(BETA 55) I need an update on various things...

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Cthulhu_Awaits, Oct 5, 2016.

  1. It just occurred to me, while playing a bit last night, that I'm still obliviuos to quite a lot of new/changed mechanics. And since I'm starting to get again pretty busy, I don't have enough time to play to explore them one by one in a reasonable amout of time.

    Cults
    This is where I found myself in (unknown) trouble for the first time in a while: I'm running a decent colony, trying to stack on some labourers before getting new overseers, and I'm suddenly attacked by a strong bandit brigade (six people, with two armoured). My soldiers where already injured from previous battles, and so I had a lot of casualties, both in the soldiers and the NCOs departments. This massacre apparently left one of my colonist so broken that she decided to turn into cults. In previous versions, cults were something that could be incouraged, since they would keep an high level of happiness even in the worst conditions (with other malus, of course). Thinking that some cults would make things more interesting I let it go, and didn't do anything against it. The next night she "failed" an evocation rite. That d**n thing almost destroyed my colony. the evoker died (turned into something else), and with him the "thing" and others of my decimated colony. I was left with 7 people total (3 overseers and 4 labourers). Is this how cults work right now? Quick and lethal, or was it my "bad" luck (to be honest, it was awesome!!!)? What are the "new" cult's mechanics?

    Higher-Class colonists
    I still don't have made enough progress in the game to consider spending resources on building an high class mansion, so I was wondering what are the benefits of the aristocracy in the game right now. Back in the day, the presence of aristocracy i the colony was of a huge benift due the Prestige mechanic. Prestige than became wha is not the Foreign Office, and the favour of the Empire is much less relevant (another thing about this: it's way too difficult [slow] to increase your reputation with the Empire, since it's rare to see the "Glowing Report" task in the office), I'm not even sure that the shipping of more people is influenced by your standing, since those shippings seems rather random (not in the amout of people, but in the timing). In the end, what does the aristocracy do right now?

    Pies and other food
    Right now I've yet to play a jungle map, since I'm trying to overcome the desert challange (I'm a liar: my colony is in a half desert, half alpine map. I have all the wood I want, and the desert crops), so I'm not sure about this, but is it the jungle the only biome in which you can have all the ingredients to bake some pies? Or you do have to always rely on commerce material? In BETA 44 in a temperate map I lacked the sugar, now that I'm in the desert I lack both the wheat and the sugar, but at least I can buy the latter (no merchants with wheat as of yet). Antoher thing: is the "Refined Food" active? In the BETA 44 I tried to cook some higher quality food i this way, but I never noticed anything particular: I saw the workers use the alcohol, but In the stockpile everything seemed the same as always, even the tooltip where the same as always (not to mention the inventory, nothing changed). This is really strange to me, since the Refined food seemed a way to give adequate food to the aristocracy, without asking supplies in the hope of pies, or foraging caviar.

    Vicar and Office Skills
    How do you get a Vicar? Luck? I admit I'm not an observant player, so I never checked if the "build us a church"-event was correlated to the presence of a spiritually inclined colonist (a good Vicar, in the end), so it's possible that I got a valid Vicar without noticing it. Something that still sounds strange to me is that every other office seems to be skill based, while the church is the only one that comes with a preferred personal trait od the Overseer (and it's not even possible to train someone in theology!!), while the context of other events (the haunting of ghosts from the mine, or the Grimoire) give me the idea that the Vicar position (in the """"lore"""" of the game) is something that require some knowledge... (at least it should be abe to train SOME people into being a Vicar [maybe excluding communist or materialists people]).
    Another thing I noticed is the some Offices, in the"Assign Overseer" tab, have a rather strange skill preference: Foreign Office and the Barber Shop display the Art of War skill ( I don't remeber what is displyed in the chemist shop, or in the Public House). Do this skill have any use in the offices? If yes, can you explain me why should the Art of War influence the Barber Shop?


    This is all I'm missing right now that I can rember, If I catch something while played this evening, I'll update the post.

    [please forgive me for typos or awful grammar, it's not that straitgh forward for me to write such a long post in a foreign language...]
     
  2. Kaldo

    Kaldo Member

    I had a cult event in which unhappy colonists were turning into fishpeople, so I think there are different types of cultist goals. They all seem pretty negative at their core though, and need a Vicar to "lead them back to the righteous path".

    As for Vicars, that's just the name of the people working at the church. Build a church, assign people to work there, provide them with iron cogs and you've got your Vicars! They can complete some unique events for you, or just generally work on reducing despair in your colonies. I'm not sure if there's a relevant skill for them, it should be displayed next to overseer names when you get to assign one to the church "workcrew".
     
  3. Yes I can do that, but it's like "forcing the rules". It worked like this even in previous versions: if you assing as Vicar a non spiritually inclined person, he/she will have the "got the book and told to something with it" record that would often be accompanied by a big increase in the colonists anger department. And as far as I can recall this anger lasted pretty long...

    Maybe I'm looking too seriously at this character...
     
  4. Kaldo

    Kaldo Member

    Ah, you were looking for the exact spiritualist trait on colonists rather than just the general occupation... I can't help you with that, I'm pretty new to CE so it's beyond me :p. Didn't even realize there is a penalty if the vicar doesn't have the spiritualist trait.
     
  5. Juwadroid

    Juwadroid Member

    For the aristocrats, when one immigrates to your colony your empire standing bumps up +10. I believe you lose some standing if they manage to get themselves killed but I'm not sure how much that is.
     
  6. OddProphet

    OddProphet Member

    -Cults
    Cults, in the current build, are largely To Be Avoided. In the best case, a colony infested with cults will schism and kill each other. In the worst case, they will band together under one dark master, and work to bring its tainted will into our world at the cost of every last life in the colony.

    Mechanically speaking, cults form when colonists have nothing to distract or detract from the misery of a life of drudgery on the frontier. A bright, ambitious overseer crammed into a dismally-packed "house" with half a dozen others, forced to labor long hours outdoors and subsisting only on raw maize is a pile of tinder waiting for an Eldritch Spark. I haven't tried to induce a cult, but I would say that a good way to force its growth in an otherwise healthy colony is to build a specific "hive cluster" for a group of unfortunate immigrants:
    1: Build an overseer house and cram it with 6-7 beds.
    2: Ensure that the overseers that migrate to fill the beds work in dismal conditions, cramming their workspace with modules to drive down the quality.
    3: If you have a public house or a chapel running, shut it down.

    -Our Betters
    I'll admit, this is an area of deficiency for me. Even in my latest colony I do not yet have the materials to construct suitable quarters for Our Betters. What I do know is that every single piece of furniture requires extensive amounts of lumber, lacquer, and gold, so a manor house is about as End Game as one can get. Even then, I think it's really more of a resource sink than anything else, impossible to sustain unless you're in the Tropics (lacquer trees for furniture, sugarcane for Aristocracy-suitable foods)

    -Culinaria
    You are correct in noting that pies are in a weird place. With a trading office, you can acquire ingredients from foreigners, presuming they make it into your trading office without being attacked. Once you do have a stack of sugarcane, you can make it into three days worth of pies. At the moment, that is the only Aristocrat-level food to my knowledge, caviar being Overseer preferred (yet dubious, somehow...).

    -Vicarage
    While it is best to find someone Spiritually Inclined, building a Vicarage into an already healthy colony is easy. While the new vicar may be upset, they will eventually go from Father Ted to Father Anderson. (Literally in my case: an invasion from Stahlmark forced my newly appointed vicar to be one of my squad's third NCO - and the only NCO of seven to survive the engagement.)

    Feel free to correct me on points I got wrong.
     
  7. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    According to various posts about this: "punishment"

    Nothing I think?

    It isn't affected by standing and it isn't random, check the thread about immigration, the days it comes on is basically "fixed" and you can plan around it.

    Any biome with wheat (and then you buy sugarloaf). I don't think the jungle has wheat?

    It works. It produces Farmers' Stew which is an overseer food.

    Luck. It's just a trait, though anyone can be a good enough vicar.

    The build church event is linked to having anyone who is spiritually inclined I think? But now the chapel is pretty advanced due to office supplies
     
  8. Isn't it also available without alcohol?
     
  9. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Yes. Refined food is amazingly efficient recipe though, using one raw and 1 booze to make 8 meals.

    Considering 1 raw gives you 3 booze, this is quite a step up from using 2 raw to make 2 meals.
     
  10. Cornuthaum

    Cornuthaum Member

    You unlock Refined Food by hitting 100 reputation with the Republique. Hands down the best reward.

    100 Novorus gives you 2x the harvest speed for nodes and trees; 100 Stahlmark gives you Leyden weapons (though in the current build we can build Leyden weapons even without 100 SM rep)
     
  11. Uh! That's really nice!! In that big colony in BETA 54 I played quite a bit around the foreign office (it was a reaaaaally peaceful game, no bandits, friendly fishermen, no attacks,... and no traders either -.-') and bumped every nation's favour up to 100. I noticed the Leyden thing, but didn't realize the other two (if the Novorus thing would also BUMP A LOT the output/growth of wood farms, that would really make that thing useful [i didn't really notice the change to be honest XD]). I wasn't sure about the refined food, because the icon displays a differently coloured food, so I thought it would output actual different food (thinking it would make it desiderable for aristocracy). Well, it doesn't really surprise me, since lacquer icon is similar to the molasses bucket, but the actual module is the same as the opium bucket XD (this kind of things really hurt my OCD side, but the mess of my colony is usually a far greater menace...).

    I hope they make aristocracy more useful (and sustainable XD it's not really balanced that only one biome can actually hope to sustain them in a decent way))
     
  12. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    It doesn't.

    Also, it seems (checking code) that it applies only to chopping trees and foraging, not even mining surface nodes...
     
  13. I know, I would have noticed it XD farming wood is higly inefficent... :(
     
  14. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    I'm actually pretty confident that a modder can change the farming code so that the part which says (for example) "1 tend crop" -> "1 labor unit" is changed to add "if larch/bamboo and novobus bonus, then" -> "+1 more labor unit" or something like that

    Because the Novorus and the republique effect are just a single boolean which becomes True when the max standing event occurs, and is referenced as such.

    (Honestly you can probably modify the mine surface node to reflect the norovus thing as a bonus too, ie: reducing the animation time for the job)