I whole heartily agree with this. but I think a way around this would be, to setup district like areas. First example would be use the campfire as a set amount of villagers work around. I don’t know, I’m just spit balling here.
Lets say you are on your map making 3 different villages all separated from each other, then have the villagers set to those village in some way would make thing a bit easier to handle.
Now what is optimal to me right now is 10 villager. Why you may ask well the game tends to get real buggy after 10, for path finding and lag. trying to handle all the goblins and wildlife, that A.I. has to think.
I really like this idea. You would still have overall control through the ‘party’ system (that is, you could make a large party of all footmen from all ‘camps’).
God, no. That means you have to micromanage three different villages. For example, if a goblin attack occurs, you may need to send additional units to another village. Distributing goods between these villages would be a nightmare too, especially if you want designations (“farm village”, “crafting village”, “resource village” for example).
By creating additional villages, you’re not making it easier at all, you’re making it much more difficult.
Could be an option though. Not that you have to go there, but many folks might. The alternatives are to limit your one village to 10 people or so - something you can manage without too much bother (if that’s how you like to play) or have one village with 50 people, and I can’t imagine how much bother that would be.
Myself, as a village got unwieldy, would prefer to peel the crafters off to a leather making clan, stone workers clan, blacksmith clan, etc. But that’s just me.
How is it a bother? The whole point of the game is that you don;t have to micromanage those citizens. You say “build a house here” and “chop trees there” and “dig out a mine here” and the game handles your 5 or 10 or 50 hearthlings and gets them to do the task and clean-up afterwards. The only management you need to do is your crafters (and, frankly, it’ll be rare that you would need more than one of each craft, even with 50 villagers) and your soldiers (which you do with the party system, you still don’t have to manage them individually).
So I’m not sure how you think more villagers = more bother? Yes, you need more beds and homes etc, and probably more than one farmer (but again, the farmers pretty much do their own thing after you have designated plots) but I don;t see that it’s actually much more work to drag out a few extra bunkhouses and farm plots and then go get a cup of tea while your army of minions builds them.
Hey - now THERE’S an idea for a mod. Someone should mod the hearthlings to look like minions from Despicable Me. That would be awesome.
actually, I believe @NonBritGit is in the “non bothered” camp…
but I also agree with your assessment of how the player shouldn’t necessarily be more taxed with micromanagement, just because we have a larger number of units under our control…
Yes, and if we want to see just how far micro-management can go, we can look no further than Timber & Stone. Took me exactly one session to realize I’d rather have a root-canal than spend any more time managing my citizen’s every single step.
StoneHearth is a breath of fresh air by comparison.
as much as it saddens me to admit, I have a similar feeling for T&S now… it has become exponentially more difficult to play… perhaps the “simplicity” of SH has spoiled me?
I would counter with the current mechanics making it feel more micro-ey than the number of guys. Workshop mechanics are currently the only thing I can think of as micro intensive. Otherwise your hearthlings tend to take care of just about everything.
Oh, and parties, but I rarely use them now because I’ve had hearthlings run past goblins to the rally point and ignore things they stood next to. As a system its fine, it just needs some iteration.
Can anyone else give examples of current micromanagement?
EDIT: I guess my current feelings are that it doesnt matter if i have 10 or 1000 citizens, I dont see the micro management ever reaching the levels of dwarf fortress or aurora. Even if things change during development, the team has said they want micromanagement to be optional, to increase output and such, rather than necessary. From the new Trello board and just what they have done so far, that seems to be the continuing gameplan.
@Geoffers747 and anyone else who disagrees i would PREFER heavey micro management, as long as it was balanced and they get all the crash bugs out… but this is just because i’m an old guy (having been a master at DK: Dungeon Keeper/DF: Dwarf Fortress and Gnomoria…) its what i am used to…
