Topic: Slow start (poor hamlet & basic outpost)

Hi everyone,

I've just played a few games with a basic (struggling) outpost start; and now I'm trying one with a poor hamlet.

Firstly, regarding the poor hamlet. I'm having some trouble... I know what I need to build, and I'm careful about ensuring the correct order - but I'm struggling to to make my metalworker not make a felling ax. I'm playing as the barbarians, and so my solo lumberjack is looking after the woodcutting and the blackwood hardening (I also have a spare lumberjack hut); and so the economy thinks I need another felling ax. That's fair enough, and I predicted this... but I thought that if I disconnected the empty buildings from my road network before giving iron to the metalworker, then the felling ax would not be 'needed' while the tools are being made. But apparently that doesn't work. The felling ax still gets made, and a lumberjack gets auto-recruited in the warehouse even though it can't get to the empty building.

So, can I just clarify, is it meant to be like this? Is there some other trick that I need to avoid the felling ax getting made? Do I have to disassemble the buildings when making new tools? I really thought disconnecting the buildings would be enough.

Secondly, about the basic outpost starts... I'm just curious as to people's thoughts on these. I kind of like the slow starts with a careful build-up. It seems it isn't really balanced across the tribes though. I haven't tried much, so maybe I'm mistaken about this - but I'd say that the Atlantean have a very slow start compared to the barbarians or the empire. (I haven't yet tried the Frisians with this.) The empire have a pretty nasty marble problem... but if there is a good rock supply near the HQ then they are pretty fast to get started. The barbarians need lots of wood; so that's pretty slow, but they have a relatively simple set of buildings needed start making tools. The Atlanteans though need heaps of buildings, because their fancy mines are super-expensive to construct and to feed.

The lack of balance isn't really a problem as such. I suppose the point of the basic outpost start is to have the minimum stuff to get started without it being easy to screw it up. (And the poor hamlet start is the absolute minimum, with no protection from screwing it up...) It might be nice to have a poor / slow start condition that was a bit closer to being fair across the tribes; but it probably wouldn't be popular enough to justify.

Anyway, as I said, I'm just curious about what other people think about these starting conditions.

[edit]

I was just thinking about what might be changed to balance the tribes. As I said, I've barely played these modes; and I don't think they really need to be fair / balanced anyway. I'm not trying to make a recommendation. I'm just spit-balling ideas to see what people think. If the atlaneans started with a few loaves of bread, that would allow them to make just a couple of tools before having to build the farm + blackroot farm + mill + bakery. That would be a pretty big help to them. The empire are fine, but they could be given a few bottles of wine just to easy the early pressure on marble. The barbarians probably have the fastest and easiest start; but if other tribes are getting excess resources, maybe they could be given some beer or something - which doesn't really help them get set up, but its better than nothing.

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Nar, I'd already done that. All of the tools (and most other stuff) was set to zero. It wasn't making a spare felling ax, it was making a felling ax because it thought we needed a lumberjack; and when the ax arrived at the HQ it was immediately used to recruit a lumberjack - who then just stayed in HQ because there was no route to his hut. (ie. there was never a spare ax in the store; only a spare lumberjack.)

I'm just guessing now, but I assume that simply having an empty building connected signals that the extra lumberjack is needed; and the request for the lumberjack is not cleared when the building is disconnected. I don't know if there is a way to make the economy forget about the unfulfilled lumberjack request. hmm... now that I think about it, I've got an ideas of how I might be able to do it. My idea is to disconnect the hut while my existing lumberjack is 'coming' to the hut - so that the hut is thinking "I would have my lumberjack if the road was connected, so I don't need to recruit a new one." I'll probably try that tomorrow.

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When the economy notices that a worker is needed that can not be created at once, it opens a Request for the required tools at a warehouse. This request is independent from the building that actually needs the worker (because the one requests a Worker and the other a Ware). So the request for the tool sticks around even when the worker request is cancelled. That's why the toolsmithy will produce the tool when it has the means to do so.

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That is not enough for the barbarians though; because the barbarians need both the lumberjack hut and the blackwood hardener. Both the buildings are required to progress; and they only have one worker to share between them. I suppose you could build the lumberjack hut, and then wait ages to get enough wood for all of your bulidings, then dismantle it before building the blackwood hardener; but to me that sounds even more tedious than just reloading every time the wrong tool is made. Surely there is an easier way.

@Nordriese, one thing that isn't quite clear to me your explanation is why the lumberjack is recruited when the tool arrives. From what I understand, it works something like this:

• The building requests a lumberjack.
• Economy as a whole notices there is no lumberjack available; and no ax to recruit a new lumberjack.
• So the economy requests an ax to be created.
• The building gets disconnected, and so it is no longer requesting a lumberjack; but the economy is still requesting the ax.
• The ax gets created...
• When the ax arrives at the warehouse, I'd expect it to stay as a spare ax; but what actually happens is that the lumberjack is still recruited.

It's the last dot point that I'm unsure about. I suppose the exact details probably aren't important, but I'm really trying to understand it in the hope of finding a trick to avoid the problem!

Has anyone here completed a game with one of these starts without reloading? If so, what did you do? Is there an order that tools are cycled through? If so I suppose we could watch carefully for the right part of the cycle before supplying the iron; but that would be pretty tricky, since the iron does not arrive instantly - and the exact timing of it may depend on what else the carriers are doing. (By the way, I did try my idea of destroying the connection while the worker was en route the the building, and that didn't solve the problem - which is unsurprising given what Nordriese said.)

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I understand the lumberjack recruitment thing now. Thanks. That was pretty clear.

Nordfriese wrote:

Yes, I did this with barbarians, atlanteans, and frisians, though it's tricky Just build exactly the required buildings in a sensible order one at a time.

But for the barbarians you need the blackwood to build things before you start making tools; so constructing in the correct order isn't isn't enough on its own. As far as I can tell, the only way to do it is to dismantle the lumberjack hut before building the blackwood hardener (unless you do some other kind of trickery like we are discussing about manipulating tool request orders - or just get lucky.)

Just stop the smithy until it has enough iron

So, does stopping it preserve where it is up to in the queue? I think that would be good enough to make it work. I'll see if I can get it to work now.

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