If you play as anything other than the starting group Ascendancy, how do you defend your people?
I can’t create a carpenters saw without first making a Blacksmith and getting them to level 4, which requires a mason level 3…
This means that days into the game you are still vulnerable and unable to defend your hearthlings against incoming threats other than rallying the town.
Is there something I can craft that would be an equivalent for the other factions?
Creating bows for the newest race ( the Nordic people sry cant remember name)
Creating Swords for Children of Rayya
Both need carpenters, neither have access until significantly into the game*
You need to take the one item bundle that includes a sword. Even then you are at an extreme disadvantage because you need to buy more swords as the caravan comes back so I hope you can get 80 gold every day.
NA can start with archers, which will defend your people nicely;
Rayya’s should start with a sword (ideally). Otherwise you’ll need to either buy one (they’re common on traders actually) or buy a saw and make one.
ok, so the deal is i have 1-2 defenders until I can unlock the skill myself? this is honestly quite unacceptable i have over 80 hours in this game. I find it completely un enjoyable to play the other factions despite really liking them.
They just are not viable on hard setting because their skill tree to get footman is so bloated…
They need to just let us make stone training swords for NA and it should be level 1, not level 4…
I ran into this problem with the Northern Alliance. I usually grab the 2 archers pack when starting out and then just as quickly as possible build a fortification to keep the bad guys out (or situate myself on a naturally defensible position such as a plateau). That way you hold out long enough to develop a skilled blacksmith and carpenter. I prioritize those professions with Northern Alliance.
Another strategy is to finish an Ascendency game to the point where you can select a level 6 knight and level 6 footman to migrate for selection at the outset of a Northern Alliance game so you start with a military advantage.
NA can actually craft a footman promotion sword with the Mason, by the way. So you can turn archers into footmen and make new archers.
So it’s only really bad for Rayya’s, tbh.
Edit:
Also, attack progression is proportional to your wealth/net worth. You can keep it lower while working towards a blacksmith in the worst cases
In the absolute worst-case scenario: dig a moat. 2 blocks deep all the way around town is all you need to stop enemies being able to climb over it, you can leave natural stairs on one side and then a single ladder on the other side will allow your hearthlings access to the wider world later on. I find it’s a useful way to mark out a town wall too; you can add some wet stones later in order to fill it with water and make everything look pretty.
Controlling where enemies can access your town has a major impact on fights. Even if you have no proper soldiers, if you keep your town banner in a room with only one point of access then it becomes a lot easier to hold enemies at the door; so any hearthlings who flee will flee to the far corner of the room (away from any approaching reinforcements) rather than fleeing outside and getting surrounded. There are a couple of traits which make some hearthlings better at combat by default, certain tools do significantly more melee damage as well, and with Rising Courage (a buff that activates when you put on town alert mode – when a hearthling hasn’t taken damage for a while and is near friends, their courage will increase so they can still fight even against fearsome enemies) it’s quite possible to keep even the workers and crafters in the fight for long enough to win it.
More than once now I’ve had late-game orc and kobold raids attack while my soldiers were coming back from clearing out an enemy camp far away from town, and had to hold them off using just my civilians. Knowing how to reduce enemies’ threat is a key to keeping your hearthlings in the fight, so with a little bit of design and strategy you can give even the civilians a fighting chance against surprisingly powerful enemies.
I’ve been playing the game for over a year now and very early on I noticed that Rayyas Children were the “Normal” difficulty race in comparison to Ascendancy feeling “Peaceful”. Now with the addition of Northern Alliance they’ve added the tooltip “Recommended for beginners.” to Ascendancy which makes me feel like Rayyas needs to say “Normal” and Northern Alliance should say “Hard”. Now by that I don’t mean at which difficulty you should play them, I mean that the race themselves have that level of difficulty within them. Without prior knowledge going in, those kingdoms will seem VERY gated(locked) in progression. I actually like that extra difficulty it brings to the game. Though I agree the game could do a better job at explaining itself to new players. I’d hate for this to be a game that never sees any growth simply because if you haven’t been around you feel left out.
NA I would say is the best at defending itself… You literally don’t need a carpenter at all…
You can pick the loadout with two bows, your mason makes the stone practice sword instead of the carpenter and you can get all the way to two-handed sword in the blacksmith without ever having a carpenter. I don’t see the problem.
Now… Rayya’s Children… It’s a tricky one, but totally not impossible without a carpenter. I’ve beaten the titan as RC on hard without any mods, the trick is getting the merchant stalls early. Summon merchants, often you will get merchants that sell wooden swords. Instantly no need for a carpenter early on. The main reason to get a carpenter at all is for archers, but you can get pretty far with just cleric/knight/footmen.
And as @cole3050 mentioned, RC is a trading faction, which gives you PLENTY of gold to buy the wooden swords when said merchant rolls around.
I’m not saying its not possible im just saying there feels to be no early way to have defense without being gated into 1 option for the starting package. It takes a long time to get going in the other 2 factions, that’s all.
So if you want to play on HARD, it is extremely tedious and i feel compelled to cheat the AI since it’s that or most likely die.
Anyways, thanks for the responses. I think this game will sit and collect dust for a bit, there are enough other issues that this ones pretty minor. Like multiplayer lag, no functional way to remove rotting food from crates and barrels (no, making another one and moving everything so i can avoid 1 rotten basket is not an option) The developers clearly dropped the ball and did not give the rotten food a category or a way to sort/deal with it. plus many other things… I love the game but its just too frustrating to deal with how unfinished it is for an officially released game.
I rush putting up walls when playing… well, any of the factions, given I tend to forget about promoting defenders at the start.
Use the builder, put up walls with a door so my people can go in/out. Enemy gets spotted, put up town alert to call them back in, promote someone to whatever I have available to deal with it.
Honestly Im abit confused how your having so much difficulty. currently doing a hardmode play threw, the first 2 waves can be easily killed bed just putting the town on alert mode. that is over 11 in game days covered if i remember correctly.
