.
I personally rather like Rayya’s current strategy of gathering wild plants from across the desert and cultivating gardens of them; an auto-harvest zone command is all we really need to make it a viable strategy. In that vein, why not add a type of tree or plant that acts like wild Silkweed/etc, which gives 1 Wood when harvested? It won’t be much, but combined with trading it’ll give you enough to get a wood surplus for scaffolding.
