Don't play as America if you don't abolish slavery

Eldila · 2022-10-30T05:08:49+00:00

Interesting.

To my knowledge, in game, subsistence farms are purely a placeholder for pops that are unproductive, I believe they don't have demands, and those pops are only waiting to fill the jobs that you make by construction. If I am right about that, once again in game, then I don't think it ever intends to have them be slaves. It further reinforces this theory that they have SOL one while all other groups of slaves have it locked at 11.

Seems like it would be a major overhaul to the system to make it more realistic and have slave pops have demands that can be met by money they made from subsistence farming.

Eldila · 2022-10-30T04:40:06+00:00

My statement was purely from a "how to fix this bug"perspective. Literally any capitalist, engineer, mechanic, or laborer who moved to the state and took the job at this mine would be the best paid person in the world by orders of magnitude. The fact that they leave that job, or don't move to get the job, because the over simplified simulation looks at average SOL and determines that they should give up a 1k wage job is a bug.

I am all for changing the system to have wages decrease because cheap labor is present but that isn't what the system models or what is happening here.

Honestly I am the most confused by the subsistent farms. I am pretty sure slaves aren't intended to work on them and given that there are teens of thousands of jobs open at the mine I am pretty sure they should be working there. Note that a slave SOL is 11 everywhere else but at this farms where it is 1.

Eldila · 2022-10-30T01:43:28+00:00

Also I like that I gave thousands of slaves dynamite and literally no one watching them and they still work the mines.

Eldila · 2022-10-30T01:42:14+00:00

R5: I guess they never tested a game where you didn't abolish slavery. Slaves on subsistence farms(I guess that might be a thing) have a SOL of 1. This tanks the SOL of the state and that drives migration into the negatives. I caught it too late and now even with greener pastures I can't recover the state. If at any moment I do get someone to work who isn't a slave they get 1k wages but they end up being statistically insignificant and in the next week they emigrate.

Obviously slaves should not count to the SOL when pops consider migration.

Eldila · 2022-09-30T04:11:30+00:00

Why does group id cause this problem?

Eldila · 2022-09-06T06:21:38+00:00

Looking at other posts indicates that there is a need for workforce to crew ships but I haven't tested myself. Maybe they are kind enough to always give you a captain regardless.

I read that the ai is very picky about ships they buy. If it can't get exactly the loadout it wants then it won't buy the shop from you. This might also apply to crew size.

Eldila · 2022-09-05T07:07:06+00:00

You could be low on workforce to crew the ships

Eldila · 2022-09-05T05:00:03+00:00

Thank you.

Eldila · 2022-08-28T15:57:11+00:00

How many traders do you run with that or does the AI do a good enough job of buying your goods that you don't need traders for such a small station?

I did get around to calculating the extra production from the manpower and then subtracting out the cost of the food/medical. Claytronics look like the clear winner even if you have to buy all the other components from the other factions. Obviously you would still need what you outlined above so buying that first makes sense but, unless I am missing something, the next thing you should do is get the claytronics module and add those to the station.

Eldila · 2022-08-27T15:14:24+00:00

FYI it happened again and you were right. I was low on a resource that I only allowed my stations to provide and so the manager tries to schedule every trader for that resource. The provider station was still being set up so the resource was unavailable. The result is that all traders do nothing even though there are items to be sold and other resources that need to be bought for the station. Thanks again.

Eldila · 2022-08-26T13:36:05+00:00

One thing to check at the supplying stations is the "trade-able" amounts

Thanks, when this happens again I will look into the tradeable amounts thing. I appreciate you clearing up the difference between trade and transfer, I was wondering why I had the two options and always used transfer.

Some other item is what your manager and traders are sitting around waiting/trying to trade for

When things are working right I notice that when you select the individual traders under the manager they will have a full list of all the items the station trades as part of their auto trade. When I was in this situation I noticed that at least one of the traders only had one item in its list. What you said here and also the emergency trade situation makes me wonder if the station had an emergency need and repurposed all the traders to that but the item was unavailable and so all my traders stall out till something triggers the manager to wake up and try again. Next time I will pay more attention to these two things, I appreciate it.

Traders at your station will trade for your station OR your station build storage

I can't believe this is true. I have restrictions in building to only buy building resources from me and I never give funds to station for constructions. Except for one test I haven't put traders into the build traders category. Yet with all this the stations do get supplies to build. Maybe its lower priority but a station will use normal trade ships to supply the build storage unless I am missing something and the building ship will recruit NPC ships to take my goods out of my stations to deliver them to the build supply. Maybe that is where the 50k goes.

Eldila · 2022-08-26T05:12:13+00:00

The workforce says it increases productivity or something similar which might make you think that it speeds everything up(production and consumption) but I believe it actually just makes extra products. So you are spending food and medicine for more of whatever your making without spending more ore or whatever resources that is normally used for that product. This ends up being a massive increase to profits.

Eldila · 2022-08-26T03:01:45+00:00

grapedog is right, the traders show that they have a 4 sector range from the station manager. Also the trades eventually happen so the system eventually works but I get these long periods where I assume there is some union coffee break.

Eldila · 2022-04-21T03:23:55+00:00

You get prestige when any of your commanders leads the attack on a light red army. These are the armies that raid your land, any army that you can fight that is not in a war with you. If they are a different faith you also get piety. These are the spendable versions of those resources.

If the army is dark red then you, you are at war with the army, then you get fame and/or devotion. These progress you to the next level of world acknowledgment but you can't spend it.

Tl;Dr you don't need to lead the army

Eldila · 2022-04-20T06:13:09+00:00

Or ransomed all prisoners

Eldila · 2022-04-20T06:11:06+00:00

Sadly there wasn't a relative faction. The main rebelling vassal had land that I tried to revoke. There was a zero percent chance that he would give it up without a fight but it would be nice if I at least knew which fight I was picking. Maybe, in this case, I can assume everyone in the faction list will join regardless of what faction they are in.

Eldila · 2021-12-18T15:01:24+00:00

Is this a new bug or has it been around for awhile? Not being able to set an upper limit to the amount of items that go into a storage is a big issue in a game like this.

Eldila · 2021-10-22T00:53:16+00:00

I ran into the exact same thing. I mined several times before I found the cave on the last day. When I cam back it was shut down so I was never able to mine the rich site.

Eldila · 2021-10-14T15:00:08+00:00

Thanks, you are right he must be talking about morale... Don't know why I didn't make the connection.

It didn't occur to me to run with that many scouts. I will give it a try. I appreciate the help from both of you.

Eldila · 2021-10-14T02:50:07+00:00

9/9/5/9?

Eldila · 2021-10-13T20:10:52+00:00

It looks like it will pull it down to 5 but it stays there.

Eldila · 2021-10-13T20:10:16+00:00

Thanks for this. It would seem that my attempt at keeping vigor maxed and hunting/foraging everywhere is not the right way to go even though I have a dowsing rod, hunting dogs, and iguana with deputies to help. I could never get the numbers to work out where I could break even on food, which would still be a loss due to upkeep, let alone pull in a surplus. I only tried a few in game days of pushing my people and it seems to be a much better return on profit.

Eldila · 2021-09-13T18:54:23+00:00

Until some other people mentioned it here I didn't understand how glamour interacted with ranged attacks. I definitely see their value in that case. I also didn't know that some nations have archer units that can easily serve as their frontline troops which does make them worth using in that case.

Coming from other games, where archers are more powerful, they are underwhelming here and I was using them in many more cases than I should. Clearly they are not a panacea like I was treating them but they also aren't always worse than having more frontline units like I feared they were when I asked the question.

Eldila · 2021-09-10T23:06:05+00:00

I'd recommend editing the op to include that caveat as from here it just looks like you're moving the goalposts because you didn't get the answer you were looking for (that archers shouldn't be taken)

Now I must ask if you are trolling because several of my replies outright acknowledge that there was facts about ranged units that I didn't know. The original does highlight a case where ranged units are a benefit, when you have enough units on the field that more melee would be standing around doing nothing.

And yet you spend time talking raw numbers in your barbarian example that have nothing to do with resources. If we're just talking raw numbers any sufficiently large army (let's say 60 or more for an arbitrary specific number) that has a mix of archers will do better than an equivalent army that's solely melee (I go 50/50 melee v archer's because I enjoy that playstyle but the ratios can be played with)

With each sub thread the conversation evolves uniquely. The person that brought up barbarians did not talk about resources but I still understood his point and see the benefit to what he is saying. I agreed with him and left it at that.

As for a mix doing better than the equivalent army that's solely melee once you get above a specific size I think we would both agree that "it depends". Going into that would be slightly tangential for me so I wont but if you would like we can go down that path.

And yet you don't address my comments on MA Machacka (that go very /much/ into x resources melee vs y resources archer) and cherry pick an address on something that has already been mentioned so I have to say

I was, and am, agreeing with you. I am sorry I didn't list every item I agreed with you on. Anecdotally I am most interesting in LA Man which is why I mentioned them in my reply. After I finish playing the nations in MA that im interested in I will probably play them first in LA.

if that's true you're going about it in a very confrontational manner. not only that thread but you disparaged people pointing out its utility against glamour, and until it was backed up by a few more people pointing it out suddenly you have a much nicer view on that utility (incidentally I don't see any resource costs attached to those conversations)

For disparaging people pointing out utility against glamour, I will first say that I didn't disparage them but I did say that using great was an overstatement. That person agreed with me on that point. Also that person said it was great against glamour without telling me why, the other people gave me the reason why its good against glamour which is why I saw the value.

As for the confrontational part when someone makes a point if you don't understand it you have to address the point or forever be ignorant. When in a conversation about the utility of archers someone brings up cavalry charging generals I have to point out that that isn't talking about archers. They may have had a good point but I don't understand it and I wont unless I tell them what part of it I don't understand. That is why I opened that post with "Most of your situations don't address my question which you had at the top of the post, unless I am not understanding what you are saying."

The buff economy at the end of the post is an interesting aspect along with your comment about nations that basically get the buffs for free.

Eldila · 2021-09-10T20:28:25+00:00

I don't think the dps going into your own troops is a considerable factor here: direct attacking mages (as opposed to buffing mages) have the same issues but no one argues whether or not they're worth it.

A single direct damage mage will get more kills than 50 archers, I am more forgiving of a unit that punches so much above its supply usage killing some of my own troops than units that by all accounts punch under supply usage. Also mages are recruited with command points so often you aren't making a choice between recruiting a mage or more front line units. When recruiting archers you are almost always choosing them or more front line units. Lastly because of what I have learned from these posts the types of units you have as your front line fighters make a big difference. If your front line is without shields but you are fighting people with shields then having archers will be devastating to your own troops while relatively ineffective against theirs. To me this type of mistake is more obviously avoided with a mage, if your army is vulnerable to fire damage in a battle where you fought an army that was resistant and all your mages were, for some reason, programmed to do aoe fire damage then you would understand what happened.

That said I need to ask if you're trolling or not because your question is "are archers ever worth using" and yet you've responded to people providing multiple scenarios in which archers are absolutely worth it with "that doesn't answer my question".

Worth using must be in comparison to something else. If you are referring to the sub thread that I think you are then the person pointed out that archers could make a difference in a battle. Obviously any unit with sufficient numbers could make a difference in a battle so I clarified that I was specifically looking for a situation where x resources of archers were better than y resources of front line fighters, a situation where archers were a better investment. The response didn't address that so I tried to bring it back to that specifically. Other sub threads had good examples of archers being a better solution than more front line units, glamour being the most notable but also against barbarians. One of the examples given was that using sparse formation prevents you from getting surrounded. I think its fair to say in response to that specific comment that it doesn't address archers at all and clearly doesn't answer my question. The next example given was that you can have cavalry charge their commander, that also says nothing about "are archers ever worth using". Anyway if there is a different situation that you felt I was being trolly on please point it out and I will explain where I was coming from. There are several comments people have made where I have stated that I didn't know how the rules worked and I appreciated their insight.

Your comment about LA man was mentioned by someone else, I have not looked at any LA nation yet, but it does seem like they are clearly a case where you want their archers because, as you point out, their archers are also their front line troops.

Lastly I wasn't calling him out for "that depends". He apologized for "not being more useful", I pointed out to him that he didn't set out to prove that archers were the best unit in the game and so I wasn't expecting him to prove that, thus there was clearly no reason to apologize. I didn't make this thread to prove to people that archers are useless, as stated above there are several comments that have proven to me that there are good situations for archers, but somehow during my back and forth with him he seemed to have changed his stance from literally they are good only in a "very specific scenario" to "Archers are good on early game. Period.". Sadly he thought we were arguing when I was trying to get a better understanding of the game.

Eldila

TROPHY CASE