Testing North7

Just want to report that it wasn´t a bug at that claypit after all. It took a very long time but after a year or two, someone must have got that spare clay away and now the pit is gone. :) sorry for “troubling” about it.

I´m afraid, the second Lanthandel shows the same weird things.

No, no Tom, you didn´t drink enough Swedish schnapps to hide your German accent. ;) But nothing can stop me from using the proper Swedish name.

I´m glad you found the bug. It was too weird for my taste. Are you sure, that it´s only one of the stores (!) that´s bugged? I have demolished them but when I look at my screenshots, I have 2 different kinds of them; the one with the fruit left and the one with fruit on both sides. As far as I noticed; all of them were bugged.

Are you really sure? I have another screenshot here from the store, where I first discovered the bug. It´s the one with tables on both sides. Same as the second, that also bugged. On the winter picture in the earlier thread, I´ve rebuilt the first store, 1 tile away from the first. That´s the one with the table left.

As you might have noticed, so far I´ve said almost nothing about “my speciality”; production numbers and balancing. That´s partly because I haven´t run many of the sites continuously long enough to get reliable numbers but also because I´m very pleased with the balancing, generally. As usual, Tom; you´ve made a great job.

This game is on “harsh”. I´ve just built a school, so everyone is still uneducated. I´ve waited this long on purpose, just to get a feeling of how the game works with only uneducated workers. It´s probably wise to build a school much earlier. So, the conditions can´t be much worse. It´s possible to survive and expand the settlement but it is a struggle. I still need to micromanage. I can´t survive without the unreliable farming and without sending, maybe not everyone anymore, but a lot of people out in the woods to pick blueberries and deadwood. I would very much like to do without this but so far, I can´t. I find this is perfect balancing! If I could have played this game without struggle, it will be too easy when the population gets educated or if you play on “mild”.

It´s a small profit to produce a surplus of goods to sell, but I can´t produce so much that I can support the settlement. The export sites make an annual profit between 600 and 1500 trade units each year. Reasonable for an uneducated worker. It´s more profitable to make wadmal than wool tunics. If I know your way of balancing, Tom, I´m sure this will change with educated workers. But it´s still a small annual profit to make the clothes and some merchants pay the higher price for them and not for wadmal, so I sell both.

I might have some suggestions for the ports and merchants.

The small ports work pretty much as they used to in North 6, even if the merchants bring a bit different stuff. I complained at the beginning that they didn´t bring any gold or silver, but they do. Maybe not so often as they used to but when they have some, it´s quite a lot. So I´m still mostly able to pay the Hanseatic merchant in gold. I also complained that they bring too little food. This changed as the settlement passed 100 inhabitants, so if I order beans, now I can never buy it all.

I´ve mentioned it before; the only thing, I might want to see changed is the trade with fresh meat and fish. If we can´t limit this to the winter when it´s frozen, I would prefer, no trade with fresh meat and fish. This could also give smoking higher importance. No merchant wants fresh meat but some pay 2 if it´s smoked. It´s still a considerable loss in food amount to trade away smoked meat but you might still want to if you have a lot of meat and want a balanced diet.

The same merchants seem to arrive to the big port as the small. It´s quite logical but it would have been a nice surprise to see at least one new merchant here, that doesn´t bother to stop at the small ports, maybe a special salt merchant. Salt was maybe the most important import good and I find too few merchants bring some.

How do you find the idea, that no merchant bring seeds and animals to the big port? The many seeds are rather annoying. At the time as you can afford to build one, you must have bought all you need and besides, I see no reason to demolish the small ports, just because you can build a large port. My idea later in the game is to use the big port for barter trade and the small ports for import, using daler. But I´m far from there, yet and can´t say if it works.

I liked the old export merchants better. It was clear what goods they wanted. Here their title says nothing, I need to stop the game and look, what this merchant want to pay good for. My suggestion is 4-5 different merchants for different types of goods with clear titles; Maybe

foodstuff
metal products
textiles and clothes
building materials, like glass, brick, pottery, tar
and maybe one more for raw material and some special goods like herbs and alcohol

Well, I don´t dare to think about “Ironmen” on Iceland. But I like the idea, that you can try it if you want to really “suffer”.

I don´t find that the traders at the big port bring fewer seeds and animals, in the contrary, it looks like more. As I said, quite annoying an unnecessary mid-late game.

I don´t see how you can auto trade at the export port unless you can afford to sell some goods for the low price, what I don´t think you can under these conditions. But I plan to auto trade food for daler at the small port, once I got the export running well enough. That will make the trade much easier.

I guess I can learn what the different merchants want to buy for daler but it used to be easier. The good thing is that there´s no merchant, that you can make no business with, like the old Timber merchant. They all want to buy something I like to export. By the way, there is one that has only a name and no title. I will pay attention and tell what he wants to buy and I also have the impression that different local merchants want different things. I´m not sure and will look at it more carefully…….

………if this settlement survives…….

I don´t want to expand farming and my food stores are slowly shrinking. The log-fuel problems have reappeared, simply because I try to increase fuel demanding export goods production and I was careless/stupid enough not to expand the pastures as much as would have been wise.

Picture
Can I demolish the other chapels when this beauty is built? I somehow miss the crosses you can see everywhere on the real Norwegian starvkyrkor. Because in this village we are good Christians except at childbirth and distress at sea. (That´s a quote but I don´t remember from where, probably some literature)