I wanted to throw this out there and see how the community feels about the idea of seasons. Kind of tying in with my other post about dynamic weather, seasons also play a huge part in everyday life. Depending on the area you can’t grow crops all year long. Introduces the need for different types of clothing based on region and season. Resources become critical to survival because you know “Winter Is Coming” sorry couldn’t resist that one for all the GoT fans out there .
Where I live we are fortunate, I think, to experience all 4 distinct seasons. Now that’s not to say that other areas are less fortunate cause they may only experience 1 or 2 seasons let’s say, just that it pleases me per se. I love seeing the changes between the seasons but also the implications/complications it could bring to the game as a whole. For instance if there was a wetter spring then perhaps your crop season would be shortened due to having to plant later or at the same time summer is really hot and your crops are suffering or the winter was a long cold one and again later planting season.
Now this won’t affect just crops obviously I was just using that as an example of what it could mean. Obviously resources would be impacted heavily by the seasons. Perhaps your civilisations mood would be affected as well leading to less productivity cause it’s too hot or too cold during the particular season. Any other thoughts about seasons jump on in!!!
I do certainly hope for seasons and weather to have an impact on gameplay. A little variety in climate however with map creation would be very welcome as well.
Resources becoming critical as winter is coming is nice, and in a throwback to e.g. Banished or as of more recent, Life is Feudal: Forest Village, the upcoming cold is a chase at first. However, despite seasons and weather being decent in those games, especially in the latter game, the lack of a climate adjustment to it does make replays very repetitive in that sense. And with that, seasons and weather then soon become quite old.
A random climate seed would be nice to go along with weather / seasons. Making it so that different playthroughs are less of the same.
I would Think this is almost a must for this game.
Surviving a Winter is the true test for any would-be permanent settlement.
However it should not be something that would be easy to do.
Surviving a Winter should (in my opinion) be an end-game feature. There should be an option to simply migrate to milder climates in the early game. And while migrating from location to location your tribe can amass knowledge about simple food preservation (drying meats and fruits) how to domesticate animals (kinda hard to get meat when all animals migrate).
I agree there needs to be some random elements to the seasons. I mean you can’t expect every winter to be cold and have lots of snow. The same as you can’t expect every summer to be nice and sunny. So your first season it was a harsh winter. The next winter you prepare for the coming winter stockpiling more resources only to find that this winter wasn’t so bad as the first. It was cold but not as much snow things like that to keep it fresh and add a newness to it.
I like this idea very much. It is true that many peoples have done these very things. Moving to warmer climates during the winter months and then heading back once the season changed. Yes please I’ll have some of this!!!
I agree that this might be good, but such a system might be easily abused, with players moving city to warmer climates every winter (which as far as I know isn’t accurate to the times- if I’m wrong please correct me) Perhaps a system where moving climates sets your knowledge back a bit so you have to re-adapt to your new surroundings. It gives you space to move if you face a few harsh winters on the trot, but also means that it’s not viable to do on a regular basis.
I don’t really know why ppls chose to settle down IRL. But the ultimate solution would be to integrate that reason into the game.
Things I can think of would be:
Migrating forces your tribe to move a long distance. Perhaps you are forced to leave some items behind?
As your tribes knowledge gets more advanced you need to build more and more advanced buildings that take longer to build. Migrating forces you to leave these buildings behind and build them anew at the new area. This might simply not be viable if the building times are long enough. Returning to an old spot (one that you migrated from earlier) could see your buildings damaged or destroyed due to wildlife or harsh weather.
Just a few reasons I think of right now. But yes, the player should certainly be given an incentive (or punishment for not) settling down.
At this moment seasons already have an impact, they come with different temperatures and precipitation conditions.
Temperatures and precipitations impact in the farming system, in every vegetal in the game in fact.
Each year the game shifts a bit the standard climate chart for that map, providing years with long and harsh winters or years with very soft ones. This is already in the game too. Sometimes I have to wait a few years to take screenshots with snow with the chart we are running now. Migrations are still not in the game, but it is planned that when migrating you will have to chose what direction to migrate. North South migrations will shift the climate chart. Migrations not come for free, but this topic is about seasons.
How do you feel about natural disasters, with a chance of happening based on the season perhaps? Like a blizzard in winter or a devastating hail in summer.
The weather system already provides ocasional extreme values, like strong winds, heavy storms or snow blizzards.
We still have to work in how that phenomena affects the city structures and citizens.
This is good to know. I’m glad that seasons and the weather which kind of go hand in hand will have a deeper meaning and consequences within the game. Making you have to really think about your choices moving forward. Do we stay another season? Do we move to a new area and start anew? Really great stuff so far wish the team all the best and success to come with the games release!!!
How about the unusual weather? Like what happen in Britain and Europe were summer were shorter and the winter was longer and harsher, I forget the century it happen in? Or a change of weather from something like a super volcano going off.
I guess a hidden event could pop, changing the climate sliders, variables. Several months later, maybe even a year later, it would become apparent that something was wrong. “Our people worry that the the gods have turned from us, even the elders have never seen such a weak summer sun / cold winter’s night”. It might be something temporary, and the next year will be back to normal… or it could be something worse. And either the player would survive this… or not. We know that wine-grapes once grew in central Sweden, but that they haven’t for millennia. Yet Swedish wine-making is at its peak right now, and growing…
I would just like to add another type of disaster that could happen, Home | The Province Home Page | The Province I Little House on the Paire grass hoopers where the problem that devasted the wheat field, I believe.
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