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Discord is pretty silent as far as dev input.  Is here the best place to get questions answered?  My current main question is how do I get more Malachite on the map?

Hey,

I just had some questions as my town developed a little and I could afford to have 3-star residences.

1) My lower/middle/upper class division is -8%/61%/46%. It doesn't seem to be causing any problems but it made me curious.

2) Is the last building unlock the hospital? I was hoping there was some improvement to the landfill. Eventually there will be no way to resolve the landfill needs of my town.

3) Doesn't the balanced demand of the small housing, large housing, and flats force a single type of city development? There's no way to make a huge city with all flats or a low pop city with lots of high earning residences because people just stop moving in.

Thanks again for the updates. I'm looking forward to trying to build the whole grid out.

-Ken

Well, this town is now at 792 pop, and is making.....$26/day :) Seems like next time I ought to bank 4-5 years of income before hitting fire station and police station pop levels.

I emailed it. Let me know if you didn't get it.

-Ken

Hi,

I'm getting my first crash (twice now) just after reaching 500 pop on 0.9.4. I put in one pumping station, and start to build factories for my next expansion, and the game crashes during factory construction. It seems like the game crashes as I add the 5 factories intended to support the pumping station.

I tried a third time just building the pumping station and letting the game run for several months. It didn't crash. Then I started factory construction and it did crash. So maybe it's something to do with the calculations done each time a new factory is built?

-Ken

Hi,

I'm looking for suggestions/corrections for my gameplay in 0.9.4. I'm really struggling to make a profitable starting town. I start with 1 factory & reservoir, 3 markets (more profitable than shop early I think), 13 houses, a park, and 18 roads. The park ends up adding 12-13 in rent, so I go for it.

Income: 53 (rent) + 9 (markets) = 62

Expenses: 18 (water) + 18 (roads) + 10 (park) = 46, so I get $16/day.

Production income ends up being a wash. This town costs $23,750 to setup, plus the maintenance incurred while the buildings get constructed and houses populate. I normally cannot afford all of these buildings on the initial $25k.

I could see a quick boost by dropping a factory and 2 more houses, which would add $14 total to rent and shop income (maybe more with two types of production). Let's say it adds $16, giving $32/day. This costs about $30,000 to setup, and nets $32/day. Just to earn enough revenue to duplicate the town structure would require 1000 calendar clicks. [Edit: Added 2nd factory and 2 houses, making a town of pop 45. I can manage $28/day]

Any thoughts on how I might improve the starting town? Has anyone made the factories profitable early?

-Ken

Hey,

Thanks for the update. I'm still checking things out but it looks like you've added a bunch and the game is really coming along. I have some questions now that I've started a new city:

1) Do houses have some hidden upkeep cost? If so, what is it? I had figured I would build them ASAP in my town because building all the roads first incurs road maintenance cost while I build all the houses. But before anyone moved in, my ledger was showing a negative housing income.

2) In the factory pricing screen, it looks like I can set the market price for goods, and as I raise it, demand drops. It also looks like if I produce the item (I have a factory devoted to it), I receive (demand * set price) - (overproduction * default price) as income . If I don't produce the item, I pay demand * price as an expense. If all of this is the case, then I think I can set the price of anything I don't produce to a ridiculously high amount so that my people do not demand it, and I don't have to buy it.

3) Production income is shown to two decimals places in the factory pricing screen. On the ledger, it's a whole number. I had income of 2.66/day for the month, but the ledger shows 60 for the month. Is production income floored before it impacts the ledger? Same question with total shop income and loan interest.

4) Water supply costs look like they are $18-19/day for me, in a town with one reservoir. Do water supply costs vary in a way that would cause them to be more than the $15 listed on the reservoir?

5) The shops will still miss houses, but it happens much less. I have a cluster of 13 houses around 3 markets. One house is max range from one market, and outside the range of the other two. That house says it needs shopping and has a considerably lower rating than the other 12. All but one of the other 12 houses are in range of at least 2 markets.

Thanks again for the update,

-Ken

I think the coding needs improvement in this area. If I build 3 markets in an area for 13 small houses, some residents claim they need shopping. This is because there is only 1 of 3 markets available to an individual house, but that market has been "taken" by 5 other houses, even though they have other available markets to them.

The only way I can see around this manually is if I build the exact houses that should belong to a market and wait until they are all populated before starting another market. That requires no future decrease in population for the houses though, because then the delicate balance would be undone. I assume this also happens for reservoirs and factories, but their large ranges has prevented this from being a problem for me so far.

If I'm just doing it wrong, let me know how I'm goofing up market placement.

Thanks,

-Ken

I think this would make it into a completely different game. Assassinations would be trivial, and keeping gangs alive would be nearly impossible. Saboteurs could be worked around completely, and it would be much easier to sneak in a bribe. I'm not sure the same set of rules would make a workable game in both live (alternating turns) mode and casual (double turns) mode.

I like that the Masquerade and Wharf start with random police so you can open Gang on turn 1. Other than that aspect, Big City is my favorite.

In every game I've played on the Wharf, no one goes for the ship if the game is close. It takes 1 AP to scout, 1 AP to kill the guard, and 7g worth of urchins to claim it. If your opponent doesn't interfere, you spend 7g to get 1 VP (the rest nets out). That's what it costs at the church but it's 2 turns instead of instant.

I'm not sure about the Masquerade VP since I've not tried it and neither have my opponents, but it feels similar. Since the Masquerade requires 6 VP, it feels like even more of a control game, leaving no room for VP timings. I think I might prefer the dimensions flipped (map is wide instead of tall), because if someone starts with a bank behind them, it's a nice advantage.

I'm in a game where I saw my opponent evolve his gang to Evict 3, so I put a trap down on my full trading house. The next turn he used his master thief to burgle the trading house (he hadn't yet), trigger the trap, then brought in his gang to evict all 3 urchins. In an AI game, I tried the same strategy, but with different units. I sent an evicting urchin in to trigger a trap, intending to follow that with a truant officer. In that game, the urchin triggering the trap then "blocked" the square, preventing the truant officer from entering. I have a couple questions about the intent of the trap mechanic.

1) Is the trap mechanic designed to be outmaneuvered by an investment in 2 actions?

2) In all other instances, the trap makes the attacker fail at his intended goal. Should that be consistent with the master thief too (i.e. he fails to scout/burgle the location, and it remains inaccessible to his other units)? I didn't ask my opponent if he suffered any loss to his master thief after triggering the trap, beyond the 1g. If he didn't lose his AP though, he could just burgle (trigger trap), then burgle again.

IGN = Kenbutsu

I just started multiplayer yesterday. Quick match matched me twice with the same player. This morning, I got matched with the same player (different than yesterday) 3 times in a row. Is there an easy way to alter the settings so that quick match skips over other players in queue that I already have a running game with?

Maybe this issue solves itself with a much larger player base, or whatever ranked features are coming in MP.