Hi all,
Day by day, I feel more excited thinking on the release of this game. After the last tweet, I wonder how the food can be storage and processed. There will be some kind of salted meat, smoked fish, granaries? What do you think? What do you expect?
By the way, I have a question. Developers say that all resources are perishable, but I hope that resources like iron ore, stone or wood won’t be.
Impatient to ear you opinions 
I guess the devs will have better knowledge of ancient preservation methods. I remember seeing that the nords preserve fish by air drying by the sea, not sure if salts comes in to that. I guess a realistic time frame would help aswell.
Well, I have to say that I am not an expert. I just mentioned salt or smoke because they were the first methods that come to my mind.
Just wanted to see my villagers processing the food (much better in an accuracy historical way. I trust developers for this), preparing themselves for the long winter… or a migration.
hmm salt and smokers were used a little later ? i think one of the oldest ones is drying… (wind and sun outside)
Very old screenshots show how the devs were trying out how citizens used drying racks for fish
Another test with storage pits. They were just placeholders but this is was the way to store grain for long periods.
As resource decay is a thing in AC, there will be multiple ways to counter it.
And wood does decay if left in the rain 
It is completely possible that Neolithic Europeans smoked aliments (they had all the tech), and they also collected salt, so they could trade with it, or use to preserve food.
Thanks for the info and the screenshots. And you are right, wood can decay if left in the rain. If AC has this level of detail, it will be an incredible game.
mmhh…depends on the wood. Let us think of ship hulls that have withstood a lot of moisture for centuries.
Also think that the way in which stocks are conserved is related to what natural resources were found. Or what temperatures prevailed in the respective areas. Presumably, you will also have thought about storage, especially with regard to bugs or mice. Overly open storage attracts bears and wolves through the scent and creates a danger to the settlement etc.
Wood are still an important resource for house buildings these days. We wouldn’t use it if you can’t rely on it.
An interesting historical village (rebuild) can be found in South Germany.
Brings in an interesting option for “Sanitation”. Not 100% on how knowledge is going to be gained, but always enjoyed the Black&White learning mechanism where if your creature was exposed to something it could learn, it would improve it’s knowledge of it.
For this, having stores be “dirty” could trigger a “sanitation” tech, which could slowly add improvements to how things are stored based on it’s knowledge level. i.e For the storage pits can start as a basic open pit, then food rots or flies/animals get at the food, someone sees this and think “Ah, a cover might help.” Improves storage/sanitation tech and then unlocks an minor improvement for that storage.
I think they said most technologies would come from trade with other settlements. While there is a chance that your settlement may discover something, the chance is very low. This is to simulate real life, where one settlement doesn’t discover everything in the tech tree, but over time techs are discovered randomly in different areas and then through trade are spread.
Ok, yeah, sure I get that ideas and technology spread through contact. However, why do other settlements have to be the one’s that we learn from, why cannot other settlements come to ours to learn and for us to be known as a “center of learning”. Lots of innovations were developed in an isolated region before spreading, Rome, Alexandria, Babylon, (Think there was a druidic one as well in Albion).
So while I understand that would wouldn’t want to be the single source of all knowledge, I feel like we should have the option for tech research to also be a focus for a civilization.
The reason we won’t (at first) is because that wouldn’t be realistic. Nomadic tribes didn’t have the resources to sit down, build libraries and schools, and devote many people to non-essential tasks.
Now, once the game has a few expansions and we actually get to the time periods of Rome, Alexandria, and Babylon, maybe that will be an option. But the base game is set in the neolithic, which is well before those cities became the centers of learning they would later be known to be.
I think I read something about it in another topic but I can’t find it anymore, the devs took a statistic and realistic approach : how many inventions were discover in your village ? 0 most likely, 1 if you are lucky. Techs are more likely to be spread to you than discover by you. Even the “centre of learning” are place where knowledge is gather, stock and spread, actual discoveries is not the norm in this centres.
Fair point about the timeline on those. I can cede the “center of learning” concept to later expansions then. 
I’m just hoping that innovation isn’t so predominantly external. Watching a nomadic neolithic tribe finally uncover concepts like fire, tools & the wheel and the impact those have on the productivity and day-to-day life would just feel so diminished without the struggle of learning it, if they’re handled as an external events. i.e. “A travelling merchant has told you about a new concept…called…the wheel”.
Just my opinion, as until the beta is released (“hint, hint”) it’s only assumptions from threads & dev notes I’m basing this on. 
Another point would be once you hit a new level of tech then all the other settlements instanly unlock all the tech for you to trade for. Thats a bit unrealistic aswell. So depending on how tech is done it would be nice to see other settlements advance just as fast as you do once a new level of tech is achieved and not just instanly 100% done. Im looking at you other games
