Elemental Forums
I just started up the beta for the first time in about 6 months, started a town and couldn't expand past a population of 10 due to lacking a food to build housing. Despite researching farms and whatnot, I couldn't build anything else because my town was still level 1. Is this an issue? Was I suppose to know something there?
You can't get past level 1 without huts, and you can't build huts without food. So put your town near a food source and build a farm asap.
If only the game told you that somehow and it didn't require you spending an hour trying things only to realize you need to restart the game.
Yeah, only folks actively following the beta would know this. Hopefully with the latest changes in 3A a player would choose to found the kingdom next to the fertile land tile they are placed near at game-start, but an additional pop-up informing the user of the importance of fertile land will probably save a lot of headache and time for Stardock post release.
EDIT: or have Janusk advise about this as his first action.
Currently it looks like even the most vigilant testers keep missing and confusing things... And documentation is not up to par...
Here's a suggestion. Instead of placing the player near fertile land, magically place fertile land near the capital. Give it some essence--revive land--whatever story purpose, but make it clear of its importance by forcing its existence.
Just my thought on this.
Right now, we're stuck with a game that requires a certain opening that isn't well defined or game-enforced. If you fail in that opening, your empire is effectively ruined. You must get materials up fast and you must get a farm up (in one of the few fertile land squares in the game, never mind that one starts near you) asap or you're doomed. The empire is a *little* better off here, being able to generate its own food in modest amounts.
It's placed near starting location as a 1 per player "freebie" to ensure you can build a big enough city regardless of your luck with random generator.
YET, player can relocate and change his capitals location to a better place if he thinks he can find one fast enough.
Making Fertile Land spawn where player places his capital would have a strong impact on city location. Considering the fact that this essentially allows to neglect the whole importance of starting location by automatically having a fertile ground near a node of choice, and that there are "more/less of <something> near starting location" bonuses that would impact the game much less after that, I draw conclusion that relocatable Fertile ground is a bad idea.
Example:
Player A takes "a mine is near starting location bonus".
Player A starts near a mine and places his city there, since he wanted this mine.
player A now has a mine and a fertile ground in one city.
Player B takes something else.
Player B wonders around a bit and finds a mine and places his city near that mine.
Player B now has a mine and a fertile ground in one city. He also has whatever bonus he chose.
It's been changing as the beta goes along. In Beta 1 you always started next to a fertile land tile, and you were frequently in range of another food tile, like an orchard or bees. Then at one point we had gardens we could build even without fertile land. Now those gardens are gone but we're not back to always having fertile land nearby.
I expect it will all get straightened out.
On that note, I've noticed that sometimes I get Janusk as a champion, then other times, there's no one actually there. Is this supposed to happen? I've noticed it happens more when playing the empire, but it still happens once in a while with a kingdom. Has anyone else noticed this?
Yes, there have been a number of occasions when I've gotten the introduction from Janusk, but then can't find him anywhere. And there was one time when he was right next to me on turn 1, but when I tried to recruit him he acted like he'd already been recruited by an opponent - trying to talk to him brought up the diplomacy window with Kraxis.
How close do I need to be to the fertile land square? I had two spaces between the city and the fertile square. Thanks for the help.
If this is the expected game play mechanic at release, I would just allow the capitol city to build a 4 square farm as a feature of capitol cities. You would also need to make it very obvious that this a capitol city only feature. If you move the capitol the farm has to go away and open up the land slots. Granted you would need to track the farm linked to being a capitol city as you don't want to whack farms that are naturally generated.
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