Not really a surprise to me, but I tried it anyway: Starting with Rayya’s Children (in the desert, though that wouldn’t have changed anything), of course with the brand new hard mode, and specifically not buying the starting sword is not just “super hard mode”, but mechanically impossible right now: as RC still doesn’t have any possibility to make weapons on their own before the actual late endgame, you have to wait and hope for traders to sell you one. But the traders, which eventually sell weapons, appear significantly after the first dangerous enemies! So while all of my people could successfully fend off the first wild wolves, there was simply no way to do anything about the first goblin raid, but to watch my village be burnt to the ground…
Just as a reminder: RC needs to go through a lvl 2 potter, a lvl 3 mason, a lvl 4 blacksmith (!) and then the carpenter, before they finally can train their own troops (compared to, oh, the starting carpenter of Asc). And that is additionally hampered by the fact that the blacksmith alone needs approximately 50 logs of wood (in the desert!), to smelt enough material to reach lvl 4 in the first place. These problems have been mentioned before (basically right after introducing RC).
So the question to the developers of course is: Starting with stable A16, will the RC recipes be adjusted to actually work in the beginning (a clay sword will fix this specific situation, but there’s others, too), will they instead have way more control about traders (e.g. you can actually, actively call an arms dealer within the first few days), or is RC simply not yet considered to really be used, and unless players want to do some simple experiments in sandbox mode (pun intended), the gameplay aspect of the current alpha is restricted to the Ascendency?
While ceramic knifes are a thing in modern times, clay swords seem a bit out there. I suppose they could always just force you to take a wooden sword when embarking, like how the Ascendancy are forced to take a saw, or make some visitor give you a sword if you don’t have one or another gift if you do near the start of a Rayya’s Children game.
That was actually my plan, but I didn’t even get that far… To be honest, I might have been able to do that if I had focused more on this strategy, as I was just getting clay tunnel doors. But then again, aren’t the new enemies supposed to knock down doors, too? Then I still don’t have any defense force.
…that it he takes his time to come by! I did have 2 or 3 merchants, but none of them sold anything useful to me at the time. When the Iskender merchant finally came, he could only collect my dry bones in the sand…
@Doc_Brano I’m not quite sure, what you mean…? I guess, walls would be helpful (I didn’t get to build any yet), but since you probably need some doors in them, and as far as I understood the last patch notes, some of the new monsters can kick down doors, so it’s not a solution either.
was wandering about walls yes. Did play a couple games taking not a single thing. Just picking the right spot and way of playing makes it quite do able.
Rayyas Children should start off with slings.
Fiber + Clay = Slinger totem
stone + stuff = stone shot upgrade
iron + stuff = iron shot upgrade
radius damage - grenades?
Clerics could handle the role of early protection, with some adjustments to the tech tree (think I got one before a footman in an RC game, but not sure). While clay swords do feel a bit silly stone or clay tablets make sense as cleric talisman alternatives. I think slings are pretty sensible and thematically appropriate, even if they just make archers with a different animation for their weapon tier.
Adding an event that drops off a sword and shield to the beginning of the RC trader campaign is probably the most sensible solution though, at least for now. In fact, that may be doable with a one file mod. Going to take a look at that.
Oooohhhh, I love that idea! You could also shuffle the military part of the professions, e.g. start with a “slinger” (who replaces the archer), and they can train to become… let’s say a spear fighter (the spear could be made from wood and stone by the mason for RC, that’s a lot easier to reach for them), and later (through the blacksmith again) some kind of “marauder” = tank/knight.
A clay sword does not sound plausible but a stone club (some kind of Rayya-specific recipe) does. That still leaves some difficulties but makes a blacksmith an “upgraded military factory” from the mason.
A carpenter is still required for bows, but the archer is mid-to-late game anyway (you still need a skilled footman to promote).
I wonder if an enclosed settlement might give you enough time away from enemies to reach the wooden sword development level. I’ve played this map (http://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/interesting-world-seeds/14511/146?u=mechanismatic) in the latest unstable version (prior to today’s release) on normal mode and it took a long while before I ran into enemies. I wonder if the same could be said of hard mode.
I like the slinger idea, I actually thought about something like that the other day. Though I was thinking more along the lines of slinger -> archer just because it seemed more thematic than sword -> archer.
I like that this is both a brainstorming session for refining theme and dynamics in a complex simulation - and a proposal to hit stuff with rocks. In the meantime I’m trying to add a wooden sword to the initial food drop off event.
I know its not a real solution, but this is a small workaround for those who’d like to play this specific setup. It just adds a wooden sword to the starting donations - might have to stockpile to notice it but it’s there. It should at least help you hold out 'til you get clerics or a talisman shop.
It installs like other mods - the easiest way is to extract it into the mods folder. Maybe if I feel ambitious I’ll prototype some of these other ideas. Cheers!
