CoTN: Happiness Descending

[Alpha]

Hello Again!

I have started using Sandboxes to experiment with my cities and I've made quite a nice little one just here in the download box at the bottom.

My problem is, is that they are starting to hate me, the luxury and common shops aren't producing very much and also there are generally more problems around the city.

Please take a look at the saved game and see what I'm doing wrong please.

Thank you =)

EDIT: Also how do you get Shipwright's to produce ships, in this Scenario they don't seem to make any ships, is this because I am missing a key resource?

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy again, Alpha!

Are we once agian, placing buildings in the editor? My reply assumes you are not, but I think you are.

1) Your buildings are in the default position. Click hold drag to the road or space while placing or use the R key to turn them.

2) MAX FARMS indicator sez 24, but you only have 8 farmers.

COTN = FOOD, bricks & prestige.

You need to be at max farmers at all times. You can even place extra farmers & they will populate automatically as your palace & nobles evolve.

3) Your people need food to buy wares. It doesn't matter how many shops you have if they have no food. Food is money in COTN. This again is why you need to be at max farmers at all times.

4) Bakeries are all in the same place. You need to salt & pepper bakeries around your city, not all in the same place. Distance is an issue with this game. More walking means less work getting done.

You really need to play the three tutorials (not the quick tutorial) in order one time through, & then repeat the three tutorials a 2nd time.

The big ? on the interface or hitting the F1 hotkey takes you to the ingame help menu. The very first item there is INDEX. It has every keyword in the game. Look up Shipwright.

The World Map has a different ? & much more game info there.

Shipwrights need import-only cedar from the world map to build barges, yachts & warships. Each costs 8 cedar.

Good Luck! :)

[Alpha]

Howdy again, Alpha!

Are we once agian, placing buildings in the editor? My reply assumes you are not, but I think you are.

1) Your buildings are in the default position. Click hold drag to the road or space while placing or use the R key to turn them.

2) MAX FARMS indicator sez 24, but you only have 8 farmers.

COTN = FOOD, bricks & prestige.

You need to be at max farmers at all times. You can even place extra farmers & they will populate automatically as your palace & nobles evolve.

3) Your people need food to buy wares. It doesn't matter how many shops you have if they have no food. Food is money in COTN. This again is why you need to be at max farmers at all times.

4) Bakeries are all in the same place. You need to salt & pepper bakeries around your city, not all in the same place. Distance is an issue with this game. More walking means less work getting done.

You really need to play the three tutorials (not the quick tutorial) in order one time through, & then repeat the three tutorials a 2nd time.

The big ? on the interface or hitting the F1 hotkey takes you to the ingame help menu. The very first item there is INDEX. It has every keyword in the game. Look up Shipwright.

The World Map has a different ? & much more game info there.

Shipwrights need import-only cedar from the world map to build barges, yachts & warships. Each costs 8 cedar.

Good Luck! :)


Ok cool thank you :)

I'll remember to spread my bakeries around and add max farmers =)

[Alpha]

hey wait I just realised something.

Some of my bakeries have 0/0 food while others have like 6/6 food or 3/5 food. Does this mean anything?

[Tinkerbell]

The XX/YY in a bakery is prepared food/raw farmed food. It takes awhile for a baker to make raw into prepared.

That your bakeries have different amounts is normal. People go there & take some. Also World Map sites will steal food for opening sites & upkeeping them.

[Janmar]

Yes it means there isn't enough food. If you don't have max farmers then the grain can't be distributed to the bakeries in order for them to make food. Your craftsmen, soldiers, laborers, priests, overseers, commanders all use the bakeries. If you don't have enough farmers producing food the bakeries won't get the grain and it is downhill from there. Also if you don't have enough farmers according to the number of nobles you have, the nobles will get angry. The shops can't work if people do not have food to go to the shops to buy the things they need.

No food - no money - everything starts to fail.

EDIT: Also I always try to build one granary by the time the second planting starts.

[Yahya]

It also depends how many bakeries you have relative to the number of farmers you have. With a lot of play time, you will get a feel for that. It takes quite a while to get it, and we really can't tell you other than basic thumbrules.

I started playing through Nekhen last night, and I'm building slowly. I have either 3 or 4 bakeries and 2 granaries, and that is more than enough for the harvest. I have I think 54 farmers there, and two scribes counting fields for max taxes. There are 6 nobles, with 2 set to grow wheat only.

My harvests are about 3300 food. That is small potatoes in CotN, but it is enough for my city as it is. (I have no labor camps or military yet.)

With all of that said, I don't need to look at the save. If you have only 8 farmhouses, it is just not enough. That means 24 farm fields, and depending how you allocated your nobles, the max you could grow is something like 1000 food. As long as all you have is 1 noble and some minimal support facilities, that will get it done for a while. But if you have a big city going, that is something like trying to run a million-dollar city on $10,000. Just won't happen. There's no deficit spending in CotN. :p

Basically what happens in that case is that no one gets any food at all, so it's a double whammy. They can't eat, and they can't buy anything. So they get mad at Pharaoh, and that means...they go to the palace to complain, rather than going to grow more food!

Downward spiral to failure ensues, unless you correct that farmhouse number.

When I build a city, the first thing I build is the Palace, and at least two nobles, depending on my goals for that scenario.

I then place 4 to 8 servants, because I want them to populate first. (I'll explain that later.)

I then go down to my farming area and place 10 farms for the palace plus 8 farms for every noble I built, and 8 more for every noble I add later.

After that, I place 4 common shops by the palace and 4 more by the farms. I then add 6 lux shops by the palace.

Finally, down by the farms I add 1 bakery, 8 brickmakers, and 4 bricklayers and then I let things go.

After the first harvest, I expand, adding more brickmakers. In the meantime, I add a priest and a school, and set the priest to only educate students. The school is next door or across the street from that priest.

Soon after, I add healthcare (1 priest) and shrines (1 more priest).

Then I am much less rigid, and I kind of go with it, depending on what I need. But a scribe comes soon to count the harvest. That can sometimes double your food output, and that is huge.

That's kind of how I play. If you're placing things in the editor, or just randomly throwing things down in a scenario, that's the trouble you're having. You need some sort of structure that is similar to what I do (and just about everyone else does), or the cities will collapse under their own weight in a few seasons.

[Alpha]

Hello Again

I have started to use these things but it's still not working. No matter if I have max farms and bakeries the common shops still produce very very slowly.

Please look at this saved game

EDIT: I've realised how its the common shops and not the luxury shops because I allow them to get materials for free from my stores. Is this problem because Common Shops don't have enough resources?

[Yahya]

Hi Alpha,

Your common shops have plenty of resources, and they are producing at a normal rate of speed. The reason they have no wares is because it is the second year of the city, and everyone is scrambling to buy the wares, so they can't be kept in stock.

I'm going to build this city for a while and then post my save so you can look at it.

One thing I see right away is that there were 0 villagers at the start of my load, but quickly 20 showed up. So I imagine you did this in the editor.

You also receive 150 prestige from 2 Great Pyramids, but there is only 1 on the map.

[Tinkerbell]

Alpha, note the changes I made to your most recent save. Note especially, where I moved/turned/deleted/added buildings, how I built back-to-back in x2 rows.

Too many lux shops & not enough common.

I also turned your edict off. ;)

What I have basically given you is my standard start build & how my cities look after two years. I would design a bit differently, but I changed your city a bit to look more like how I build.

EDIT: It would help if when you upload game saves, that you upload the problem save itself, not the scenario start. We have no way of guessing your problem if you give us a save years before the problem happens, especially when you build your cities in the editor, not via normal gameplay. You force us to guess.

[Yahya]

Alpha,

Here is my game save after about 9 years of developing your city. I deleted only two of the priests that were there in the beginning because they weren't needed at that point and I wanted to make sure I got 2 scribes going first.

So I added 2 scribes and 2 more nobles, and lots of farms. After a couple of years, the food started to roll in. Then I checked the common shops. Still plenty of wares, but couldn't keep them in stock. At this point, there was plenty of currency in the economy, so the problem had to be not enough shops.

I added two more sets of common shops then. (I then added no more shops the rest of the game.)

Then I added the healthcare priest back in, and started creating a worship area, and added the mortuary priest.

Then I just kept adding nobles until I got to 8 and kept adding farmhouses so that when Max Farms goes up, the houses are already zoned for building. I also evolved the palace as quickly as a could. That was tricky due to the size of the city when started and the lack of farms, but it only took me a couple of years.

Eventually, I needed temples so I added 2 overseers (1 quarrying basalt and 1 overseeing statue construction), 8 laborers, and 4 stone carvers (which is too many, really). Temples got dedicated with carved statues.

I then opened 1st city and built the obelisk base. Changed the basalt overseer to granite and the obelisk started getting quarried. I assume it is ready, but forgot to check. I also didn't change the statue overseer to obelisks, so that will never get built until that's done.

You basically had only two problems here: not enough common shops and way, WAY too few farms (and nobles) for the size of the city. That was just killing everything, cuz the common shops were getting mad due to lack of food.

Oh, and your starting prestige is far too high. No difficulty at all in the game. Of course, if that's what you want, it's fine. :p

Well, I shouldn't say no difficulty. You have built considerable economic difficulty into the scenario, but with a sufficiently-sized city it should be no problem.

[Tinkerbell]

Yahya, it looks like Alpha started with tomnobles' sandbox UCS, loaded it into the editor & added mines/quarries (much too close to each other), then buildings & of course the Great Pyramids for prestige. Someone is not playing the game at all. ;)

I just looked at tomnobles's UCS. He only starts the player with 20 villagers. LOL Dat's mean! :D

[Yahya]

Okay, yeah that is what happens. At first there are 0 villagers, but quickly 20 show up and build hovels.

I agree. If that's how Alpha wants to play though, I will help. :)

[Tinkerbell]

Okay, yeah that is what happens. At first there are 0 villagers, but quickly 20 show up and build hovels.

Ah, I didn't think of that one. tomnobles might have used the editor free villager trick.

Not mean after all. Cheating! <ducking lol>

:D

EDIT: Yep, just loaded it into the editor. Free villagers! LOL

[Yahya]

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention, Alpha.

You've placed all those quarries to the east of the city, and that's handy. However, if you decide to quarry either limestone or fine limestone, you're going to have a serious mess on your hands.

There's not a lot of space between the limestone quarries and the basalt and granite quarries, so there will be limestone everywhere. Give it a try. Save first though.

Limestone quarrying is different than the rest and if you don't understand how to control it, you will quickly have a limestone parking lot on your map. :)

[Alpha]

Ok thanks all of you for your help :)

One other thing. how do I rotate buildings? :D

[Keith]

Press "R" on your keyboard or befor you place the building mouse click on the map once where you want to put the building and then hold the button down while you drag the mouse in the direction you want the front of the building to face. Then release.