Nilla

This stream is at a lake, I don´t think any of my other crayfish streames were. But I can´t understand how this could change anything. If you look at the picture, you can also see that they fish at spot nr 3 and 5 from the bottom, not at the end of the stream. The map seed is 845834870, valley, medium, if you want to look at it. I´ve now built a bridge and started to cray fishing again. So far I saw no one idling on the other side of the map.

By the way, it took until year 5 until everyone had a house and a tool (OK, I couldn´t stop myself from taking more nomads from the capel otherwise it might have been a little bit faster;) )

Not much to say about my game; it´s quite easy to play on “mild” with farming; no need for a lot of micromanagement opposite to “harsh” or seafarer. That´s perfect! Something for everyone!

I just loaded the summary of my first impressions. I will make some further comments.

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.
It would be nicer if the starting buildings at “villager” were”frame houses” instead of the log cabins. You can´t build any more log cabins early (unless you are very lucky with the merchants) and if you want the “Viking look” of the village, you need to replace them; not nice. Now, it is good that you have the workshops from the start but since you can´t grind flour in them anymore, they aren´t quite so useful as they were. I used them at the beginning to make wadmal and clothes but since you need a tannery (and iron fittings) anyway to make use of the wool, it´s no big deal to also build a tailor.

The Iceland scenario; seafarer is clever and can develop further to a real challenge.
The amount of birches (or rather the absence of birches) is now perfect. You can manage to get enough fuel and wood to build but you need to be very careful and it´s a struggle. It makes a lot of fun and is different from most other games. Also the absence of deer works, it makes the start harder but not impossible.

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.
These ports work, also when you need to trade a lot for food. In a “heavy trade game” it´s nice that you can make business with all merchants.

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 Still agree.

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. Now after I´ve played a bit more I can say a little more.

The different kind of stones
Why not? I basically like it, even if it could be developed further. First, I must say; in no game, there´s been a lack of small stones. But on the other hand, opposite to a vanilla game, there´s seldom lack of stone in a Nordic game. I also think that it´s a good decision not to give the boulders an own “button”, as I suggested right at the beginning. You only need boulders for the Thingstead at the beginning and maybe if you want to build a crossing over a stream but otherwise it will not be used. The third kind of stone; ashler are also rarely used. I´ve only used it for the temple. That´s a pity. Why not make use of these worked stones in more buildings? It would be logical that stones you pick (or take from a quarry) must be cut before they can be used in fancier buildings. Why not replace stones with ashler in all “modern” buildings?

stone tools for early use Already gone; good.

Christianity only with a bought bible It´s OK now after the Thingstead bring more nomads.

smaller reindeer herds OK, doesn´t hurt.

longer-lasting tools OK, doesn´t make that the game feels easier and I also find that your arguments for this make sense.

heavy turnips and cabbage As far as I have seen it´s all vegetables except beans, not only turnips and cabbage as I thought. I don´t like this and I don´t like your argumentation about calories. Why calories? Why not vitamines? Or some other essential content in food?
I believe you when you say that weight has no importance of how people pick food into their houses. Still, I am sure that it makes trouble by distribution, probably by the vendors. I also see no sense in giving all the food in one category this disadvantage. What does it add to the gameplay? It makes farming of vegetables harder. But why should it be harder to farm vegetables than grain? It´s cheaper to bye than grain but you can process most grain, what you can´t with vegetables (with one small exception). Which evens the value.
Different weight of some goods could add something to the gameplay but only if it´s used in all/most categories to motivate a change to more advanced products. Say; turnips; high output also for uneducated on harsh, weight 3, cabbage; lower output especially for uneducated on harsh, weight 2, sauerkraut weight 1. Or meat and fish. weight 3, smoked and roasted meat and fish, weight 2, salted, weight 1. Something like that.

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 changes work. I don´t find it too easy to get enough logs/fuel.

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…
It´s been better but I see no reason that the Thingstead can´t attract nomads on “seafarer”. Alright, there will be no domestic nomads if we are on Iceland but other immigrants from oversea will arrive. They would come there, also without a chapel.

Other notes;
I´m glad that you´ve dropped the “Berry Tweak” and wouldn´t mind if you would drop the “bean tweak” as well.
Something needs to be done about the big markets. They don´t work, at least not in my games.
Good to increase the efficiency of herbalists; especially now with that sweet little healer´s hut.

Finally; WELL DONE! I think it´s “ripe” enough to be released.

I played around a bit yesterday and wanted to test some easier gameplay. I don´t think I ever used the “Villager” start. It´s supposed to be the easiest, isn´t it? I have a couple of suggestions to really make the start easier. There are hard options if you want but I don´t think, you like the easiest option to scare some people away from the North because the start might be a little tricky. Isn´t it better to make the starting conditions as easy as possible?

You will have a lack of firewood right at the beginning. There are 5 houses from the start but only something like 100 firewood. The fastest will grab it and some houses will show the freezing sign. It wouldn´t hurt much to triple the amount of firewood from the start. There is a woodcutter built and some logs in store, so it isn´t hard to start to produce firewood at once but why make the start harder (and scarier when you see the freezing sign) than necessary at the easiest option?

The first map I opened had flax as seed from the beginning. It looks like they have one random seed for each field and orchard. Why not give them turnips, barley and apples to start with?

Also, livestock seems to be random. If I didn´t look all too wrong, the flax map had all three of them. In my game, I have sheep and chicken. The animals you need early are sheep. Why don´t give it to them and leave the others? It only takes focus away at the beginning to take care of a few chickens. I know that it doesn´t matter at the beginning if you take care of them or not, but does a newer player know this?

I now also know why I thought the sandpit had 2 miners as default start. I mixed it up with the larger clay pit. Maybe you´ve already checked but I find it also should have 1.

First picture
Scary start with freezing signs.

Second picture
I couldn´t resist building the small chapel as one merchant brought a bible. So now we have double nomad attractors and are growing FAST (at least for a real-time ageing game.)

I also ordered some bricks and roof tiles and believe it or not; he returned the next year with the ordered goods. Sometimes it takes 20 years! But no one have brought glass, yet. So I guess that´s what we need to wait for “forever”

he, he weird! Because he doesn´t show up here. The children have to wait until Christmas for presents.

About the eggs, I´m pretty sure that it´s meant normal chicken. Normally they didn´t lay any eggs in winter but started again to that time of the year. It was a very important event, even as late as in my childhood. I also think that´s a reason that we eat easter eggs. They tasted extra good when you couldn´t have any the whole winter; simply the finest food at the finest Christian holiday. But I´m pretty sure that there was an “egg fiest” in the pre-Christian time as well.

And the Ein- month; maybe they thought of their dead to that time of the year, like we do 1 November.

“Secluded Settlement” “Viking Village”, I don´t follow.

Again I have some notes that are hard to decipher but I will try; it´s a combination of small questions, suggestions and things I´ve just noticed. Nothing important.

It looks like the production of some iron products has no uneducation penalty. How where your thoughts by the different products?

I always find it more relaxed when all buildings, also those where you can employ many workers, like mines have the number of workers from the start set default to 1. Like here; I built an iron mine but didn´t want to start the production at once. But, of course, it started, since I had some miners in clay/sand pits. I also think that the sandpit has the number of miners set to 2 from the beginning.

I miss the brown variation of the smaller red barn? Why did you take it away? I find it fits very well in areas with log houses and izbas. Of course, you can always build this new larger storehouse, if you don´t want a red building but I don´t mind variation.

What is the durability of steel tools compared to iron tools?

If I read my notes right and there´s no mixing up with educated/uneducated workers, but I think both are uneducated: It looks like you need 4 salt to make 28 salted meat from 16 meat but only 2 salt to make cheese. I don´t think these numbers are weird if you think of real production but since the raw material increases its value from 2 to 3 by both products, it´s more profitable to make cheese than salt some meat. Now I don´t know if this is compensated by a higher speed by meat. That could make sense.

I also have noticed that we now also have oak trees. They weren´t there in the earlier versions. I may be wrong but they seem to spread very slowly. I built my Thingstead in a group of oaks, cut all other trees and hoped that the oaks would have spread. But unfortunately, now after 50 years, they start to die without any small oaks. Maybe the free space now is too small but it would have been nice to have oak trees there “forever”. After all, oaks may be very old.

First picture
I was too impatient when I thought that roasted meat doesn´t make anyone happy. I took the ale away, happiness down and started to roast meat and it took a little while but now they are all happy again.

Second picture
This is important, however! To all players that play disasters on: If you build a brickyard, make sure that you always have 80 bricks in your stores so that you can rebuild it if it catches fire! I had 76. Now I must wait for the Hanseatic merchant. No one has shown up, so far.

It looks like the fire started at the red cottage. Didn´t you write somewhere that they didn´t catch fire?

Third picture
My “cult area”. I also show the content in my stores. The wagon vendors in the “outback” work a bit better than the large market. But health isn´t very good.

Fourth picture
All in all, we are doing fine. I have even started to order some fruit. I think we can afford that. But I don´t think we will be able to hoard a lot of daler (as we have done in some earlier games). One export port, two small ports for orders with daler as payment (mostly) and one big port for barter trade of “not ordered” goods work well for a population of this size (170). Since I don´t need to buy all they bring, it will work for some time.

So far the merchants at the export port have brought enough daler. And since I sell many different goods, I can make business with everyone.

The merchant that´s least useful at the moment is the sami trader to the small ports. I sometimes buy some blueberries (but don´t want to order any because of the grain flag). I also used to buy gold but since I don´t barter any goods he wants anymore, I have no payment for his gold and gold for daler makes no sense. But, there´s no need for any changes, I used to trade with him and on another map, where we have sheep and no cows, we could buy hides or if we mine a lot and don´t have enough animal fat, we could buy it to make tallow and so on; so generally, all merchants are useful.

Yes, the boardwalk left did save the stucked girl. But it would be nice if she could have been saved without it. It might be a good thing to open a path out, I have seen more people out there, even if they shouldn´t be there; not stuck, the boardwalk is still there. Maybe they also used it to get there.

Question: I can´t find a way to make steel. Did I miss something? Did you miss something? Or is it meant to be “import only”?

Yesterday was no sport, so I had more focus on testing and looking at different things in the game.

I might have a clue about the not good working market. It doesn’t work much better in this game, even when I have a larger surplus of food. I have looked more closely what the vendors are doing. These still sometimes make labourer´s work, even when the market holds too little food for my liking. And when they work, they often get something like 2 pottery, 3 leather or 4 wadmals in a far away barn; too busy with other things than gathering food together. It looks like very much space in the market is reserved for this “not foodstuff” and since the vendors find that a lot more of these things are missing than the food, they prefer these materials.

I find, there´s no reason to fill the market with things like pottery, tallow and barrows, it´s better to take it away. You don´t need 200-300 clothing at the market (the same with tools, even if I have never had such a large surplus of tools); I would reduce the available space to maximum about 50 of each tools and clothing. I´m not so sure about textiles, salt and sugar; it´s nice to follow the “vanilla rules” and locate tailors and salt/sugar demanding sites at the market, always provided with enough materials but we also have the Industrial Market that does the same. So either reduce the amount of textiles and salt/sugar or take it away. This would leave more possible space for food. This would probably not totally solve the issue with vendors doing labourer´s work but I guess it will improve the function of the market a lot.

I also made a “herbalist test”. I made notes of the total production for 2 years, divided in food and not food. Then I assigned 3 herbalists; 2 normal who also picked herbs in areas where people were really unhealthy and one healer in the middle of the village; as strategically located as I could. I also had picked a lot of herbs in the years before, so there was a good surplus. Health did improve very well. Now I noted the production another 2 years. Guess the result?

First picture
The alehouse can´t produce mead. It´s not necessary; it´s actually called “Ale House” but since the mead hall can produce ale, I guess it would be nice if the skill of making mead isn´t forgotten. I can also report that most of the ale I produce stays in the alehouse opposite to what it did at the mead hall.

I might be wrong but didn´t the roasted meat work as alcohol when consumed at the alehouse? Here my citizens had eaten all the barley I bought, so as the alehouse was finished, I had nothing to produce alcohol from but enough meat and fuel to roast beef. But I didn´t see any effect on happiness until I could produce alcohol.

So far, my strategy was to grow as fast as possible by taking every nomad until the population reach 100. (Here, July 36 we have 103.) From now on, I will not take any/only a few new nomads and rely on my educated youngsters for further growth.

Second picture
The “MortalSmurph” method of hunting does work well. Not this much every year but one small hunter at the edge of the map hunt a lot.

Third picture

My latest developments. You can see my herbalist experiment at the graph and also that I haven´t taken many new nomads for the last 10 years.