More radical changes to Rayya's economy

Suggestions
1

First of all, great job on RC. But after playing around with them for some time now, I do feel like they should get some more significant changes to them than just the standard building templates and starting items.

Currently the only economic difference between RC and Asc are the default starting item, which is the carpenter’s saw for the latter and the potter’s cutter for the former. This automatically makes Asc easier, as they can get to the cutter way faster, than RC can get the saw:

  • Carpenter Lvl 1 -> Mason’s hammer -> Mason Lvl 2 -> Potter’s cutter
  • Potter Lvl 2 -> Mason’s hammer -> Mason Lvl 3 -> Blacksmith’s hammer -> Blacksmith Lvl 4 (!) -> Carpenter’s saw

This by itself wouldn’t be that much of a problem, it’s just that the economic system is the same for both, and therefore still heavily depends on the carpenter, as the very basic items of training sword and farmer’s hoe can so far only be made by the carpenter. Additionally the blacksmith is very limited in their usefulness, as every single piece of ingot requires wood for the smelter (including steel, which also needs coal), which makes metals suddenly also a surprisingly rare commodity in the desert, contrary to what you might suspect.

My suggestions are the following:

  • Move the farmer’s hoe in the tool chain; not necessarily to the potter, but maybe to the mason? (The mason’s chisel also doesn’t need to appear twice, just at the potter for RC should suffice.)
  • Create a clay training sword (I think, the ability to create at least one guard should be available from the very beginning)
  • Reduce the RC’s dependency on wood more by allowing their blacksmiths to melt ores with either wood or coal (and maybe throw in more coal in the desert mountains)

Alternatively it might make sense, to keep the hoe where it is, but move the spoon. A desert civilization might be more into preparation and preservation of existing foods, than into farming. But that of course then needs more (= at all ^^) recipes for desert fruits, and maybe more harvestable food in the desert (something like dates, next to the cactus pears).

That’s just from the top of my head right now… Opinions? Discuss! :smiley:

4 Likes
2

Well you can get a wooden sword and farmer’s hoe form the caravan that comes occasionally, but still, they are really expense and usually you can only buy one of them. Otherwise, I agree with everything you said- RC is much, much harder.

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3

Raiya’s children are dependent on wood… O_o

In my opinion, the ascendancy are more wood dependent. Raiya’s Children are more clay dependent with a side of wood.

Why would RC need a carpenter? You can buy wood, or chop what you need. They are more Trade oriented, hence quite a few more valuables to be made in the long run. Buying swords and hoes are cheap if you consider what you are selling.

Wood is more sparce in harvesting than the ascendancy since RC doesn’t plant trees in the current version. No idea if they ever will, as they are trade focused. Would be nice if you could buy saplings though.

Do agree RC needs more farming stuff though, as that would make sense.

I don’t agree with the tool changes though, as right where it is seems fine. After all it is suppose to entice trading, not cut it out. Hence why it takes a bit more to get a carpenter. Well it is the way I see it, and I work with the trades that come by with what I have. Mainly selling cloth, leather, and simple items till I can make more advanced pottery. :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Everything needs to be harder, but that should start coming from changes to combat and the addition of more animals and enemies in the next alpha update.

I fully agree that metalworking shouldn’t require wood. Coal should suffice, and for higher temperatures wood may need to be prepared int charcoal or eventually even smelted down to coke in a coke oven in order to be useful. Coal should be most common in the mountains, then in the desert, and least common in the forest where wood can be upgraded slowly over time with proper planning.

Beyond that . . . the biggest change would be making the potters cutter harder to get for the ascendancy. You shouldn’t quickly get BOTH tools. All that leads to is a super civilization that can make tons of money AND harvest forests in a renewable manner.

I’m wondering if the third civilization will be dependent on the mason or the blacksmith as both of those skills seem like they could use some TLC. :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Generally yes, but that “side of wood” is still too big for my taste.

That’s my main concern, to be honest. I can accept the tools and farming under the assumption of a bigger focus on trading, but then RC should have some actual advantage in trading over Asc. Maybe they can build some kind of trade post (only them, or at least severely earlier/easier than other factions), that attracts more traders, bigger traders (more than just 5 pears and 10 corn baskets) or traders with better prices. Maybe you can even somehow automate the trading, by telling your hearthlings to always try and store, let’s say 5 stone tables and 5 wooden bucklers in the trading post, and as soon as a merchant arrives, they sell everything in store. ^^

6

I agree about the wood for RC. I would like to take my blacksmith to level 6 for the crate he can make but in RC the cost for the crate is too high with all the wood that’s needed.

7

I like the fact that trading takes a bigger part in RC. It makes the game a lot more fun! :slightly_smiling:
Random out of the blue comment.

1 Like
8

I think the biggest issue with RC as a concept is that their trading is so unreliable (or rather, not much different from Asc trading). It would be better if they had more consistent traders (maybe 2 per day?) with a wider variety of stock to offset their ascetic lifestyle. We’re talking about a desert nation that thrives off of trade, right? The variety in RC’s gameplay, then, should come from selling their goods and buying “exotic” items, not just foraging for what they need from a wider area.

9

Maybe adding some kind of value, similar to morale, that would determine your settlement’s trade-ability.
A higher number would get you more traders with better offers.

1 Like
10

I’ve not seen the little bit of wood being a problem, since even now with all the trading I’ve done… I have plenty of wood. That is a cheap low cost item when that trader rolls by. They usually have a bit of wood, which will add up after a while.

My question is, what are people doing that is taking so much wood. Carpenter was not truly meant to be used primarily with RC. That is just what I would call “Exotic Luxury” for these desert people.

Many of the products do use wood, however not really all that much. Most of it is clay. When there is wood it is small. The chest mentioned from the blacksmith… I consider that a Luxury. I am aiming to build at least one granted myself, and I definitely have enough wood for a few.

The thing I mainly lack is the ores. Almost there for one. Trading has its’ focus, and I utilize it for things that my colony lacks. Since wood is more sparce, of course I would buy wood. Since I don’t really truly mine with them. Have not really started to mine, even if I have a mountain to mine into right at my doorstep. Clay pits I do, but that is a short distance away from my village.

And now I am even buying clay, because I don’t want to really dig more clay pits. I’ve amounted a lot of gold from trading for the lesser stuff and selling back to them a manufactured piece. Cloth and leather for example. Is what I started out selling. Buying the skins to be made into leather. fiber… I have silkweed all over my plateau…

So really I don’t see wood being a problem, although would be nice if there was a trader to sell saplings, albeit rare. After all that would be exotic. That way there would most likely be something prized to buy. Maybe not extremely rare, as that would defeat the purpose of having a shop for it.

Anyway I am just a bit left confused as if people are trying to play RC like Ascendancy. Not saying people are, but almost sounds like it. The way I see it is each faction will have their own perks and advantage as well disadvantage. I see the ascendancy as the average people, as in jack of all trades master of none. Something like that, more like the middle ground.

What they really need is a faction that can contrast that aspect and go the other extremely even if mildly. Well need is a strong word, more like would be nice. I guess we will see more differences when they do add more factions, as does peak my interest. :slight_smile:

11

In my latest RC game, I played them like dwarves, so instead of building houses I just tunneled into mountains.

I was up to my neck in stone and ore and I had far more ore than I had wood with which to smelt it with. But that is also an atypical playthrough for RC.

The other issue is bedding. With beds being tiered as they are, you’ll want a high level carpenter to make Fine Comfy Beds and grinding one for RC is just not feasible. I suppose we could say that the RC are just not supposed to live comfortably, but since the morale system is still in its infancy, there’s area for improvement/differentiation there.

2 Likes
12

I spend a lot of my wood on ladders. Also I noticed they use one wood each time they light their campfire.

1 Like
13

This brings up a point… maybe the campfire (hearth) should be upgraded for Raya to be more of an oil based source like the lanturns. FREE OIL! :smiley:

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14

Do ladders actually require wood? I use them liberally but I don’t feel like my wood reserves are being depleted by them.

Okay I just tested it out and there’s a bug. As far as I can tell, Hearthlings will use wood to build ladders but not the “whole” piece of wood. A single piece of wood will sustain multiple ladders.

However when a ladder gets torn down, it will result in a piece of wood, effectively recycling the wood used for the ladder. Except this process actually gives 1 whole piece of wood per ladder so while I started my test game with 3 woods, after building a bunch of ladders and tearing them down, I wound up with 13.

INFINITE WOOD.

15

I never use a carpenter in RC only a blacksmith. My wood is always low and the only other place than the blacksmith it could be going is the ladders. I use lots of ladders because I make the mountain sides smooth before mining into them.

16

Those returned logs are fractioned logs, they waste a slot in inventories, but have a lower value.

I did a test. A new game, it started with two logs, I build some ladders and removed them, ending up with 8 logs in inventory. I then ordered them to build the small template house, which uses 7 logs. They did just 2 layers of the walls before running out of wood.

I repeated the same test, without increasing my logs making and removing stairs. So I ordered the same house, but this time the inventory had just the 2 original logs, they did the same 2 layers of walls.

So in conclusion, you have more itens, but they worth and can be used less. consider it like a 1/x of a log.

2 Likes
17

This is because there is no “restacking” done by hearthlings at the moment. Each log is a “stack” of logs and building one voxel takes a part of the stack. But if you tear something down, the stacks might be split into two logs with half the amount of stacks for example.

Crafting/burning does not worry about stacks so you have more usable logs for crafting but the same amount of log “stacks” for building. I hope that makes sense. :confounded:

4 Likes
18

I wonder if ladders are considered to be buildings or part of crafting. There’s been times when I tell them to build a ladder they won’t do it until I get more wood but I didn’t check the inventory those times either.