So I don’t mind the idea of it taking a lot of different steps to get a carpenter in Rayya’s Children. It makes sense because it takes awhile to get a potter in the Ascendency as a trade off. There’s some serious gameplay problems with it though. I have never been able to tame Bluebell in RC because I never come close to getting a shepherd by the time the goblins pack up and leave. Nor have I been able to get the windchimes before Ogo Skullbonker shows up. Here’s what it takes to get a potter in Ascendency:
level 2 carpenter to make mason chisel --> level 2 (or 3?) mason can promote to potter
Here’s what it takes to get to a shepherd and the windchimes for RC:
level 2 potter can promote to mason --> level 3 mason makes blacksmith hammer --> level 4 blacksmith makes carpenter saw --> level 5 carpenter makes shepherd’s staff and windchimes
Let’s not forget either that the desert is scarce on wood, and you need a lot of it so your blacksmiths and carpenters can reach the required levels. You also have to get a hold of iron and coal to make the steel for the saw. Even while making getting a carpenter priority #1, it never gets done by the time these events come around. Therefore I think this needs some serious tweeking. It’s not balanced enough.
I can only hope that the goblin campaign is slightly different from AC with this faction to further differentiate the two. I mean they are coming up with variations for the critters and hostiles. In a way it doesn’t make sense why the goblin tribe of the desert would have a bluebell, I mean it is a different tribe I would think.
Regardless… RC is obviously trade based, and I have been able to prolong the goblin campaign by appeasing them, at least in A16, Getting coal, stone, and other resources really isn’t a problem considering how little you would need for the smith to make the actual saw. Granted the trade caravans that carry said supplies seem to be random to some extent.
However the farmer can eventually grow acacia trees if in the field long enough. So like the AC farmers they will be able to grow trees eventually as well on top of the trading that you can get wood. Every little bit counts.
I don’t see RC as the rushing kind for shepards, and that is the thing I do agree with. Whether bluebell is going to exist in the future for the desert tribes or not is yet to be seen. Don’;t know how the route is going to be in the future.
My question would be why are you playing RC? I personally play for the culture, architecture and premises that is apparent with them. Which is Trade faction primarily, as they get more trades coming in from the sounds of it. That and I started the game primarily playing them at a fairly slow pace… Interesting suggestion though, if not a little vague on the actual suggestion. I agree that more tweaks seem to be needed, although unsure where would be best to pin point, as there are a lot of areas that could be potential prospects for such tuning.
I suggest that Bluebell be replaced with Coco the quail-yo for the desert campaign. NA’s native biome could have Mr. Thump the bunny. That way you can have a different “Special” animal for each.
I think a good thing for RC would be to have the ability to use coal as a fuel resource. Then they wouldn’t be relying on just wood for the fire pit and the blacksmith. Coal doesn’t have much use but for making steel anyway. As long as you mine a lot you would get plenty enough I think. especially if you can find a vein.
For me, this is the most serious of the imbalances. Thanks to Ogo and his army, you need to rush through the crafters, to get a carpenter and make him craft the windchime. Otherwise, you will probably have a very bad day, when Ogo arrives. You can stand your ground, of course, and fight Ogo’s army, but you’ll need a well equipped army yourself to do so - i.e. weapons and armor made by a high level blacksmith. Either way, it puts some great pressure on RC, which doesn’t fit the overall SH feeling, IMHO. I don’t want Ogo’s strength to be tuned down, but a way to face him without the need to get to the end of RC’s “technologies” first. The goblin campaign is a early one, after all. I hope for some rebalancing in the future.
I have started a hard difficulty game with Raaya’s Children recently and was trying to get past Ogo. So far the only way I’ve been able to get past him is to sacrifice my military to kill Ogo, then turtle in my fort until the remainder of the army leaves. Unfortunately, they massacre any new migrants and … well … they haven’t left yet.
For me, I’ve actually done just fine with fending off Ogo, but I don’t want that to be my only option. I want to have a prayer at a peaceful resolution. Otherwise, what’s the point of having options?
As much as I like RC’s aesthetics and gameplay I don’t really like to play them anymore. Mostly because playing normal I have to rush my town to a certain point just to overcome this encounter. Either have to rush to carpenter which you may or may not get leveled high enough to make the chimes by the time ogo shows up, or you have to rush a heavy military which means sacrificing a lot of growth with your city. It just seems like you have to put in a lot of effort just for one encounter that isn’t even half as difficult when playing ascendancy. The potter should really be able to make the windchimes.
RC needs options that allow them to get all the needed stuff (like swords and windchime) as early as AC.
For example: Why not give Mason a stone weapon that can be used to promote hearthlings to footmen? And why not let the potter or mason create a windchime out of clay/stone? A mason is very easy to get with Rayya/Dessert, since you dig holes/tunnels anyway to find clay and also find alot of stone this way.
I second this. It would relieve a lot of the current pressure on RC playstyle.
Swords for Footmen aren’t that big of a problem. You can get them from traders - unless you are very unlucky. But once you have Footmen, you are forced to rush through the blacksmith recipes to get them the best equippment possible. The armors made by the Weaver are often useless, because with RC you cannot get enough raw materials to make them: no carpenter, no Shepherd’s Staff, no sheep / no Silkweed farms. And by the time the blacksmith has made all the weapons required to face Ogo, you already have iron armor available (or looted from encounters). But this rushing feels so wrong in SH. And RC in particular don’t seem to be the heavy military guys to me. More traders and craftsmen.
Progression in a game like this should never depend on luck. It should be up to the player to decide when he wants to have some military units. AC can build swords nearly right from the start, while the potter has a long way before you can promote someone to carpenter. That’s why I suggest a stone sword, which is equivalent to the wooden sword in terms of promoting someone to footman.
Another way would be, since you said they are more like traders: They have access to the trader stall right from the start (maybe potter can build one), letting the player “summon” traders very early, with a very high chance of getting traders who sell you wooden swords and armors. For this, you need lots of money ofc, so producing stuff with the potter and sell it would seem reasonable. This would make much more sense and would provide RC with a different kind of gameplay, because it would be more based on trading/crafting instead of being able to produce everything you need by yourself (like AC can).
I like this idea. IMO, for RC a tier based system of different trader stalls with different items in store would fit very well. One of them could sell wooden swords. The simplest of these stalls could be available right from the start, as you suggested. Others could be available, as the town tier increases.
I think that if RC get a new “training” weapon then it should lead to a new class, with all other combat classes stemming from that one.
I think a fitting option would be a slinger; the token for which might be crafted at the weaver rather than the mason. It would mean that RC need to rely on trapping a bit more because leather is now more important than ever for their military; but because the slinger is a ranged class they’d be very useful for slowing down approaching enemies. Their higher level skills could be stunning effects and taunts, so they work a little bit like a knight – locking enemies down and disrupting attacks – only they rely on other soldiers to stop enemies getting into melee range. In the early game, that basically means a few slingers surrounding an enemy and constantly drawing its aggro, keeping it away from any one slinger it gets close to; in the later game it’s a way to lure enemies into a counter-attack or stop them for a moment while a footman catches up to finish them off.
The Ascendancy could get slingers as a new, separate class; and only learn the recipe for the sling weapon after completing some mission (either an Iskender caravan makes contact to establish trade but comes under attack, or maybe the Red Kiln pass on knowledge they’ve learnt from fighting the RC’s slingers)… however the class is unlocked, it should be something for relatively well established towns (I’d say even an event that can only unlock in a Level 2 town); giving them a powerful defensive class to man the walls if they can complete the challenges.
I love the idea of a clay windchime as an alternative to the wooden one – the important point is the note of the goblin trainers’ whistles, as long as that note is carried over it really shouldn’t matter what instrument is playing it.
However, I’ve usually found that getting a blacksmith to level 4 as RC isn’t all that hard – I find plenty of ore when I’m mining for stone, the only challenge is finding wood to fuel the furnaces with. And when I play RC I buy up all the wood I can, and push to get acacia saplings as soon as possible (to this end I’ll usually make my first farmer out of one of the hearthlings with a higher Mind score rather than saving them for a later industry); so wood isn’t actually a problem for me. I keep my construction simple so there’s not a lot of scaffolding involved, and I make sure my blacksmith is levelling up on the most efficient crafts possible (e.g. as soon as I can make bronze bars I get them to make a couple and then start them making those bronze ingots into armour; as soon as iron unlocks I get them to make a few iron ingots and then turn those into armour) so that I’m not burning a lot of wood while levelling up to steel production.
The difficult part is doing that while dealing with escalating attacks… and I think that’s where slingers would come in useful, since they allow you to slow down those attacks without dramatically increasing your military score.
I kinda like the way Rayyas is set up. They are a trading race. So they wait on the trader every day. So I just make a ton of things with my potter. Well, my first potter goes to being a mason, second one is my main guy. Those teapots sell for 28 each. I just make a bunch of those then sell them for my training tools. I’ve played on hard mode enough that I’m used to the “rush” aspect of both races.
Very seldom so I miss the daily update. If I do it’s cause I got tunnel vision and forgot something.
Yeah, it’s good that they have the “trader”-feeling, but certain items are badly needed to progress or survive hardmode and if you are unlucky, you dont get those items at the right time, which shouldnt happen. THat’s why I made some suggestions above, which are in line with the whole “trader-feeling”.
