Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Rabauck]

Hello

At first i m Chris from Germany. My english isnt the best but i hope i can explain my problem. (game buyed over steam). I know it is Early Access BUT:


I start this game and i need 4-5 attemp to come to the 2 year no problem for me ... learning by doing. For other player pls bring very soon the possibility to change the leven (easy, normal, hard and so on)

I play now 2 time a random map until year 5 and than all my villages die because nothing to eat. this isnt possible and kill the motivation to play again this game.
something is wrong ..... pls change asap the need-rate from villages for food by 50% (minimum)

pls let me explain what two times happened :
it was the year nr 4 all was running fine step by step. i had 20 villagers + 4 young + 4 babies
i build 2 fisherbuilding with 2x3 workers on it + one collector building with 4 worker to pickup in the woods some food + 2 fields with apple (on each little field 1 worker) + 1 field potatoes with 1 worker + 1 hunterbuilding with 4 workers

in summery i had 17 !!!!! worker to collect food and 3 worker they collect wodden + stone
all workers was equiped with tools ... and died with hunger in the winter from year 4 to 5 !

i have played two different maps (random small maps) and on each map the same problem

this is not normal and i think it is not in your opinion , that we need so much workers to collect food.
i cant build an other building because i didnt have the workers
all workers work only for food and dieing in the 5 th year in the winter???

i have screenshots and save data ...... if you want i can also upload short review from this miracle on YouTube or i can send you video by mail , if this will help to check and clear this problem

this game has really really potential but if a can only play 3-4 hours until the end of year 4 to year 5 is coming, which makes the game fun destroyed

pls let me know if you need this data ...........
or the problem is already known???

p.s. turtorial - unfortunately, it still does not work.
ninja patch dosnt help

[Rabauck]

Edit
ok now i am in year 7 BUT !! with many many new starts and extrem tricky / 90-95% my people only work for food !!! think this is not , what you wanted or?
thats the reason why many players stop playing and wait if this game is finish

I WILL NOT WAIT ^^ hurry up

[LadyCaticorn]

I'm having the same problems. Every couple years, despite having most of my people working to collect food, too, they starve to death, particularly during the winter. I have nearby barns to store the food, and barn is also close to homes, so they don't have to go far to work, store, or pick up food to take home. Still, every couple years when I've reached 25 and up in population, they end up all starving and I lose most of my population. I'm lucky if 10 villagers in total survive, including the babies, children and teens. So, not even all my villagers that survive can work to help rebuild.

Also, because this especially happens in winter and I need most of my workers gathering food in order to try to delay the inevitable starvation, I can't keep many people for gathering firewood, so they also freeze to death.

Then again, by the time I reach this many people that I apparently can't feed them no matter what I do, they also go through firewood in the same way. I've upgraded my lumberjack and have had it maxed out on workers, and still can't keep up with the demand.

The ratio between amount of food and wood produced to the amount needed to consume is too imbalanced. It's impossible to produce enough of anything to keep up with the demand, no matter how many people you have working on it! They don't even make much for the amount of work they do.

It's not even just the food and wood, everything is way too expensive in the cost of resources for the amount that it's possible to produce. This game needs some serious re-balancing with all the resources.

Another thing I noticed.... Slightly unrelated, but it does effect the whole food thing; Why is it that only boars produce meat, it seems? Every other animal just gives hides. It's hard to believe that after, say, killing a whole huge bear, the only usable part is it's hide. Where's all the meat!? It's not realistic that they don't provide any and that only boars are edible.

Well, I said more than I meant to, so let's leave it at that.

[Merrybike]

Ive managed twice now to have a city with every research unlocked. Around 30 years in ~ 80 people. It's REALLY important you grow slowly, dont build new houses like crazy. Maybe 20% of your population can be kids/teenagers or you lose to much food. It's slower, but it's also way safer and easier. Even at 50 people I only had 8 kids max.

[Machpelah]

it is tricky to balance but actually not too hard once you get the hang of it. I have no problem growing quite quickly and keeping food stockpiled.

The trick is to rotate workers; often having more workplaces than you do residences, and shifting people from hunting to gathering or fishing depending on the season.

The people will eat more fish and meat than vegetables, but having a huge stockpile of vegetables is relatively easy compared to stockpiling fish and meat (since those get eaten preferentially and therefore much more quickly).

In the "early years" (approx. 1-5) I have as many gatherers as possible during the entire spring/summer/fall cycle, and when winter rolls around I move them to fish/hunt. I always start without houses, so with just two villagers and a tent, and by the end of year one I have usually built (in this order):

a barn, a gatherers hut, a lumberjack and a small house.

By the end of year two I have built:

a fishing dock, a hunting cabin and a forester.

This is only possible when you play on 1x or at most 2x speed, and sometimes requires first-person control of villagers to optimize the work flow.

Still, by year four I usually have 4-5 houses and a clay mine, farm, weaver, furnace, smelter, and blacksmith in addition to the buildings listed above.

This game requires micromanagement and moving villagers from job to job throughout the year, depending on the season. I am sure you won't have success if you don't play slowly (especially at the start) and move villagers from job to job thoughtfully.

All of that said, I have not really had a problem with starvation until I am over 100 villagers and it becomes a question of stockpiling enough food for the winter, and making sure that I move enough veggies (with the caravan stables) from one part of town to the other so that a whole area doesn't starve by spring.

It seems doable, but challenging; which is why we play this game, right?

[Axe22]

Get a mod that lets you adjust the amount of nutrition the villagers get from eating. Or one that lets you adjust how much food gets produced when you hunt or farm or fish or gather. Then you can balance it to whatever you think it ought to be. I agree the balance of lots of stuff in the game can be pretty far off. The food is one of them. Early on you can't get enough, then later you can't get rid of it all on account of your whole town being built up from the start as a massive food production place.

I try to balance so it makes sense. Each game day is I think about 1 month long. Three per season. So the guy fishes and hauls in 20 fish. How long should that last 2 people? Ten days if they each eat one a day, which sounds reasonable to stay alive. Longer if they are willing to live a little hungrier, I think. They shouldn't starve to death if they have to stretch it out to like 2 fish every 3 days, or even one fish every other day. A person can survive on that without starving to death. So if you assume they eat 1 per day and each game day is a month (30 days), then you would expect that every game day (month) if they could haul in 60 fish, there should not be anyone starving to death. Even if the haul is only 30 it should be enough to keep 2 of them alive, albeit hungry. So I simply tweak the numbers until I see that during play.

In vanilla, I don't think you'll ever see one fisherman hauling in 60 fish in one game day. Maybe 25 if he's got a tool and is happy. Typically I've seen about 10-15 being produced depending on how close is the stockpile. Which is barely even half what one person needs for a month, let alone two. Nor do they eat at the proposed one fish per day rate either. So the fishing job needs to produce more per game day (month) in order to approach being realistic. Because common sense tells you that it should not be difficult for one person to fish enough food for two people...ever. Unless you deplete the ocean of fish. That mechanic exists in the game, so after a long time you will have to move to a different fishing spot. But until that happens it should not be a problem. Certainly not how vanilla has it all set up.

The hunting job has almost the identical problem. However that one is compounded by the fact that you also need hunting for hides to make clothes. And the balance between how much meat vs. how many hides you get from an animal is way off too. Later on you'll have tons of meat and no hides at all. And the hunters won't hunt cuz there is too much meat. So you get no hides. So you get no clothes. And you freeze to death on a mountain of meat. Yet early on you can't hunt enough meat for two people.

Also be aware that children and teenagers eat more than do adults. Another thing that really doesn't conform much to common sense, but it's in there. If you expand quickly with your housing, plan for food stocks to deplete rapidly over about the next 2 game years, then watch out for over production after that.

Even with the mods that let you tweak things it can be a tough thing to balance properly. Sometimes it just isn't feasible to try for a realistic goal. For example the food consumption.

If the villagers are going to need one fish per day (30 per game day) this means they will need to return home 30 times each game day in order to eat their one fish every day. That won't work out because the time is compressed so much that just walking from the house to the barn can take like 3-4 days. It takes about 20 days to walk down the road from dawn until dusk. So if you consider how far along the map a villager can move between dawn and dusk you 'll notice that is isn't very far at all. It certainly won't seem like a 20 day journey worth of distance. Because it isn't. Not even close. Likewise back in town, going to the next door neighbors house takes almost a day's worth of game time to traverse. To reach realism the villagers would have to move so fast they'd just blink about the map a lot. They must move far slower than realistic for the game to remain playable. Like it takes them an hour to walk a couple of meters. That's how slow they have to go to keep the game from being ridiculous.

So you can't adjust the food consumption to a realistic level or else your villagers would spend most of their time returning home to eat. They'd barely get out the front door before needing to eat again and would likely struggle getting past the house two doors down the road anytime within their lifespan. Therefore you are forced to treat one single fish icon as a stack of actual individual fish, and try to determine how big it should be so they only go home occasionally each game day, and the fisherman can keep up. Stated another way, you are forced by the time compression to balance it so the villagers only eat every week or so, but when they do they gorge out enough to last for a week or so.

One fish icon = three actual fish is a pretty good approximation to make according to my limited experimentation so far. If they keep 7 fish icons in their home that would be about a 10 day supply for two. And that lines up well with their default carrying capacity. Three trips to the storehouse per month to keep the house filled. Three or four trips home per month to eat, consuming about 3 or 4 fish icons each time. That will get you pretty close to 1 fish each per day, and the fisherman would need to haul only about 20 icons.