Is this game fun?
Seems like earlier versions of the game promised a fun game but now i look at the discord and the dev is openly saying he WANTS people to HAVE TO have excel open to play this game.

Does that sound fun to you? or was he joking?

>>2046370 (OP)
Songs of Sex is good. The game really understands that cities require large tracts of farmland to be sustainable. And I mean huge.

Yeah it's great
What upset you to cause you to try to be a shit stirrer?

>>2046391
Here's a short list of issues, describing them in depth would make me go from 2 posts to 3 and i dont feel like solving the captcha.

>diplomacy basically doesn't work. You can approach a smallish city (300-400 vs your 2k+) and suggest/demand they unite with you. The reply is that they demand 14m denari, which is many times your both economies combined and completely unfeasible in the game due to inflation mechanics just deleting money as you slowly accrue it. All factions generally hate you, even if they're a speck compared to you, even if allies, because they're all set up to worsen relations if you're "a threat" by size.

>I've had okay-equipped (2.3 arms/armour) 90 humans + 90 cretonians conscripts with a bit of training lose to a group of 80 or so unarmoured, unarmed dondorians that had training. Kung fu is a lost art apparently, and is only achievable by NPC armies. There's really no reason for unprotected enemies without weapons to be able to win from a larger force with weapons and arms purely by "better training". It's the epitome of the mechanics of combat being opaque and unintuitive, even more so than the already weird "a unit equipping anything improves multiplicatively with more gear". Which then apparently gets countered by training completely.

>training troops takes forever. This is true in your city for "elite troops" but my god are the conscripts for armies sluggish. It will take literally ages to train even a small army. You will spend years feeding your economy to an army that is functionally useless.

>mercenaries exist but are random and may just not show up for a (long) while or be such a small force they're not useful. They also require a LOT of currency to hire and keep paying. Mostly the latter part, which means you're incentivized to disband them but then the next mercenary groups you get might be small and ineffective.

1/2

>>2046399
>>2046391
>armies are a constant HIGH drain on your economy. They eat through weapons, armour, rations and clothing rapidly. You need an army (because there's no other options), which means you need to gear your economy for specific items which means the sandbox aspect of building up your economy gets removed. My city started with gems (and jewellery) for trade; that has become a secondary as the main economy is now metal and smithies, because i have to.

>in combat, troop movement/orders are buggy. You can set two groups of your troops to flank one enemy group; one will engage, kind of envelop the enemy partially, while the other group has 5-10 units attack and the rest just stands around awkwardly staying in formation, refusing to fight. This is a common occurence and makes already unfair/unfun combat even worse. This is also what happened with the "kung fu dondorians" above, which probably helped slant things in the AI's favour.

>raids are unbelievable unbalanced and anti-player. Not only does the "ransom" to make them go away scale far too high, if you do actually get in combat, these troops (which magically appeared at your city) will easily be larger than the forces by any of your rivalling factions. They will happily throw insane numbers of fully equipped and trained soldiers at you which you CAN NOT EVER defeat. As a recent example, my ~3.5k population city had an attack of 750 amevians, of which all but one group of 100 was fully equipped with 8.0 metal armour (those archers had 5.0 of leather armour instead). All of them had 8.0 of a weapon. This would mean a decay 1k+ of pieces of equipment every year, but obviously that mechanic only applies to the player, should you wish to field an army that size. Which you would have to. More actually, because if the enemy field that many you'll need a significantly larger number to win.

2/2

>>2046370 (OP)
Fun is subjective but personally I think the game is crap.

>>2046391
I like this in theory, but being confined to a grid with no hopes of expansion does hamper this.
>>2046388
The dev has been obsessed with "difficulty" and "challenge", relentlessly patching out any form of fun and other deviation from the 1 optimal strategy allowed. Canals - "exploit", patched out replaced with an infinitely worse version. Stockpiling resources? Exploit, and who cares people did that since the stone age! Patched out and everything rapidly rots away, including basic rocks. I can store food in a stone age sim like ancient cities for longer than in this game, because it seems the the idea of food preservation makes "the game too easy". Trade? Super exploit, heavens forbid players actually sell things they produce and buy other things instead. Crippled until late game, with many arbitrary limitations and with intentionally significantly worse UI. Unique research system? Removed and replaced with some ridiculous current system that permanently locks up up to half of your population in "research" in early to mid-game, just to be able to use the buildings you need for your city to function.
The game feels like an abstact puzzle, since so much of it of it makes sense from a "playability" or "plausibility" perspective. You will need to just follow the rules and solve the puzzle. And the game actively and by design prevent from from ever feeling you are doing well and "winning", since that's bad, according to dev. The game will just punish you with more difficulties.

A great example of this: inflation. Don't get me wrong, an actual inflation mechanic would be cool, a detriment to the player but something you can manage. "Inflation" as exists in the game has nothing to do with how it actually works IRL, it's just there to hamper the player in an unrealistic way to force you down a pipeline because there is only 1 "correct" way to play. The more money you have saved up, the more "inflation" you have, which is just a flat decay on your treasury.

>>2046370 (OP)
>the dev is openly saying he WANTS people to HAVE TO have excel open to play this game.
Absolutely based

>>2046423
>Absolutely based
what games have you played in the last 5 weeks?

>>2046427
Mostly Terra Invicta, with a bit of CK2, EU4 and Imperium: greek wars on the side

>>2046438
>terra invicta
chink spotted

>>2046438
>early access slop
>ck2 and eu4 (easy games)

>>2046370 (OP)
It's good but the new maintenance changes suck, you have to spend like 1/3rd of your GDP just maintaining shit that you've built.

>>2046412
Having played this game, all I'm getting from this post is "I'm bad at the game."

>>2046370 (OP)
There was already an existing thread >>1934269

>>2046370 (OP)
Unironically most of the complaints you hear about this game are from people who are shit at it or refuse to learn. Also I'm almost positive you're a single person posing as multiple detractors specifically for this game. Why anon? Why do you have such a hate boner for this game? The music is nice, it does something different from others in the genre. Its made by one guy as a passion project. You don't have to like it but you are legitimately constantly seething about this one game. Almost to the point of being a /vst/ resident schizo. You just make this board a less pleasant place to be

>>2046401
seems like a easy fix would be introducing a diplomatic option which allows you to larp as merchant nation protected by others.
>diplomacy basically doesn't work.
oh....

>>2055834
>You don't have to like it but you are legitimately constantly seething about this one game.
nta but I kinda feel him
it could be so much better with just a few simple balancing tweaks but they are yet to come
I'm not sorry in the slightest for pirating it desu

>>2046388
>Farming instead of importing shit
Shitter

>>2056573
>he cucks out to rival powers
ngmi

>>2056573
>not covering your map in slave plantations

>>2046370 (OP)
Yes. Excel spreadsheets make the game better, git gud

>>2046370 (OP)
>Seems like earlier versions of the game promised a fun game but now i look at the discord and the dev is openly saying he WANTS people to HAVE TO have excel open to play this game.
that's how I feel
he's absolutely obsessed with balance and making things difficult despite hardly playing his own game
he only ever loads save files people send him and "plays" from there
he believes literally everyone will do the 100% optimal thing even if it's unaesthetic or lame, therefore he has to fix it
basically he's a turbo autist and yes the game was better years ago around v59
it's still a really good game, just wish less dev time went into redoing the worthless tech tree for the nth time

>>2046370 (OP)
Sounds like you got filtered (and that's a good thing).

>>2046370 (OP)
its doomed to obscurity.
95% of people drop it after a couple of hours because of the way it designed to beat you down and make you quit.

>>2061563
there are 20 different systems to hinder any progress you are making, from spoilage to inflation, epidemics or ever increasing demands and resulting riots. The fact that the game suffers a massive change every half a year doesnt help either.

>>2060913
can't really confirm how easy it is now because i didn't play the last several versions but in the video for the latest release he said he addressed that specific point and made the game much easier on the default settings

>>2061567
he also said that he doesnt interact with anyone outside of his discord

>>2046391
Ever played Darkest Dungeon? It's like that- lots of promise early on that was driven into the ground out of a vague sense of "balance" and "git gud" that sharply restricted what was viable and made the game frustrating instead of fun. This is a city builder, I want to be able to have enough leeway to design my city aesthetically or try unorthodox specializations instead of following a guide.

>>2061569
which is why people here should raise their concerns over there, thats literally what the dev asked for in his latest update video

>>2061687
no thank you, sharing criticisms among a bunch of fanboys always leads to arguments

>>2061567
He also said he would reduce the needed amount of lab workers because that was a big complaint so he made it consume insane amount of resources instead. So now instead of 40 lab workers you need 10 lab workers and 30 clay miners. Funking genius, why aren't you happy you dumb drones. I love having half my population being locked into workign full time remembering how to build basic service buildings.

>>2061570
>he doesn't build ghettos to prop up his urbane elite quarter
Do you even impressions bro? Slavery is a thing, just build slave quarters out in the sticks so you don't have to look at the unwashed while you jack off to your nice city center and nobles' quarter.

>>2061567
>>2061687
I've lost faith in Jake after interacting with him several times through youtube comments and his discord
he's a lost cause with terminal balance brainrot

>>2061570
>>2062540
Yeah, he got obsessed with turning the game into an optimisation problem with steep maintenance on everything and spoilage so you can't stockpile goods either (nor gold even if you sell the surplus).
I don't want to have to break out excel sheet to figure out if upgrading my shitters to marble will attract more migrants that it will take in additional stonemason jobs to cover upkeep. And those stonamasons have to eat requiring farmers, live somewhere that costs more maintenance, use clothes or want furniture in their houses which are whole industry chains in themselves and use up more other services. The margins are just too thin for the game to be fun. It sort of depends on your individual git gut level and there's a couple of traps before but above 1k pop the game just rapidly falls off.
Also why do stone fucking buildings take that much material to maintain anyway. They'll take as much in maintenance over a couple of years as they did to build to begin with..

>>2046370 (OP)
Its a fun game, absolute kino if you roleplay and actually make a city you love, it's nice to see it organically develop.

>>2046370 (OP)
Brehs, I can only buy one.
This or Factorio?

>>2046399
>>2046401
you dare doubt Swedish strategic game design, you fucking heretic?

>>2061567
alright, played it for a while and i have no idea what jake is smoking but this version is pure torture compared to whichever version i last played.
>have to do clunky manual trading so you can afford automatic trade
>still need millions of labs and libraries, and material to feed them unless you just don't want to unlock anything ever
>you don't start with a region anymore so you can't do anything administrative until you annex someone
>trade partners will eventually just say fuck you and end the agreement, basically bricking your playthrough
>everything involving military seems like it's designed to make you want to alt+f4. combat is nonfunctional with how bugged it is. archers act like they're out of ammo, melee will just fidget around instead of engaging
>soil quality is annoying and nonsensical. deserts have the best soil, you just need to irrigate. meanwhile if you start in a high moisture area, your soil is shit and there's no way to fix that
got many more complaints but at this point the city building aspect has been choked to death by the optimization aspect, and the military/strategy aspect is in such a dire state it was better when everything was just placeholder mechanics

>>2061567
its so retarded to try to break the charm and fun of the game just to abuse the 1% hardcore players.
majority wants a fun game watching a city grow.
trying to penalize the majority just so u cant hit 30k in the tryhard group.

adding annoying tryhard grind just to squease a few more hours out of it by killing the fun and making it tedious will just shoot himself in the foot.

cities skylines were never hard and it has 10k recuring players restarting

>>2063611
Cities Skyline is also objectively the worst city builder of all time.

>>2063612
you are objectively the worst poster of all time

>>2063624
At least I'm not objectively the most casual-ass scrub retard of all time who just wants to play with pretty blocks instead of a city builder. Learn how to compile cheat engine if it's too hard for you.

>>2063628

>>2063636
mad becuz bad

>>2061570
The dev is one guy and has said many, many times now that he more focused on getting features out before balance. The game is far easier now than it was years ago. Plus he's making sure the game has customizeable difficulty so (You) control how hard you want things to be.

>>2061570
But have you tried getting gud?

>>2046370 (OP)
By midgame the mechanics railroad the player into having most of tbe population producing stuff for the army, which degrades super super fast
Think 2k people packing rations and drinks in a 10k city

>>2063587
>>everything involving military seems like it's designed to make you want to alt+f4. combat is nonfunctional with how bugged it is. archers act like they're out of ammo, melee will just fidget around instead of engaging
Just autoresolve every fight until v1.0