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Forgot to add pictures, here they are.
Maybe you could make two versions of seafarer; one easier, the way it is now and one harder, with less and slower growing trees and no deer. That way, it could suit more players and offer different kinds of gameplay. Maybe the birds could be trapped by the trapper as a by-product, I don´t think I want to build a hunter´s lodge for a few “chicken”.
Let´s see what´s in my notes. The list is not so long this time.
I have some questions about the Mead Hall; no mead yet but ale seem to work as at the other inns. But what about the roasted meat? It looks like it can be consumed at the Mead Hall instead of alcohol but opposit to the Ale House, some of it is transported out of the Mead Hall out to “the market”. Ale is also transported away very fast. You need to use “alcohol from outside” option a lot also for self produced ale. Is this intentional?
I also wonder a bit about the proteins. It would be interesting to hear about your motives for the changes. In version 6 almost no cheap proteins were brought by the merchants. Now they bring all kind of meat; raw as well as smoked. All (except salted) to a value of 2. In the earlier versions, you could increase the value of meat by smoking it. I can´t say that I like the other version better than the other and I can´t tell if the changes make the game easier or harder. It depends on the conditions. If you are short on food; it´s very nice when a merchant brings some cheap fish. If you overproduce proteins, it´s very convenient to smoke some of it and barter it 1:1 for vegetables or bread.
It´s a bit weird that merchants bring fresh meat and fish but OK, it´s mostly the local and the sami trader and they will probably not come from very far. The lower export price, combined with the changes of firewood (at least I think it used to give more than 3 firewood from each log) also make smoking meat and fish quite uninteresting. Charcoal is used for many things and I see no sense in spending valuable firewood on increasing the amount of food so little as the small smokehouse makes. I don´t know if it´s better at the larger site.
First picture
This one is for Irrelevant (and everyone else who is interested in happiness). I told you yesterday, that the initial settlers are hard to get happy, only a few of them were happy in the turf houses, even inside all happiness circles. Now I´ve built a few frame houses without happiness detraction and located initial settlers to them. Also here one of 4 is still unhappy. This is not new to me. I have noticed it in Nordic games before; it takes a very long time for Bannis to forget that the conditions were bad; that they were homeless, had no coats, were ill without a doctor, had a bad diet…….. some never forget.
Second picture
I couldn´t understand why the small DS workshop didn´t produce. I had enough iron bars but it uses iron fittings and logs, not as the text says; iron and logs and I was out of fittings. I don´t know if you could do something about it, Tom. If I remember it right DS has different receipts for wagon parts; you can use either iron or iron fittings but I don´t remember how this small blacksmith works.
Third picture
This is as warm as it gets this year. Luckily it´s not this cold so often but it might happen. And if you play “harsh” you must be prepared for this; no harvest at the fields and also no blueberries in the woods. I must confess that I was not really prepared here. I was only saved by the merchants.
Fourth picture
Could it be that animals in the “wrong” pasture produce less? I moved the cows temporarily to the second sheep run in the time I expand their normal pasture. The production of milk from up to 13 cows in the sheep run is far less than the production from my initial pasture for 8 cows. You can see the production menu from it some years ago cut in left. (Sorry for the ugly weather)
If you know me and my opinion of herbalists, you might understand that I haven´t noticed that the herbalist need glass to be built. I seldom build any but since the game offers herbs from the start and the possibility to regain hearts by taking a herb and visit a herbalist, I too find that there ought to be a healing possibility early in the game, where it´s not unusual that you have problems to support your population with all food categories. Good ideas! But I have noticed that the hunter also need glass to be built and that the forester lodge has become very expensive to build (at least I can´t remember that it needed that many logs before). Don´t get me wrong, I don´t disapprove. It has a point that you can´t build a small, cheap hunter and support the whole settlement with meat in an early game or that you need to make larger investments in logs to get a lot of logs. But a forester´s log needing as many logs as the big mead longhouse? Hmm.
Sorry Tom, I didn´t express myself well; there´s no ale at a marketplace. It lands in some barn. And I´m not sure that it´s the vendors that take the goods away. My impression is that the Mead House somehow can´t store as much roasted meat or alcohol as the Ale House. I´m not sure that you need to change anything, they may very well work a bit different. It´s not such a big problem to use the “alcohol from outside” option, even if you produced it at the same place last year. That roasted meat is transported out of the Mead Hall might be good or bad, depending on the circumstances: If you´re a bit short on food the Ale House may hold 1000 roasted meat or more, that´s unaccessable for people to eat. I´ve had to “fake demolish” Ale Houses to feed my people with roasted meat. But if roasted meat once is transported away from the Mead Hall, I haven´t seen that it can be transported back and you need to produce much more roasted meat than you need for happiness. That´s not so good if you have more proteins than you need but are a bit short on firewood. (a very common scenario on “harsh”).
One more question on the mead House; did you always used firewood to produce ale and mead? Does it really make sense?
I can see your point with the smoked meat. But salting wasn´t useless. I might have overused the smoking alternative in some games but only quite early in games as you can produce more firewood than you need for heating and other processes. There was always a point where I switched to salting (or didn´t process the meat at all because I had more trading goods than I needed). Don´t get me wrong, I don´t mind the changed trade value of smoked meat, there are enough other trading goods. I´m just concerned that smoking meat generally will not be an option in the North 7. If I don´t remember it wrong; you have reduced the output from the woodcutter from 4 to 3 firewood from each log and you have reduced the output of charcoal from each firewood and there are more sites that use firewood or charcoal than there was in earlier versions. If I haven´t overseen something, this will make firewood rarer. This game is with “harsh” climate, where you always have some trouble to get enough firewood but my impression is that it´s worse than usual. I can´t simply afford to use the precious firewood for such a small increase in food.
You have two types of stone roads. My stockpiles were pretty full of small stones so I built some ordinary stone roads. My guess is that the “paved roads uses stones from the stonemason, that needs a quarry to work. How much faster are these roads?
Some more questions to the pictures:
First picture
This is, of course, a consequence of the weight of turnips; it takes much longer to harvest a field of turnips than a field with “normal” crops. The farmers need to walk to the barn very often. This is a decent year; the harvest of barley is done but not even the half turnip field. I´ve relocated some barley farmer to help with the turnips, two farmers will not be able to harvest a field of 80-90 tiles.
You can also see that there are no workers at many sites. Almost everyone is out in the woods picking blueberries and if there´s time enough, herbs for export.
Second picture
I´m a bit confused about the limits and symbols. I think, the production of iron bars has stopped because I´ve reached the limit of “metals”. But the menu of the blacksmith shows other limits. Maybe there´s only room for 3 different windows but iron bars is the most common product, so it would be nice to have it at the menu. There´s also the deer hide symbol at something called “minerals and ores”. You might want to take a look at this. By the way, I like the menus with the limits and the texts like; “Controls the limit of wadmal and other textiles”. The tannery also has a button “Controls the production of potash and other materials”. Did you have plans to make potash at the tannery and changed it?
Third picture
A few days ago I asked if it´s worth to farm flax at harsh. You didn´t answer, Tom. Maybe you didn´t see it or though; “let her find out for herself”. So I bought the seeds. I haven´t really tried it yet. The one year I grew it was really miserable and gave nothing but there were also almost no turnips and barley so I will try it a few more years.
You can also see the content at my trading port (there are also some pottery and some cheese). I sell a surplus of various goods. Long term I want to support the settlement with imported food. It is tedious and uncertain to farm and gather wild food on “harsh” but I don´t really know yet, what export goods are the best. It will probably stay a mixture of various things for a long time. The merchants of the small port also don´t bring as much food as would have been necessary with import only of vegetables, grain and fruit.
Our games were not much different at the beginning, Vrayna. It was a real struggle to get enough logs, firewood and charcoal. I had to send all Bannis out in every accessible small birch forest to pick deadwood to heat their houses. I was very careful about cutting trees. The woodcutter was only allowed to work when I needed charcoal and I only produced the few I needed to make a few tools. That way the birch forests got large and dense after 15-20 years. But still; I have constantly a lack of logs, firewood and charcoal or this is maybe wrong expressed; I have enough but only because I´m still extremely careful, how I use them. You said Vrayna, that you want to run charcoal production a year or two. I´m in year 46 and so far, I couldn´t run the pit one whole year in a row. And I still need to send more or less everyone out in the close forests to pick every available deadwood and I can´t let fuel demanding sites like blacksmiths, pottery, meat smoker and glassmaker work as much as I want to.
I find this rationing of wood and wood products is OK (and wanted) at an Iceland scenario. It´s a different way to play and think, that I do enjoy. I wouldn´t even mind if it was even a bit worse if you play on harsh but the conditions I have now, after the forests have grown to normal size are like a “normal Nordic game” and I don´t find that lack of logs and fuels should be the limiting factor in such a game.
I don´t find that logs, firewood and charcoal was overpowered in North 6. There´s a merchant I think it´s called Timber Trader who comes to the big port with desirable daler, who only pays the “good price” for wood products. I always tried to sell various goods but could never sell anything to this merchant, I never had a surplus. The changes in North 7: 3 firewood from each log instead of 4 and 16 firewood for 12 charcoal instead of 1:1 make that instead of 4 charcoal from each log you only get 2,25. So, you almost need the double amount of logs to make charcoal and there are more, new products that you among others need for construction that use either firewood or charcoal (pottery, potash, iron fittings). So here you will rather need more charcoal than you did in a North 6 game.
I think some rebalancing in firewood-charcoal production is necessary for normal scenarios. With a slower growth of the trees at “seafarer”, we can still have this challenge when we want to.
Since I´m constantly short on fuels, I wanted to find out how much firewood the different kind of houses really need. I held the menus of 2 turf houses and 2 frame houses open over one year. The turf houses needed 30 and 31 firewood, the frame houses 40 and 41. This year had an unusually warm summer so I held the menu of a turf house that for some reason had hoarded 126 (!) firewood open (no wonder that the stores of firewood sometimes drops fast). Over two quite normal years, it needed 66 firewood. Then I built one log cabin and compared it to the turf house. They both use the same amount of firewood. I tested twice because I thought I wrote the wrong number or mixed something on my not very tidy notes but one year they both used 32 logs, next year the log house 32 and the turf house 33. A bug?
Anyway; to help the situation I´ve built a mine and mine for coal. I will not need to mine for iron ore for a long time, because like on Vrayna´s map, there are a lot of bog iron (and stones) on the map.
First picture
To help the log situation long term, I built a forester´s hut. They plant firs! It´s not the first time we humans have changed the ecosystem.
You can also see my “normal way” of getting logs; a woodcutter in woodcutter cabin, combined with a firewood chopper. Since I don´t want to “over cut” trees, I cut for a while and when the log pile is full, I let the cutter switch to make firewood. There are 3 such combos together with a couple of village woodchoppers.
Second picture
Beautiful buildings! The merchants seem to arrive a bit more often to this port than to the small ones. I had hoped that also other merchants would dare the long journey to this nice port but so far it´s the same. But there is room for an export port right next to this one. We will see who arrives there eventually.
Third picture
I don´t know what went wrong by removing this small clay pit. I had 2 pits and the first was removed without problems. I used the fill option, a miner worked and was unemployed but here for some reason 2 clay is left. If I try to demolish, it looks like no one can demolish it as long as there’s clay left and even with priority tool no one carries the clay away. Possible bug?
