Hi guys,
This is a bit of a side track from the previous discussion on tents which in itself kind of fractured into a debate over caves vs buildings early games.
Following the concept of tents, which thank you to the multitude of people who posted about them because I’ve been utilizing them on my more recent games, I wanted to discuss people’s tips and tricks for early to mid game buildings.
My trick tends to be roads, I call them trails in my head because I always repave everything fancier after the initial groundwork is laid.
So does anyone have a tip or trick in regards to building that you feel has really improved your first week?
I find tents extremely useful, as I’ve mentioned in the other thread, and it’s got me thinking about other temporary buildings.
I have a cart design which I sometimes use (particularly with Rayya’s) as a warehouse/drop-off template. The cool thing is that even when all the storage items are full, I can deconstruct the cart and order it re-constructed somewhere else, and the hearthlings will move the storage items with their contents intact! It effectively allows me to move my entire storage in a few clicks, which can be incredibly useful if I want to start, say, on the plains with easy access to food but eventually want to move on top of a mountain or mesa for defensive purposes.
I’ve seriously considered a “storage depot” blueprint as an Ascendancy equivalent. I love the look of stacked crates in a bustling Ascendancy camp, but it’s a hassle to build the piles manually… originally I hated the way that additions to a building are saved into its blueprint, but now I’m seeing some use for that to get around manually building up my piles of crates hahaha. What I’m picturing in my mind is a square floor with space in the middle for a stockpile, and piles of crates around the edges, with fences around the whole thing to keep out pesky goblin raiders.
Another one I’ve considered is “earthworks” or wooden pallisade walls for early-game defences; although I’m not convinced these would be worth the effort. In Hard Mode it’s probably a lot better to just dig a moat (it can always form the footprint of town walls coming later, or a sewer/escape tunnel system.) One benefit is that it pushes back the enemy spawn locations, and gives you somewhere to fight on – even if they’re not hard to get around, the effect of funneling enemies close together can be dramatic… as long as you don’t overwhelm your soldiers by fighting the whole invading force at once.
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I tried a cart design myself but as more of a covered wagon but your ability to move your storage around is intriguing. I never knew that they utilized that sort of logic, I just assume the storage would fall on the ground and then they’d make new crates/bottles
It’d be nice if they included a cart like in Dwarf Fortress as a starting out item/object. The player could then deconstruct it for some materials or hang onto it for late game use (if caravans are ever a thing…)
I usually like making a town hall/supply building. It’d be nice if arrow slits or firing from windows could be a thing one day, then you could make a frontier style blockhouse!
I really hope that organic footpaths are added to the game, that automatically creates dirt tracks where hearthlings walk over often. This would be a lot more atmospheric, interesting looking and easier than laying down roads too.
When crates are “undeployed”, their contents remain inside – I’m still undecided whether this is a really cool feature or a bit of an unintended exploit, but dang is it useful when you want to move camp hahaha!
When a building is demolished, all furniture in it is automatically undeployed at the same time; and when you place the template somewhere else the hearthlings will use the newly “freed up” furniture (even if you have the setting turned on where any furniture in a blueprint is crafted automatically regardless of whether you have some in stock, the hearthlings will still use the existing furniture because it’s available rather than waiting for the new stuff to be crafted.) This is the crux of the “one click to order a ton of stuff to be moved” trick.
At the end of the day it doesn’t save your hearthlings a significant amount of time compared to manually moving all the crates; it just saves your sanity as a player 
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Interesting, I haven’t been able to undeploy my crates with stuff in them but maybe if a hearthling is planning to put something in it that’s what the game sees at “in use” even if they’re a mile away I guess