Rayya's Children: Farming Suggestion

I love the aesthetic and gameplay style of Rayya’s Children. It really jives with my wants as a player. I tried them out before I tried the Ascendancy and I was taken aback by how easy it was to play the Ascendancy in comparison. I really found myself enjoying the challenge of playing the Children and the way you have to slowly work your way up the production ladder instead of having everything handed to you.

However, I do have one peeve and that is how hard it is to farm wood. Food I can deal with and my Hearthlings are very happy (I assume) living fairly acetic lives, however I do think it would be interesting if there was some way to grow trees at a decelerated pace.

Like, instead of being able to farm a large number of saplings you would be able to plant saplings and cacti directly into the ground whereby they would grow far more slowly than the trees the Ascendancy has access too. This is not specifically for the sense of resources, mind you, I just really like the aesthetic of the clay buildings and the trees going together and I would appreciate some control over that, especially as it is reasonable that whilst it may be difficult for the Children to get their hands on other sorts of seeds or grow those sorts of plants, the local trees and bushes do certainly grow in the area, and harvesting seeds should be a given.

That aside, I really do adore this game. I’ve wanted a game like this for a long time and Stonehearth ticks all of my boxes.

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except that they arent supposed to have access to alot of wood… thats the downside to living in the desert… the idea is that since you have a limited amount of wood available you sell clay decorative items (which sell for alot of gold) to buy the wood you require.

rayya’s children are supposed to be a desert trading colony… they rely on trade to get what they cannot make the lack of wood is one of the main things youll have to trade for… but this is also why rayya’s children have a much easier time getting gold than ascendancy which is just rounded and good at everything.

the last human faction coming out will be based on like vikings ect with fishing/hunting and a focus on warfare which allows 3 distinct playstyles rayya’s children are the traders, ascendancy is the “do everything for yourself” faction and the northern alliance will be the military/combat focused faction.

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The problem is that having trees is not only a question of resources but one of aesthetics for some players (myself included). Part of the issue is that there’s no requirements for growing plants yet, such as water, light, etc… If you could grow trees right now, it’d be too easy.

Just because there’s the current “trade to get wood” mechanic doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be ways of terraforming/lumbering in the future, though at a much slower rate than the other groups. After all, how does the RC caravan obtain wood to sell to the player? It had to come somewhere, and it’s not unreasonable to think that groups exist in the game world that specialize in this growing. Why not the player? Maybe it’s something they have to trade for in order to learn how to/improve their abilities. But even still, it would need to cost a LOT of time and commitment. By no means would it ever be easier/more cost effective than crafting and selling goods as is the current game mechanic.

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i would imagine that lore-wise the RC caravan travels to all places of the world, not just their own deserts, and buying up stock of things that can only be found in certain biomes and or factions (such as wood from the ascendancy), and then selling it to the ones that cant get those resources or items.

did my wording make sense? i have a feeling it didn’t…

True, but Acacia grows indigenously in the desert. If they only offered oak, juniper, or pine, I think your explanation would fit better…

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I would argue the fact that trees and cacti clearly grow natively in the desert supercedes all other reasoning. The trees do grow there, and the fact that I’ve no way to replace them makes me very wary of cutting any of them down because of the aesthetic value they present. I often set up my first potter in the shade of a tree and build my town centre near water as well.

I wouldn’t mind if every now and then a trader would come along with perhaps a sapling or two to purchase and then I could plant them. Certainly it’s not the most efficient means of gaining wood, but it allows the Children a means to grow trees and acquire wood that suits their hard-living, trading lifestyle. Perhaps the trees grow slowly over a far longer period than it would take for the Ascendancy to grow theirs?

The Children are all about resource management, so it would be interesting if they had more ways to manage them that tie into that root of trading.

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If anything thus far I’ve found the desert too easy. I just got the game and I’ve never played the Ascendancy; but in some ways I already feel like I’m able to “win” too easily. My village has been growing at pace, the combat is easy, resources abundant, and the worst complaint my hearthlings have had is that the food is monotonous at the beginning. They didn’t even gripe about spending the first few weeks sleeping in beds outside.

I wouldn’t mind being able to grow acacias IF they required water nearby to drop saplings, and if Cacti no longer counted towards my wood resource. So far I’ve never traded for wood, instead I trade for wood products. Specifically wooden swords and hoes.

My gigantic palace compound was slowed down by the time I took gathering cacti for huge amounts of scaffolding but that was less a problem with the abundance of the material and more an issue with me building a 31X31 building with towers on each side as my first structure.

The only thing I might “change” on a hypothetical third attempt is that I’d plant more of the melons early on rather than carrots and corn early on since my cook couldn’t bake bread or make vegetable stew until level two. That would get rid of my complaints about food variety in the journal.

I like the general idea of trading goods for wood. But then again, it just happens every couple days that the trader even has wood. And that ranges from 1 to a maxium of 13 I’ve seen so far. This leads to hindering my smithing progress.

One other thing to keep in mind regarding RC’s wood situation is that you’re forced to burn a log every night in each Fire Pit you have (you can get more via trading). And sure, you can just undeploy them to save resources at this point, but eventually they’ll likely give some sort of positive benefit for the hearthlings.

(Personally, though, I think the Fire Pits should be able to be toggled via a GUI instead of having to take down the entire thing to save wood, but that’s another topic entirely.)

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I disagree with this idea completely, I think that Rayya’s Children having to trade with caravans to get wood is 90% of the struggle of the race. That’s why Carpenter is almost impossible to unlock and use for them.
Although there are games like mine last night where I ended up with 5+ days of “Fine Animal Parts” caravans in a row. :sweat:

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I understand, but that completely skirts the aesthetics issue. You are actively discouraged from cutting down what few trees there may be because you know there is no chance they’ll ever return, and in an environment where so much of what you build will have earthy colours like sand, clay, or wood, trees are an invaluable splash of colour. They’re also very good architectural features as I find myself building small garden areas around them or incorporating them into the grounds of my more opulent-looking houses, but that again is all highly dependent on the randomised placement I get from those trees.

Point is, the Desert and Rayya’s children need more development with regards to how they interact with resources, partially because the desert really isn’t as hard to work in as it is made out to be, and partly because intrusive gameplay elements like this ban on saplings defies the logic of the setting.

If we could just purchase saplings from traders that’d be hunky dory, but we need some way to get new trees.

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a problem im having while playing the children in desert area is that u need wood for scafolding to buildings… i had 0 wood untill the building was done and when it was done i had 160+ wood… the thing is that i cant really do blacksmithing cause it uses 1 wood ever ore i smelt so i cant really build big buildings later on if i do blacksmithing to get the carpenter… (not that i need the carpenter, but the armour and knight upgrade is nice to have)… and tips on help for this ? and dev who can make its so that u can see how much wood u need for scafolding when building

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