Testing North7

Since you think that there will be a new version this week, Tom, I went on with this town. We live but it´s still a struggle. Perfect, as it should be! I have looked at some more things; it looks like glassware is cheaper and much more profitable to produce for export than glass panes. What´s the reason? At the moment, I don´t bother to look at production numbers. With a partly educated population, it´s tedious. In other more planned games, I use to start a new village with educated couples a bit away from the old town but since I have no intention to play this game so much longer, I haven´t in this town. So I take it as it comes.

Sometimes it brings surprises: I had a lot of boulders blocking my stockpiles, so I decided to build a stonemason. First I just cut them to small, more useful stones. Then I saw that he can also produce millstones. We need to buy a lot of food so another thing to export that doesn´t cost any logs is great. I saw, 1 boulder gives 1 millstone. Sounds reasonable. The production was slow at the beginning but after a while, it increased in a strange way and I saw that now 2 millstones were made from each boulder. It looks like one of my younger cleverer workers saw how inefficient the older generation handled the stones and decided to do it better himself. By the way; the menu says that “stones” are used to make millstones. It would be better if it says “boulders”.

First picture
I´ve played with things I usually never use in a Nordic game; here cray fishing. The idea that a gatherer can empty the catch cages is clever. Now, it´s not much use to have a gatherer picking wild food on “harsh” so I concentrate on cray fishing and have located 4 spots in it the area. When they are empty the gatherer picks his deadwood until I have time/remember to put out new spots. Also good. On this picture, the output is very consistent but I have seen everything between 15 and 90. I don´t know if it pays off but it´s something different.

Second picture
This one is a little extreme, but principally not unusual. There are much more seeds and animals than advanced goods delivered to the big port. I´m glad you want to change this, Tom.

Finally, I can say; things work quite well. I now notice that the education rate increases. We are still not wealthy but we manage.

There are not much on my notes paper. Just a couple of remarks:

The large temple doesn´t seem to attract many nomads. Not that I have any intentions to take any at the moment, it´s just a remark. It looks like they arrive more seldom than to the small chapel and are not more. My population is now about 300. Still, only something like 10 nomads arrive. I don´t mind seldom but a bit more would make sense to me.

It looks like no merchant pays daler for herbs. Is this intentional?

Too few merchants bring salt. The small profit of salting meat, making sauerkraut and cheese is totally “eaten” if you need to order salt.

I´m a bit confused about the price of the glass products. It looks like glassware is more profitable to produce. Even if only few merchants pay the high price for it, it´s more profitable to sell to the lower price than glass to the higher. Or is it any difference in production speed or receipt? It´s hard to compare production numbers when sometimes all glassmakers are educated and sometimes most of them uneducated.

Today I will make a small summary of my impressions so far of the North 7.

Of course; I like it, like all other versions of the North. This version has further developed the start in “old days”. The Viking design buildings are beautiful. The Iceland scenario; seafarer is clever and can develop further to a real challenge. The trade has developed with a special export port that will make it easier to make a big trade economy and is fun to use even if you don´t trade so much. I like the development of more complex clothes production and complex building materials for advanced buildings. The balancing is good. There are also a lot of smaller details that have improved the mod. Also buildings that have been there for quite some time as separate mods are now included

There are other changes I´m not sure if I like or not. Partly because I´ve played it to little and partly because I see good as well as bad effects.

The different kind of stones, stone tools for early use, Christianity only with a bought bible, smaller reindeer herds, longer-lasting tools, heavy turnips and cabbage.

There are two things I don´t like:
Problems to get enough logs and fuels have limited the development of this settlement. I don´t mind if this would have been in “seafarer” only. But it´s been that way all the game, also after the forests have grown dense. I don´t find that “normal” for a Nordic scenario. If we have one thing here; it´s a lot of forests. If I understand your change log, you have planned some changes here; good.
The difficulty to get early nomads. In North 6 I usually built a small chapel as soon as everyone had a house and the basic tool production was working. Here I need to wait for a bible. It´s good that the Thingstead bring nomads, it can be constructed almost as fast as an old chapel. But it looks like the nomads are rare. I need many early nomads to enjoy a real-time game. Otherwise, it becomes too much the same micromanagement year after year until enough children become adult and you can really start to develop your settlement. You can build new sites but haven´t enough people to staff them. I find the year 5-30 boring in such a game. It doesn´t make the game easier if you can grow by immigration during this time, on the contrary; all these people need food, houseíng, tools…

With the frame houses, I somehow agree with Vrayna; they do have limited use. I´m a “trained micromanager” so I have no real issue with the pottery; one worker digs some clay, makes some pottery, makes some charcoal, makes some iron bloom, makes some iron bars, makes some iron fittings and iron tools, then back to clay digging and so on. A lot to handle but it works, even with just a few workers. But I understand your point, Vrayna. The difference in amount and complexity of materials between the turf house and the frame house is large, the difference to the log cabin; not so large. My reason for not building more than a few frame houses was mainly fuel consumption. It needs 10-12 firewood more each year on “harsh”. Except for the initial settler, I managed to make everyone happy also in the turf houses. I think frame houses would be more used if you take away pottery and/or iron fittings as material, maybe instead increase the amount of clay and also increased the heat efficiency to same as turf house.

I also like Vraynas idea of simple initial tools made by blacksmiths. I always found stone tools weird. How many 1000 years have passed since the stone age? No Viking would use a stone tool, rather a primitive tool made mainly of wood; in fact shovels, rakes, hacks… were still made of wood in the 19th century.

From my point of view, the number, or rather the frequency of nomads could never be right during a whole game. As I´ve said, I want a lot of nomads as early as possible. Later, when enough young people have grown up I don´t need any at all and frequent nomads arriving annoys you. But I prefer to reject nomads later over not having any early. I´ve had settlements with 8-10 small chapels in North 6; not so nice with all nomads but then I seldom bothered to reject them, they went away after some time anyway.

I´ve been thinking about some “realism” and tools. We agreed; Vikings wouldn´t have used stone tools. I even doubt that they knew how to produce something like an axe that could be used to cut a big tree. That knowledge would have been lost for 1000s of years.

But let´s think about settlers in a new land; if it´s oversea or far away “in the woods”; they have brought some supply; food, tools, clothing, even livestock but I´m pretty sure that they also would have brought some raw iron. Who knows when they can get some the next time? Why not add some iron bars from the start in these scenarios? They would still need a little charcoal to produce iron tools, but much less than otherwise. The harder options like survivors; that must be some refugees, maybe their village was attact by some enemy; of course, they didn´t have time to grab any iron, but this way, it´s still the same challenge as it was (if you take away the stone tools).