One Hour One Life Forums

Thanks, Portager!

It's more like the sketch for a fan fic story.  I had just been spending some time thinking about the type of civilization I'd like to see us have (one based around a dedicated matriarchal caste that centralizes births in one location and sends grown adolescents out to outlying villages for specialized work) combined with one of the common themes of "how do we deal with Troll attacks" ?

I imagined a situation in which Trolls killed off the core population of the civilization, but we were able to recover by respawning on the outskirts and climbing a ready-made "ladder of technological recovery" with prebuilt stations that led back to the center.  I really think something like that is what we should aim for (and shouldn't build infrastructure that almost immediately falls apart in the absence of people to maintain it, even briefly) and thought maybe a story would illustrate the idea better.  Needs work though.

I haven't played the new update yet (been busy with work since it came out) but I have been seeing in a few other threads where people are trying to come up with new tiny farm designs that could work.  Honestly, composting sounds a lot more resource-intensive than I'd hoped (taking berries and reeds and I don't know what else) and so I worry about it.  I may shift my focus to trying to create tiny milkweed plantations and/or tiny trapper/furrier camps, to make sure we can cover the map with plenty of clothes.

The way I look at it, if I can live long enough to create even one tiny settlement before I starve, that's a "WIN" for me.

Imagine how much easier the game would be (or maybe "less impossible" would be a better way of saying it ) if every time you spawned as a new Eve, you could run in almost any direction and stumble across a supply of clothes, some food caches, a tiny farm (if we can figure out a new design) or such.  And from there, once you'd "caught your breath" and felt secure enough that your basic needs had been met, you could branch out and start looking for forges or bakeries or other slightly-more-advanced (but still small, and widespread) settlements.

So I know this will drive the Milkweed People up a wall... but nearly every time I've played the game, I stay naked the entire time and don't bother with a fire.  Why?  Because with one of my tiny seven-plot carrot farms (which I can usually build as a new Eve pretty quickly unless I spawn in a truly terrible spot) I very quickly was producing so many surplus carrots that I ran out of baskets.  Food was never a concern, so I really didn't care that I was getting hungry 3x as fast.  If I happened to come across clothes I'd put them on, but all that would do is make it so I was generating carrots even faster, and I'd spend a lot of time placing them one-by-one further and further out from my farm.  Or... I hate to admit this... I'd just eat them even if I was full, to make them go away.

I recognize the long-term importance of clothes, and the benefit they bring.  It just wasn't my thing, and given the particular way I played, clothes weren't really helpful at all.

** EDIT:  I used the past tense wrt "the particular way I played" not because I've stopped playing, but because with composting and soil exhaustion being a thing, I expect my playing style will need to change.

Yes.  This.

Also:  sorry for any water skins I've used for these purposes.  I'm pretty dedicated to the carrot farming role, and honestly don't know a lot about the fur/clothing tech tree.  I didn't realize water skins were so expensive to make, relative to clay bowls.  I got into the habit of using water skins because they could be stacked, but since I've moved to a "put the farm directly next to the water ponds" model, I never need more than one water carrying device anyway -- so a single clay bowl works just as well as a single water skin.

With the big caveat (again) that I have not actually played since the update (busy with work) from everything I have heard and what I've been thinking, this just seems like experienced players have essentially been reduced to (somewhat of) a newbie status.  And it's going to take a while for people to figure out how to build a suitably robust safety network again.  But we WILL reach a point where we have sustainable farms and other settlements, and people can get back to raising babies.

I'm not sure the "balance" we need is to tweak the game.. we may just need to tweak our playing style, and rebuild that safety net.

I haven't actually gotten to play since the update, and while it upsets me to hear that my efforts in building sustainable tiny farms are now basically for naught, in principle I support the change.  I think this was probably always the intention (that soil "run out" as well... EVERYTHING RUNS OUT) and we were just given a free pass for a while, to make it easier until people were more experienced.

I don't think the current difficulty is permanent -- and I admit my opinion on things may change once I actually get to play again (probably this weekend.)  But I think we just need to focus even more on building sustainable ready-to-go farms (and trapper/furrier camps, milkweed plantations, etc.) so that a wandering Eve stumbles across something that can help them get established.

Stop building large settlements!  That did not happen in real human history, until we had spread out.  It should not happen in this game, either.  First we should seed the land with ready-to-go tiny settlements.  THEN we can focus on building more advanced ones.

I think of a tiny farm as a kind of renewable resource.  Just as properly managed ponds will refill, properly trapped rabbit holes will repopulate, properly harvested milkweed will regrow, we should start constructing tiny farms that will renew themselves.  But not larger.  The smallest self-sustaining establishment possible -- and spread them all over the map.

With a farm, the limiting resource is the water.  Everything else forms a closed loop.  If you build a tiny farm next to some ponds, then so long as the ponds refill the farm should be simple to revive.

I can't figure out how you could've downloaded the game on your ipad in the first place.  What did you do exactly?

I doubt this would work in iPad, or that it could even easily be ported given the way the controls work.

Daebak, I have been pushing the idea of having the more experienced players build "ready-to-go" tiny farms all over the map, to ease things for new players.  This is an example of one I built recently, intended as a viable farm that can sustain a new farmer and let them expand a little if they want.  Also note the baskets of carrots ready to keep you fed while you kick-start the farm.

Would that meet some of your goals as a sort of more hands-on tutorial?

Oh TLyon that's great!  I am glad I could help make your introduction to the game more enjoyable.  What you experienced (thriving for a few generations and then somebody eats all the seed carrots) is pretty common, and is pretty much the issue that we're trying to address.  Rather than focusing on building larger communities that require coordinated, complex interaction and cooperation between players to thrive, I'm thinking we would do better to create as many of these tiny farms (and elsewhere:  tiny rabbit-trapper-camps, tiny berry orchards, etc.) as possible, so that any wandering new Eve will stumble across one right away and be able to get started.

Even if people end up eating all the seed carrots and the tiny village dies, the plots of land will still be there, the ponds will still be there, the baskets will still be there, the water pouch should still be there, and it should be straightforward either for a more experienced player to get the tiny farm going again with minimal effort, or to restore it to "ready-to-go" status (all plots seeded but not watered) for the next wandering Eve.

Related to having a more international audience:  Right now, most players seem to speak English.  As a native English speaker, I find this convenient.  Communications in the game may become more problematic, with a wider international player base.

Other games I've played have dealt with this by automatically translating chat messages (with mixed success, but generally it works) though given the other restrictions on text in the game (e.g. number of characters) I don't see how that could be applied here.

On the other hand, different languages may simply be an interesting feature of the game, making it more reflective of the real world anyway.  But it's something to consider... the difficulty that people in other countries have in buying the game does help keep the language issue at bay.

Goateelord, I agree with your "every life can potentially add to the village" philosophy in general, but given the flood of newbies in the game, it really seems to me that every new baby is (on average) more a drain than a benefit.  To survive, we need to optimize.  Letting a disabled baby starve just means that player will respawn anyway -- hopefully as an able-bodied female (or perhaps just as some other village's problem.)

This is something where I think people will change their strategy as the mix of new/experienced players changes, over time.  Also as in-game civilization progresses.  At the moment, given the struggle just to survive, nobody can afford the chance of that disabled baby also being a newbie.