Money sinks 💸

Cool that hired contractors do the work, but how will you explain away the visual of the instabuilding process, immersion-wise. If hired contractors do the work, the player still expects that to take time, or that you need actual contracters on the ground. If you can’t explain that away, it becomes spooky action (ib) at a distance (done by absent contractors).

Maybe contractors have a more efficient building process, prefab building pieces, cranes etc.

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Show Hearthling contractors building it but it’s faster. The trade off is that your Hearthlings aren’t tied up building and can continue on with other tasks.

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Love the idea of mercenaries. I feel like way too much of my population gets tied up in military. Wish I could augment my military with some mercs.

Not really a fan of having to pay ‘taxes’ to build. Aren’t I the highest authority in this region? Whom am I paying and why?

Exotic goods always interest me. I’d throw large sums of money at things that are rare, interesting, help my town etc. etc.

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Something I’ve brought up before as a potential function of the game is advance economics. Your settlement starts as a small gathering of shacks housing a small, intimate community. As the town grows and gains recognition and the population grows, the needs of the people should get more complex. By the time you’re a city, your workers, crafters and artisans want to get paid. That would definitely eat into your town’s stock pile of gold while adding an interesting mechanism to keep your hearthlings happy.

I expand on this and options for economics in this thread from… wow a year ago?

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Who gives you the town quest?.. :slight_smile:

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@Fornjotr, think that, if you have to pay taxes to the Queen you should be also entitled to ask taxes from your hearthlings, and from the traders… (even the goblins that go through “your” land :smiley: ) In the end a “tax mechanic” would work in your favor and you would end up with even more money and a new “happiness mechanic”.

Have fun, Kyth.

PS: The Queen asking for a sum of money, once in a while, to raise an army to repel an Orc Horde or suffer an increase in orc spawnings is another idea, though. Deserves some thought. Payment should guarantee a “peaceful” spell of time.

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We have some lore that there used to be a larger kingdom that fell, as well as we have the donation to the church for Ascendancy. Maybe we can have an option to “support” the empire, and in return get gifts/donations in return.

FOR THE EMPIRE!!!


So their work is free, until your town reaches teir 3, then they want to be payed? I like your idea, but I’m curious where the line is that this “feature” would be activated at.

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I’d say tie it to the township quests. So far they only have the first tier of quests established, but I’d assume they plan to have more. Tie this to one of those quests, maybe the second or third in the series. Make there be a trade off. Maybe in order to levy taxes, you need to start issuing salaries. And I guess the player could have the choice of setting pay to 0, but that would impact happiness accordingly.

I think the best system would be some sort of taxation, with the tax value based on net worth per Ling (tax increases with net worth and decreases with number of Lings). The question is what to do if the player fails to pay. Negative happiness modifier doesn’t seem enough.

The Anno series makes the population have higher expectations when it gets wealthier. Luxury goods may be an exotic addition for a pioneer, but for well-established crafter in a prosperous town food without some exotic spices may be a disappointment.

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I think late-game uses for gold are a fantastic idea, and something the game sorely needs. I’d prefer it to be something positive the player can spend on rather than an obligation like taxes, though.

Broadly, traders need a lot of expansion and re-balancing, so I hope that they can provide a big part of the money sink that the endgame needs!

I’ve been doing a lot of work on campaigns and encounters recently, and I’ve probably been neglecting the “just pay them off” option…

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I feel the same way… paying ‘taxes’ is just a blatant money sink with zero engagement, reward or fun.

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I think having some items that are only sold by traders would be okay to spend money.

Maybe some special containers or decoration items that can’t be crafted. Different colored carpets and curtains for example or a special sort of fence for RC (never have that much wood and stone is not really my thing).

Or a trader with exotic stuff from enemies. I’d love to be able to buy some of the goblin barricades or some graveyard stuff from the undead church.

Maybe a trader from that bunny cult? Some of my Hearthlings would love that.

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I’d also like to know what happens at tier three. If it means everyone takes you super seriously, and you get giant, army-sized kobold raids, then paying contributions to an alliance association in return for on the ground support might be a good investment. Basically you can play it as, “you are a big town, suddenly noticed by the outside world far and wide, and now you must build your connections.” Then using money for that could be a good thing.

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In exchange for paying those “contributions” to alliances or “taxes” to the Queen you could get spawns on your map of friendly squads, royal troops or mercs. They would patrol the land just like any other spawn and attack every enemy they see… As long as you keep paying those patrols would keep spawning. Just an idea.

Have fun, Kyth.

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It’d be interesting if crafting recipes cost a coin or few each, as a show of paying your craftsmen to work

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Along those same lines… perhaps you could throw more gold at them to ensure a higher quality tier that gets produced.

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New idea for money sinks: make drystones extremely expensive to buy from merchants. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I read that with the new ACE 0.9.3 update that you can now smelt coins into gold ingots and gold ingots back into coins, check it out!

Hey, you all, I have came across this problem my self, and I think it might be a solution to be able to “pay” for some quests. Meaning that some quests required you to pay for some reason. If you are imaginative enough, it could solve the problem. For example: I read that in ACE there are plans for a crazy pirate NPC. He could give you a quest for a “lost treasure”. He would ask you to pay a large amount of money to support his journey. And than you could get some reward