Just a couple questions about the resource system.
As mentioned in the features everything is growing and dying in the game, does that mean forests will grow and expand over time? What happens if you harvest all the wood or if there is a fire natural disaster (if in game) burns it all down? Are the plants static and just grow back in the same place or is the opportunity for random expansion of them possible?
What about animals and fish, if you kill it all in one area is it just gone forever and you are forced to move your tribe to another map or will it eventually start re-spawning in that area given enough time?
And what about resources that aren’t life based, like stone (if needed for something like tools) is that truly finite and you will eventually use it all up?
Plants spread seeds and if that seed find a place and conditions are good, a new plant will grow. The same with trees. If you give them time forest will cover the terrain again. Seeds also come from outside the map with the wind. This way even if you cut every tree, eventually new trees will grow again.
Animals also enter and leave the map. If you hunt them all, more will come while they have free space to roam.
Other resources can be limited or virtually unlimited.
For example, gold, copper, silver, and lead are often- found in their elemental form. Using stone tools and an open fire, you can easily make simple beads.
I used an open fire and copy nuggets to make copper beads a few years back. It was not very hard and may have occurred on occasion.
Heat fire to maximum heat: Pine wood, lots of wind from a fan made from bark or (in my case) goose feathers.
Heat the copper nugget for about an hour and then place in a small hole in the ground, covered with dirt, to slowly cool.
Pound with rock hammer (stick with stone head bound by sinew). As you strike the copper, it will harden.
Repeat step 2 and then 3 until you shape is achieved.
Are the farming resources going to be map/area specific and for the time frame for what was harvested/domesticated at the time? Possible specific uses for each type of crop depending on how it was used during that time frame?
-9,500BC - Emmer Wheat (Middle East) - Emmer’s main use is as a human food, though it is also used for animal feed. Einkorn Wheat (Fertile Crescent) - Einkorn wheat is low-yielding but can survive on poor, dry, marginal soils where other varieties of wheat will not. It is primarily eaten boiled in whole grains or in porridge. Its flour lacks the rising characteristics desirable for bread. Barely (Fertile Crescent) - Barley beer was probably one of the first alcoholic drinks developed by Neolithic humans. Peas (Mediterranean Basin) - In early times, peas were grown mostly for their dry seeds. Lentils (Near East) - Lentils have been part of the human diet since aceramic Neolithic times Bitter Vetch (Mediterranean Basin) - The crop is easy to cultivate and harvest and can be grown on very shallow, alkaline soils. According to Zohary and Hopf, only humans of the poorest economic classes consume this crop, or in times of famine. The grain is an excellent sheep and cattle feed concentrate. Chick Peas (Mediterranean - Middle East) - Multi-use high protein food for human and animal consumption. Flax (Fertile Crescent) - Flax is grown for its oil, used as a nutritional supplement, and as an ingredient in many wood-finishing products. Flax is also grown as an ornamental plant in gardens. Flax fibers are used to make linen.
I was thinking about this last night about which resources you could have in the game and the one item that i thought would be really important at the time but it normally overlooked is Salt. Very important for all sorts of reasons such as food preservation and tanning but there is evidence of it being used as a early trade good.
"Solnitsata (Bulgarian: Солницата, “The Saltworks”) was an ancient town located in present-day Bulgaria, near the modern city of Provadia. Believed by Bulgarian archaeologists to be the oldest town in Europe, Solnitsata was the site of a salt production facility approximately six millennia ago;[1] it flourished ca 4700-4200 BC.[2] The settlement was walled to protect the salt, a crucial commodity in antiquity.[3] Although its population has been estimated at only 350,[3] archaeologist Vassil Nikolov argues that it meets established criteria as a prehistoric city.[4]
Salt production drove Solnitsata’s economy, and the town is believed to have supplied salt throughout the Balkans. A large collection of gold objects nearby has led archaeologists to speculate that this trade resulted in considerable wealth for the town’s residents"-Solnitsata - Wikipedia
I’ve seen some screenshots of bushels of crop being dumped on the ground in the game in a rather uncoordinated fashion. A pile of salt is not going to last long against the rain. I’m assuming that it will be collected in the villagers huts and as things like pottery are discovered then they will be able to collect and store and carry more resources around with lower levels of spoilage.
I’ve been silently following this game since it’s Kickstarter phase and I’ve decided to give my thoughts on certain aspects of the game. Originally I was gonna put just one main post but I realized it would be too big of post, so I’ll be making a series of posts.
So for this discussion, I was thinking about the idea of having a changing/expanding pool of resources depending on what type of lifestyle the tribe currently is.
One example would be the relevant resources for a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers versus that of a settled tribe. For the hunter-gatherers, it would make sense that they would mainly use resource that are easily movable, such as food, large sticks, animal products, flint stones, and such. However, once the group becomes more settled, only then would it use resources like entire logs, stone boulders, and even ores, while still using the other previously mentioned resources.
I think one of the main benefits is that as your resource pool expands, its doing so at the same rate as your tribe, giving a nice feel in that regard. It also helps that interface would be more simplistic at the start of the game, which could help introduce new players to the game in a much easier fashion.
Interesting idea and one that makes sense. However, I don’t know if the devs will make a distinction between similar resources (such as sticks and logs). It is far more likely that they will lump similar resources together (like: sticks and logs into wood). However, I hope that they make a distinction between different kinds of stones (as this is the neolithic). This was done in Children of the Nile with Basalt, Granite, Limestone, etc. so I see no reason why the devs couldn’t do the same here.
We have separated sticks and logs at this moment. Different stone types are planned too.
There will be not artificial pool or resource cap, but limits will be there naturally, because when you migrate your carry capacity is limited.
The reason I mentioned the sticks and logs being separate resources was so the there are different actions for collecting them. The main reason is for a more “one with nature” approach in the beginning, as you wouldn’t need to cut a whole tree down if you needed to make a spear, rather just find a suitable stick.
I believe I misworded what I meant by a resource pool.
What I meant was when you have to keep track off the resource you currently have, if you’re currently a group of nomads, there would be certain resource that make no sense of keeping track of if you don’t have a use for them at the moment.
Basically, just keep certain resources tracking icon (I still don’t know the right words for it sorry) hidden till… say the tribe has the means to obtain the resource.
I know mate. I didn’t know the devs put in such a distinction. All I was saying was that I didn’t think they would make a distinction because most games don’t differentiate… wood is wood in most games regardless of the realism.
I hope, I have understood it correctly. Example: Wood-tree-spear, it always depends, on what the NPC wants to produce with it. Command: “build spear” will not automatically load a tree trunk into the inventory. On the other hand the order: “build house” will need more wood, but not automatically leave a few spears as waste … firewood but already.
I was talking about games like banished where the “tools” are made with logs just like homes are made with logs. Or, in games like Minecraft and Colony Survival, you have to craft planks out of logs which can then be used to make weapons. In both cases, there is only one primary resource (logs) which, yes, you can turn into smaller pieces, but are all derived from the same basic resource.
I think ideally the developers want to keep things down to their constituent basics - meaning that if you can’t find it lying around on the ground or harvest it from nature in a raw form then it’s not a natural resource.
Evolving resources is the application of new knowledge to existing resources. For example: it’s evident that villagers can collect fish and hang them out to dry in the screenshots. But as a resource it has limitations on durability - it will expire. Salting said fish will create a new resource that has longer durability.
I the case of wood, once smelting comes around higher quality wood working will become a thing and planks are a thing.
One area of curiosity for me is resources like amber - which were functionally useless but precious trading items.
Flax existed a bit beyond the fertile crescent, for example, 32ka we have flax in Georgia.
Also, by the Neolithic, we should see flax all over the place. Many of these crops quickly left and went to other places.
