First time was frustrating, now I’m honestly irritated that this was thought through so poorly.
Two villages in a row I’ve built, and two villages in a row the first goblin camp has spawned immediately after I get a new villager. Each time the villager spawns near where the goblin camp spawns and runs a train of high level goblins (the newly buffed Goblin Guards), who can’t be touched by town militias or even a couple hastily crafted wooden swords, back to my village to slaughter everyone.
There’s many solutions to this, and I’m disappointed that none of them were considered.
Make it so Goblin Camp guards turn back after X number of feet if they haven’t been attacked.
Make it so newly spawned villagers are ignored by Goblin Camp guards for their first 15-30 seconds after spawning.
Make it so newly spawned villagers don’t spawn where the next Goblin Camp is going to appear.
Make it so Goblin Camps don’t spawn at the same time of day as new villagers come.
I’m sure someone smarter than me could come up with a half dozen other viable solutions, but in the end it just needs one of them. I’m not going to bother playing until one of them gets put in, because otherwise this is just a waste of time.
If I wasn’t interested in playing, I don’t think I’d have built those two villages in the first place. I’m just not going to waste my time with a third until they find a solution.
If I was interested in playing peaceful I would already be playing peaceful.
I honestly think you’re being a bit too harsh here. There’s an even simpler solution for you–take the goblin camp out. We all know the goblins kill the Hearthlings, that’s what they do. If you don’t want yours being killed, just remove the goblins from the equation.
In a larger sense, not every difficulty that players experience is due to a bug or an unbalanced feature. Yes, the goblins go after the weak, defenseless Hearthlings in addition to the footmen. That’s part of the challenge. Once the player realizes that his or her new citizens are being slaughtered by the goblin neighbors, it is up to the player to do something about it. Just my personal opinion anways, and I do recognize that the degree of difficulty in destroying the goblin camp could vary depending on when they show up.
Martyysvale, if you’re new to Stonehearth and struggling with basic game concepts, just ask next time and I’ll be happy to help you! Let me clear up some confusion for you, buddy
First thing you don’t understand about Stonehearth is that Goblin Guards have been buffed significantly, so “wiping them out” by day 3-4 when the first camp appears with a couple wooden swords and shields isn’t going to happen.
Second thing you don’t understand is that the mechanics are supposed to be designed to allow for a peaceful state between the goblin camp and the player. The player gives them items they demand, and the player is left alone.
By having a new villager spawn right next to the first goblin camp as it appears, combined with the design flaw of having the (newly super-buffed) Goblin Guards pursue unlimited distance despite zero provocation, means you have a camp that is guaranteed to be wiped out UNLESS you spent your first 3-4 days mining and grinding to metal weapons and armor for several hearthlings, something that the vast majority of players do not do, and something that a player intending to stay at peace for a few rounds certaintly would not do.
Hope that helps, buddy. Don’t feel bad, everyone starts out a newb. I’m hoping you’ll get the grasp of the basics of Hearthstone soon enough!
Ah, there’s something you didn’t mention in your original post! If indeed you’ve been giving tribute to the goblins and they’re still attacking your Hearthings, that’s a bug (which, incidentally, has already been reported here: [R293 (x64)] Goblins Attack Regardless Of Choice).
Second, the goblin camp spawns after your town reaches a net worth of 1500, so the theory goes that if you have that many resources, you should be able to defend yourself from invasion. Thus, you don’t actually have to prepare in 3-4 days–I spent 14 days building, crafting, and preparing, before reaching a net worth of 1500. If you do that, it’s actually rather easy to defeat the goblins with heavily armored and buffed Hearthlings.
In addition, I may have detected a bit of sarcasm in your tone (if this assumption was made in error, I apologize, it is often difficult to accurately assess sarcasm in text). If this is the case, the following information may not be helpful, but I’ll include it in case you were entirely serious.
First, by clicking on a username, you can tell how long a certain user has been a part of the Stonehearth community. This might be helpful to check before calling somone a “newb”.
Second, it’s Stonehearth, not Hearthstone. We’re a bit particular about that
over the top sarcasm aside, please understand this community is very supportive of Radiant and each other… we all offer helpful feedback to enable SH to become the best game possible…
your original arguments are perfectly valid, but the manner in which you’re delivering them, as well as the tone with which you respond to the other members, leaves much to be desired…
you’re clearly a sharp guy… there’s no reason make these thinly veiled belittling comments…
all things considered, this is a good topic of discussion!
I figured “what the hell” and started a new village because hey, what are the odds that a new villager will spawn JUST as the first goblin camp spawns, almost on top of each other, 3 times in a row.
I was right! It didn’t happen this time!
Instead, the goblin camp spawned within spitting distance of my first and only building, wiping out everyone in minutes.
Here’s the screenshot showing how ridiculous the goblin spawn mechanics are:
you clearly have a really high probability of “bad luck” when it comes to goblin spawns, my friend…
I haven’t experienced this behavior myself, and haven’t read too many others having the issue either (or perhaps they simply aren’t as vocal in voicing their concerns?)…
regardless, it is worth pointing out that combat mechanics and scenarios (goblin camps, etc.) are still very much in their infancy… you may be better served to wait for perhaps one or two more alpha releases before diving back into the game…
I’m not sure how the goblin camps are set to spawn, but I would imagine right now they’re focused on x distance from the fire pit. At least that’s how it seems as I’ve met them. Yes, they spawn close to some of my buildings, but that’s sort of on me, as I never seem to put my fire pit anywhere near where I initially set up (I’m weird, I know!). I do know that there are really bad spawns out there, as @c00de mentioned, but even with the closest town I’ve had (around the corner in my current game), it just took a little bit more preparation. I’m running with three footmen who each started with a wooden sword and a shield as soon as I could make it. Also, what @martyrsvale said is right, that if you fiddle with your resources a bit, you can prolong that spawn for a few days until you’re more comfortable.
Ultimately @TekDragon84, there’s still a ton of growing and tweaking to happen. There’s a thread here that’s looking for feedback for the goblin campaign, which also might be a good place to share your findings so that they can look at it and tweak it if need be.
Don’t give up on Stonehearth, but certainly take a break if you’re frustrated.
The goblin camp is setup to spawn a considerable distance from your town banner. I can’t tell from your screenshot, but I’m guessing your banner is in the network of caves you’ve built, so “far from you banner” actually isn’t “far from your entire town”. We’ll work in making this better over time, but that wouldn’t address all your problems (e.g. the immigration scenario, or the trapper accidentally running through their town).
There are variety of ways to address the rest of it. I think the one we’d like to pursue is to make the goblins non-hostile if you attempt and appeasement route. So as long as you’re playing nicely with them, they won’t attack any new or existing citizens, but once you fail to meet their demands (or start attacking them or something else equally hostile), they’ll become aggressive. What do you think?
I don’t particularly like that they spawn a distance from the town banner. The “considerable distance” in my opinion is tiny as I like to make large, spread out towns. Also, some of the images for towns that have been mocked depicting large, sprawling towns with a giant castle just won’t be possible (there are other reasons why it’s not possible yet, but that’s why this is still an alpha).
I think a better algorithm would be to check once a day/night cycle for the total area which the player has built or zoned (there are many algorithms to find a rectangle between 2 given points), pick a random direction from the center of that, and spawn the camp a medium (~30 voxels) distance from the edge of discovered rectangle with the previously decided direction.
I understand that this would be more processor intensive so it will obviously have to be weighed against the current method, but that’s just how I feel.
The other stuff with goblins are clearly bugs (spawn camps breaking player built buildings, hearthlings spawning in/close to goblin camps, endless goblins/wolves/zombies when they can’t path to a stockpile, freed wolves sometimes attacking for a second before disappearing)
I’ve had similar issues with my villagers wondering into goblin camps. It can be very annoying when you lose a high level villager due to a buggy mechanic. Another way to fix the problem would be to zone the aggro area around the goblin camp so that villager won’t cross into the threshold for them to attack.
