Store Page
Jon Shafer's At the Gates
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Jon Shafer's At the Gates

Store Page
clayffo 10 Jun, 2019 @ 8:36am
Jon's big suggestion thread
ok, so at Jon's request, please post suggestions to make the game better. I will lead with things already posted by me and others (not 100% comprehensive)

- 50 wood is too high for starting buildings, such as farms. reduce it back to 20 wood. This will allow players to build up a stockpile of food for winter 1

1. install bot scripts so the computer actually plays. Even if it's not what you "want." give us something to work with here.
2. create "phase 2" and "phase 3" content. phase 2 is the point after survival (post 100 turns) when you're thinking of establishing a kingdom. phase 3 is defined as the point (post 200 turns) where you are economically and militarily strong enough to attempt to attack Rome. (or liberate Rome of the barbarians/other players)
3. create scripts so that Rome has varying degrees of interaction with the player as the player progresses.
4. fix the stuff that is in disrepair or generally doesnt work. these things include, but are not limited to, the trade skills, quality of life items (like a way to heal away from camp ,carrying more than 1 unit on a galley, and establishing forward operating bases to move people quickly across the map), and the ability to launch sea craft if you're not on the coast.

- allow diggers to produce reduced quantities after 24 turns as was available before.

- allow fish to regenerate after 2-3 years. this only makes common sense

- allow deer to regenerate after 2-3 years.

- allow for the building of fishing docks and ship yards so that players can settle camps away from the coast. Building docks will allow for expanded trading options in caravan.

- create a "builder" class so that destroyed buildings can be recovered and so remote buildings can be built (such as fishing docks).

- allow for player to capture and use enemy camps. allow for camps to be used as "way points" to move clans quickly around the map.

- allow watchmen to become forts. forts will allow for storage of clans, healing of clans, and quick movement of clans across the map. Forts should have a defensive attack of 10 (stand alone) with a bonus if troops are inside. ability to attack 2 squares in all directions.

- "One big problem in this version is there is nothing to scale with the clan growth as far as food consumption! No matter what i do or how much food I have accumulated clan growth always brings on starvation and death." - tcmots
allow for player to reject clans during recruitment and allow players to kick out clans as needed

- "You can't pack up with fishermen in your village, so I just have to convert them to eg trappers, then pack up the village, and turn them back into fishermen when I've unpacked. And fishermen don't need wood for their boats, which is weird." - zarconnen

"The ability to harvest a small amount of stone from stone ruins. A lot of buildings in 400CE were built out repurposed old roman stones, AFAIK. And it would mean stone, at least in moderate quantities, would be easier to find." zarconnen

- allow for interaction with bandits. Interaction could be a number of formats such as alliances, trading partners (bandit caravan), mercenaries (attack other players), and recruitment into the tribe.

- reduce food demands per family back to .2 instead of .3

- food should be reduced to 1g each and allow amounts up to quantity 150/item with fully upgraded caravan

- allow for scavenging of abandoned buildings. (building materials.) these would include wood, stone blocks, iron, cloth, boards

- allow for interaction with "neutral" or white camps. They should be activated too as players, although diminished like city states in civ 5 and 6. this should include trade, treaties, and recruitment.

- create an actual interactive political screen. we should be able to interact with the computer players freely and have multiple options. For example, there is no way to improve relations with another tribe unless they initiate the conversation. (IE give me food or money."

- bring back parchment for training. The game really drags mid to late game recruiting clans and they having to wait forever for them to upgrade themselves

- extend the number of berry patches available and allow them to grow back every 2-3 years. currently, there is typically no more than 1-2 patches nearby and frequently there is a bandit camp in between, making it impossible to use that patch.

- allow for galleys to transport more than 1 clan per boat ride

- Phase 2 ideas:
1. do not allow enobling until player declares kingdom. (other than random spawns.)
2. enobled clans need expanded capabilities since they are nobles. these would include gold production, expanded and upgradeable skill trees (create separate enobled skilled tree), + influence for each noble.
3. force player to choose to side with Rome or against Rome.

siding with Rome allows for expanded trading skills, roman style unit building, and roman style roads. allow enemies not sided with Rome declare war on you. penalty for attacking neutral structures. access to "Roman only" caravan with greater marketplace.

siding with rebels automatically declares war on Rome, rome periodically attacks you. player automatically declares war on other tribes siding with Rome. player gets influence bonus for attacking Rome allies. bonus of materials and gold to looting of neutral structures and roman structures. bonus to groups (3 or more) or archers, lancers, and spearmen.

3rd option; not declaring kingdom. if you choose to decline, you become a nomad tribe. you have to get permission yearly to be on certain lands and pay tribute to kingdoms. you get a big bonus to scavenging skills, as well as bonuses to attacking bandit camps, neutral structures, and roman structures. Bonus defense to forts. bonus to raiding tribe camps and tribe structures. ability to take on contracts to attack anyone you want.

4. access to building forts
5. ability to build war ships
6. kingdoms should have greatly expanded territories, maybe 5x the current size. all resources in new kingdom become yours and computer gets relocated off your lands. Bonus to resources within immediate kingdom borders

- discovery is kind of a boring activity that has diminishing returns. allow for "auto explore" like civ 5. allow upgrade for explorers to use boats to sail without needing a galley pickup.

also, going along with discovery, there should be the ability to "discover" ancient artifacts and / building plans. reward discovery with the ability to build bonus structures

Here is a list of bonus items that could be easter eggs. each one would allow the player, for a cost, to upgrade structures, improve existing clans or tribe wide bonuses.

Roman items

1. aqueducts - improve tribe wide happiness. no building / upgrading needed
2. Roads - +2 movement add to existing + movement on roads
3. roman concrete - improve stone structures to concrete for + production efficiency. Add a "building materials" catchall to the caravan to cover items needed to build and upgrade buildings.

4. Mills - upgrade camp workers like bakers for + production
5. Mining - water powered "hushing methods" allow for + production on mine. this can stack with roman concrete for additional production
6. ballista - upgrade archers to crossbowmen and upgrade catapult to ballista both for +attack

persian items

1. qanats - + farm production in desert areas
2. art - + fame production
3. jewelry - valuables to be sold at caravan
4. medicine - + healing for 50% greater health per warrior
5. astronomy - +2 viewing distance for explorers and galleys

mongol /chinese knockoff technologies

1. armored tanks - + attack for lancers
2. silk road - + sell rates and - buy rates at caravan
3. triangular plow + production for plower (give us a reason to use this guy)
4. blast furnace - + production of iron and steel
5. gunpowder - +attack of swordsman and spearmen
6. dried milk - +1 turns before food exhaustion (must be upgraded per clan field only)
7. composite bow - + archer attack






Last edited by clayffo; 28 Jun, 2019 @ 8:13am
< >
Showing 1-15 of 17 comments
clayffo 12 Jun, 2019 @ 7:31am 
Here's another trade idea based largely on historically accurate data. There were 2 primary sources of trade, land routes and sea routes. Land routes were mainly small, light loads of goods and generally required Roman roads for efficient use. Sea routes were generally the preferred method for trading.

Land routes -

- without a trading post or roads, players get the most basic "light load" horse drawn caravans. These caravans only hold light goods such as wood, grain, cloth, and high value luxury items, like fine cloth.

Once the player builds a trading post and a road connecting it to the camp, then the caravan will be upgraded to a heavier, larger caravan pulled by pack animals. This caravan will have additional items such as weapons, tools, small quantities of animals, and other mid weight items. Heavy items like stone, animals, and large quantities of grain are sea based only.

The the caveat to these larger caravans is that they will be subject to raids by barbarians.

- Create an option to build a sea based trading port. (similar to trading post, but on a major river or lake only. Player must establish a kingdom to gain access to this option.

This will allow for the purchase of high quantity, high value goods like stone blocks, heavy armor, 150+ quantities of food, and the rest of the caravan items. It will also allow for a larger budget for greater 2 way trade. However, due to tides and winds and so forth, these caravans only show up every 10 turns, except in winter when the rivers are frozen over, making no deliveries in winter.

This trading scenario solves a key issue in the game, evolving from a nomadic tribe to a kingdom.

It creates a logical and forward progressing trading system. As the player progresses and improves, more trading options come online. it also forces the player to move and find areas of greater opportunity so as to take advantage of sea based trade.

One of the key design criteria that has never been achieved in this game was for the player to be nomadic. A system like this creates an incentive for the player to move, harvesting and collecting, instead of immediately settling. The player must move through phase 1 and into phase 2, which is the "establish a kingdom" phase, in order to unlock this content

It also creates an interesting decision because the player has the option to stay nomadic at a cost of trade and other items noted previously in this thread
Last edited by clayffo; 12 Jun, 2019 @ 9:41am
#1
Jon Shafer  [developer] 12 Jun, 2019 @ 8:38am 
Thanks clayffo, I like a lot of this. Just posted a new thread focusing on the Romans specifically.

- Jon
#2
clayffo 27 Jun, 2019 @ 8:32am 
Suggestions and bugs based on V1.2. I'll try to focus on things that are either game breaking or are new to 1.2 and not rehash too much from above.

Bugs / problems :

1. Gold and food from Rome does not credit player account
2. There are major lag issues now. There needs to be some resource optimization for the Romans as it's pretty clear they are the cause of the lag and subsequent crashes
3. the open clan list (F10) button crashes the game
4. cannot move a camp when you have a galley in it.
5. cannot capture AI Galleys. I have tried with my own galley and it ground units. just shows a red X over them
6. The Romans can give you impossible goals and the attack when you don't accomplish them. I had 1 where the western empire asked me to destroy a bandit camp on the other side of the map.
7. The diplomacy with the Romans is pretty much as deficient as it was before. You can only communicate with them when they communicate with you. no way to call a truce or make trades initiated by player

suggestions and thoughts:

1. as you can see in the pic, meat is clearly the only way to go in this game. The only other good choice is fishing, but that peters out after turn 200 because all the spots get used up.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/profiles/76561198052032646/screenshot/787483077046420696

2. the resource screen is still a big mess. numbers smash into each other and items drop off the bottom of the page. i would suggest adding a drop down menu with a function key to toggle.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/profiles/76561198052032646/screenshot/787483077046434121

3. In this 450 turn game i noticed that cows never sold and sheep/horses just once in a great while. it feels quite unsatisfying to spend 740 gold on a fully upgraded caravan just to have it lacking in supplies. see my comments at the top of this thread regarding trading

4. i found it curious that this Roman fort was raided and the Romans could not fix it. it also maintained it's control. I then developed areas on both sides of it, clearly encroaching on their territory and there was no response.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/profiles/76561198052032646/screenshot/787483077046464201

5. i would like to see a top tier upgrade for hewers or have wood production added to one of the boosting trades. Currently i am making more cows per turn than boards, which is weird.

6. I would like to see preserves added back to the game. Currently if you pick a briner or preserver, you will get a modest boost to food production. in older builds you could create a new resource called "preserves" which were a commodity. they could be used like cows or horses as emergency food sources or they could be sold to make gold.

Salt is an uncommon resource on the map. However, it's value is not optimized based on it's uncommon status.

Since meat so heavily overshadows plant based products, it's not that beneficial to set up a salt mine and invest in a preserver. you are far better off building a second butcher or meat smoker. Yes you can sell salt, but there are much better cash crops that can be mass produced for sale, such as wine and iron.

7.
Last edited by clayffo; 27 Jun, 2019 @ 2:56pm
#3
Jon Shafer  [developer] 28 Jun, 2019 @ 3:25am 
Great feedback. I'll start working through a lot of this with v1.3, along with improvements to the AI.

Do people still feel that stone is too rare?

- Jon
#4
Elhoim 28 Jun, 2019 @ 5:54am 
Some very early v2 feedback:

- In 3-4 starts, I was almost completely surrounded by Romans, other tribes, neutrals and barbarians, with barely room to expand or gather enough resources. In general, before I had a bit more of room to establish my first area. Is this intended? Or just bad rolls?

About the OP points:

Quite good in general, you'll decide which fits your vision, but I'd like to focus on these:

- extend the number of berry patches available and allow them to grow back every 2-3 years.
- allow fish to regenerate after 2-3 years.
- allow diggers to produce reduced quantities after 24 turns.

My main problem with the game right now about resources is that the "optimal" way is to harvest until the resource is almost depleted and then build a stone building and use it forever. Which doesn't make much sense. Here is how I would go about it:

- Stone/metal/coal deposits can have regenerate on each building tier, simulating reaching a new "vein" with the upgrade, which can then be depleted and produced reduced quantities (instead of stone buildings lasting forever). The tiers (forager/wood/stone) are cumulative. So let's say the resource has 24 units per tier. You "forage" it, deplete, then build wood and get 24 more. Deplete it, then build stone and get 24 more. But if you forage the first 24, then build stone (skipping wood), you get 48, from both tiers. Or 72 directly if you build the stone ones.

- As for plants and animals, they could all have a small regeneration value, that gets increased with each extraction tier or job. This could allow some "circular" travelling patterns for a nomadic tribe, in which you come back to a location 2-3 years later to harvest things again.

I focus on this point due to something that happened on my first experience. In the starting map, there was some gold nearby. I sent a digger, he extracted everything until depleted, and I thought "That's cool, this gave a nice boost but now I have to move on". I thought that all tiers depleted the resources. When I found out that I should have left a resource unit so that a stone building could harvest it forever it left a very sour taste, as I felt that the game rules encouraged a metagame behavior that didn't make much sense.
Last edited by Elhoim; 28 Jun, 2019 @ 5:58am
#5
clayffo 28 Jun, 2019 @ 9:16am 
I came across a bandit fort today. I found it to be kinda cool that, albeit completely undeveloped.

One of the things you don't see in 4x games is the impact of bandits/barbarians. they are typically nameless, faceless thugs that serve as a check on the player early on, but fade mid to late game as irrelevant. bandits should have a meaningful role in this game as they did in this era.

Rome was essentially a giant bandit camp. (to greatly simplify things). The principle driver that led to the kingdom becoming so large was conquest and the spoils of war. in the 1,000 years of the empire, war spoils created far more wealth than taxes and slave labor combined.

With that said, here's how i could envision bandits playing a meaningful role in this game, as well as serve as an on-going threat to keep pressure on the player through mid game.

1. bandit forts would be like city states in Civ 5. they start off with a meaningful army (maybe 3-4 ax guys) and a typical control area.
- spawn new warrior every year. max cap of 8
- ability to either capture and control other assets or to destroy them. They gain different bonuses based on that decision.
- for example if they capture a farm they will increase growth of new warriors. if they destroy the farm, they gain gold, which allows for warriors to be upgraded to lancers and archers.

- ability to capture tradesmen and use them to convert their own resources. This creates an incentive to deal with bandits otherwise they will become more powerful. if they gain certain assets like horses, they can build lancers.

2. bandit forts can be captured and used by the player. the forts are essentially converted into watchmen.
- player gains 1 extra person as a watchman
- player gains the benefits of forts (as i discussed earlier in the thread)
- player gains control area
- any assets in the new control area become property of the player
- player also has the choice to destroy the fort to gain fame and gold. (no watchman gained). Fort becomes rubble.
- player gains diplomatic choices for bandits.
- hire bandits as mercenaries against known targets (neutral camps, Rome, and AI players)
- recruit bandits (if you gain favor say above 4)
- establish trade and peace agreements for a yearly price (they are bandits after all!)
- similar to civ 6, players can lose favor with bandits and they can be used against the player

3. bandit camps (the bandits that just sit infinitely as fortified troops.)
- reduced spawn rate (maybe every 2 years)
- reduced ability to upgrade warriors
- can combine to create new forts if they are not dealt with. requires 4 warriors. (this gives the player approx 6 years at 1 spawn every 2 years for a total of 3 new spawns)
- forts and camps have an increased chance to raid caravans (see my caravans earlier in thread)
- raided caravans have greatly reduced gold supply and products



Last edited by clayffo; 28 Jun, 2019 @ 9:25am
#6
clayffo 28 Jun, 2019 @ 9:22am 
Originally posted by Jon Shafer:
Great feedback. I'll start working through a lot of this with v1.3, along with improvements to the AI.

Do people still feel that stone is too rare?

- Jon

no stone is good
#7
Jon Shafer  [developer] 4 Jul, 2019 @ 7:07am 
Good deal. And great feedback guys, I'll be working on some of this stuff while I find away at the more long-term goal of improving AI performance. v1.3 will probably go up in late August, but I'll be updating the unstable branch every couple weeks between now and then. Taking some time off this week for the holiday so no new build until Friday the 12th.

- Jon
#8
Elhoim 5 Jul, 2019 @ 4:59pm 
Thanks Jon, keep up the good work :salute:
#9
BlckKnght 6 Jul, 2019 @ 1:56am 
A few things from my experiences playing several (often short) games in 1.2:
  • I've yet to unlock any of the other tribes. So every game I play is with the Goths, and because the game is so hard right now, I don't think it's likely I'll ever survive long enough to unlock anyone else. I don't actually know how to form alliances (diplomacy is pretty opaque and expensive), and I've not tried war yet but I'm sure it's hard. I struggle to figure out how to afford even a single spearman, so putting together an army that can capture another tribe's capital is pretty much impossible. It would be nice to see what the other factions can do, but for me, they effectively don't exist as something playable. Perhaps most or all of them should just be unlocked immediately (or after your first game, if the Goths are intended to be a sort of tutorial)?
  • The clan traits that limit what disciplines a clan can take on are very frustrating. I don't mind too much the ones that say a clan can't do one discipline, but I hate the ones that require a specific discipline. "Oh, there's my fourth clan who will only ever be happy if he's in Honor" a shame there's nothing left to hunt and I can't afford to craft any weapons, since everybody is right on the edge of starving..." In my only remotely successful game since 1.0 (which is headed towards starvation in winter 3), I got four clans in a row that would only be happy in crafting, and two of my earliest clans were only happy in livestock.
  • Having started a lot of new games in 1.2 (since so many starts are just obviously doomed, due to not having enough sources of food nearby), I have to say the starting dozen turns or so are often pretty frustrating, as you have to train a whole bunch of absolutely essential survival professions (at least two food gatherers of some kind, a lorekeeper to get tech a bit faster, some kind of wood profession so you can build farms or mines in year two, etc.), but your clans come in at such a pace that you can't usefully plan anything out in advance. I hate to turn to suggesting some of the traits I hate, but maybe limiting the professional traits to only the most immediately useful ones that don't have any prerequisites (scout, surveyor, wood collector, lumberjack, reaper, gatherer, hunter) for the first year or so would help. Or maybe some of the three starting clans should have some guaranteed professions (e.g. one reaper or gatherer and one wood collector), so you can start feeding yourself and start developing an economy immediately. Getting a miner or a rancher on turn four or five is pretty useless, as it will be most of a year before they can build their structures, and probably quite a bit longer than than before they're actually needed (i.e. when you're prepared to build blacksmiths or meat cutters).
  • Some other traits and combinations of traits are just mind bendingly awful. Leprous means you're becoming a scout and getting fed to the barbarians immediately, and you might manage to destroy my economy in the few turns I have to have you in my settlement while you train. Another bad combo I've had repeatedly is somebody who has some penalty to military use (or who will be unhappy if not settled, or can't encamp), but who will also only be happy in the honor discipline. Maybe if I get a tribe established enough to be thinking about the high level jobs in that tree, such a clan would be useful, but currently I pretty much want to get them killed off as quickly as I can so they stop eating my food.
  • Getting two ranks of a discipline when researching the first level tech of each one seems like it should always be nice, but the way so many traits interact with disciplines makes it feel very unsatisfying much of the time. I consistently waste two or three of those bonuses in every new game, as the new clan I was hoping could be my first agriculture workers are only able to do crafting, or something. So the bonus gets ignored, or given to somebody who'd already been given an earlier bonus. Perhaps the level bonus should be applied automatically to the next clan trained in the discipline (which can be saved up as long as necessary)?
  • Feuds are incredibly frustrating. Mostly you can do nothing to prevent them (especially in the early game when you can't train your clans as fast as you gain them and they pile up in the settlement). Punishing one side or the other just turns one clan into permanent trash and undoes a whole bunch of training making it even harder to get your most annoying clans separated. I know there's some late game profession that can remove the modifiers for being punished (but they're absurdly expensive both to train and use) and the fact that the penalty is otherwise permanent feels really bad. If the happiness penalty would time out after a year or two, it might feel more tolerable, and a feud would be less of a "which clan do you want to feed to the barbarians" question. I might feel the same about crime, but in almost every game I've got a clan that prevents all others from committing any, so the concept basically doesn't exist in practice (I've had exactly one crime occur in all my games, and it occurred on something like turn 4 while I was turning a leper into a scout, if I recall correctly).
#10
clayffo 6 Jul, 2019 @ 4:50pm 
Blkknight I can post a starter game maybe 20 turns in on the other site with some tips if you would like?
Last edited by clayffo; 8 Jul, 2019 @ 8:41am
#11
Jon Shafer  [developer] 10 Jul, 2019 @ 8:25am 
Really good points BlckKnght.

I've been meaning to add difficulty levels to the game for a while, as not everyone wants the game as brutally hard as me. It's probably about time to do so in v1.3, so I'll put that on my list along with general changes and some preliminary AI work. I've calibrated the game roughly to my own skill level, but that's obviously not a good fit for everyone. Expect some improvements in this regard in the next major update.

In v1.2 I made feuds a less mean, but a lot of that is under the hood. The odds of a feud or desire escalating to the point where it actually impacts a clan's happiness are actually fairly low now, but I imagine you've encountered the same thing as me, which is that the game feels like it's punishing you, even though it hasn't really, yet. I probably need to tweak the desires/feuds stuff a bit more to add a "warning" stage before clans actually go all the way to developing a desire/feud.

- Jon
#12
Duke 10 Jul, 2019 @ 5:16pm 
Been enjoying the game so far, after a few playthroughs.

One thing that really stands out to me is just how underwhelming forming a kingdom seems. The fame gain is nice, but not worth the loss of mobility, as the settlement is strangely the fastest unit and moving it around to expand seems much more efficient to me in most cases than sending out watchtower units that take time to train and remove a clan from the economy and/or military.

Perhaps all the old folks, sick people and children that are presumably left in the settlement shouldn't be 2-3 times as fast as the strong young warriors.

One downside I did notice to the mobile approach (though I'm not sure if it's intentional), is when I moved my settlement after sending a warrior to train in Rome, he immediately came back untrained. If that's intentional, then I suggest putting some kind of warning in there.

The other thing I'll mention is that sometimes the "highlighted" area showing how far a clan can move in one turn isn't all that clearly distinguished. Especially if moving through Vandals territory with their white background.
#13
clayffo 10 Jul, 2019 @ 8:17pm 
I think that the focus should be on completing the game rather than screwing with difficulty

There are a number of gameplay mechanics, if implemented with change the entire balance.

These include ai participants, Rome participants, kingdom mechanics ( currently there are none) and barbarian participants ( barbs just randomly move about without any real purpose atm)
#14
Jon Shafer  [developer] 16 Jul, 2019 @ 6:53am 
My plan from here is to add a few very simple difficulty levels which will make it easier to keep people fed, but focus most of my time on improving the AI.

- Jon
#15
< >
Showing 1-15 of 17 comments
Per page: 1530 50

Jon Shafer's At the Gates > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 10 Jun, 2019 @ 8:36am
Posts: 17

Discussions Rules and Guidelines