a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I doubt I could agree more with CrazyEddie on this one. Others including DestinyCall have good points.
Bob, maybe you have some competentence at certain things in this game. But, stop playing as a woman. You are not cut out for that role at present. Even your test for children makes for a bad idea. Making a fire in the middle of a desert isn't good for anyone. You have used kindling, and maybe the child just doesn't move because you have intentionally done something stupid, and they are pissed at you. What a waste of kindling and a tool to make that fire. Do you know about 'shift + delete' with the mod? You never know when someone quits on you who can play well, because you were a negligent parent pissing them off. Here's the catch: when someone uses "shift + delete" to die with the mod, the family tree says they died by starvation. But the player didn't starve, he or she suicided for someone reason.
Babies who run away from where their mothers leave them also might be runners, who run away to die instead of wanting to clutter up the place with their bones. Testing babies also doesn't let anyone develop in their knowledge or skill level of the game. And probably you did a bunch of stupid things as a baby when first learning the game. Also, sometimes the game doesn't load quickly. Regardless of where my skill level actually lies, I've heard the crying sound BEFORE I can see the map I don't know how many times. So, maybe the baby didn't run because they didn't see the map. You lose time that you could be doing other things by watching to see how children react to your tests, or even holding the baby and communicating to them where biomes lie or what might get done. Or giving the baby a tour of the town so they can find things more easily later. Finally, if you plan on testing children, try something going to the grassland with clothing and drop the clothing on the ground and see if the baby tries to tell you to put the clothing on them. Oh, but you're going to be cold? But, there can be uses of going to the grassland, since there may exist resources or wild food that can get brought back to camp to increase the colony's yum, or your yum, or bring home rocks, or show the baby what the grassland looks like so he or she might find things more easily. See how that works? You can end up testing the child, showing them more territory, and even bringing home something, effectively doing multiple things at once, instead of just being someone who makes a fire in the middle of a desert... a telltale sign of a newer player.
Players like you make for one reason why I have to decided to keep on running if I see a decent spot next to a snowbank. Someone will mess it up somehow beyond the difficulty of already living near a tundra, whether it be with multiple snowmen in bad spots, or "snowball abortions" when you could have just refused to pick any children up, which doesn't cost any time or food.
And again, stop being a mom with your attitude. Or at least for a while until you quit with your snowball abortions and the like.
I see myself as Eve, the creator of the camp and I feel responsible for setting things up so that the future generations can actually survive. Long term survival is my main goal. I have a set of tasks and I need to do them in a limited time and if I don't, the camp most likely dies out.
You're suggesting that I take time out of these tasks and devote them to teaching people. I could do that. But it would mean that absolutely essential stuff doesn't get done.
I can see that there's a trade off where teaching increases productivity and I'm ok with trying to go for a bit more teaching. I'm just not willing to do it at the cost of the camp's future.I guess this made me realize that I am not building my camps for newbies to live in. I build them for people that at least know how to survive. Maybe newbie isn't even the right word. I mean unwilling-to-learn-people. Because a newbie that is willing to learn can stop being a newbie within a day or two. A person unwilling to learn never advances from the newbie state, basically. And those are the kind of people I don't want to waste my time on and I don't think that's gonna change.
Two stories:
My first, what I would call 'successful', Eve run I only had one girl as I recall who I fed. She told me she was new. I said that's o. k. She helped me build a farm. The settlement lasted 20 generations, and I saw someone else play that family later on, on Twitch. They had a pump and he thought they were doing super well. I didn't make steel tools, and I'm not sure I even got any iron. I hadn't made any steel tools myself then in any situation as I recall, and even if I had, I think the farming and food approach first (I cooked eggs and usually do) was the right thing to do (I think I went boar hunting some also... I knew about that problem).
I had a spot where I had multiple children. I think my first children told me she was new and asked 'where is food?'. I showed her the banana bushes which were virtually on top of. She asked me what to do, so I told her to get branches, preferably a pump beam kit. I really just wanted enough kindling for the first fire and that was it. She brings home I think four branches, but they are somehow yew branches... the best to pick if doing them one at a time! Then she asks me what else. I wanted like 3 more clay before I started clay firing, and was still in the process of getting ready. She then tells me that she can't get any clay, because she's not old enough. I'm completely confused and go with her to the clay pit. She's trying to use a basket to empty it out, because, I guess, it looks somewhat like a fertile soil pit. So I tell her to use her hand. She then uses one of the baskets I made (I always try to get my children some baskets... I've learned it best to try to make a basket in the same trip as when I go out to the swamp for clay or adobe... though for a while I may have just been making a basket for each new child), and brings home more than enough clay that I could fire... and I will almost invariably let the first fire go out and cook eggs. What happened with the colony? I got reborn like a dozen or so generations later, and the settlement is doing fine. Some other family actually came by and joined my family at some point in the settlement, and they don't seem to have any major problems.
Sure, if you have all new players as children, your lineage probably ends up doomed. But even then not necessarily. All families need in this game is security from animals that can kill you and the ability to keep their pip bars above zero. I suspect that you take a blacksmithing approach to being an Eve, so I'll write the following with that in mind. Your children can't build a farm, suggesting them as newbies? Adapt. Forget about getting any branches beyond when you need for the first fire. Fire up a clay nozzle and two bowls... that's it..., and get started on farming if you feel concerned about their skill level (I did it once when my first child threw soil right above my kiln before I had made a fire). Forget gathering iron, let alone making an axe as an Eve. It isn't like the axe will substantial use if the fire goes out anyways. A shovel? But that won't have enough value until stones get collected (sure digging up tule stumps is nice and the nearby soil pit early, but neither is as bad as your children starving). And a shovel isn't necessary until all nearby ponds dry out or can't get found. Build them a farm and hope someone figures out how to eat or to tend to it, and hope their children can clean up or improve any mess. Get wild food for them also.
And finally, there is no set of tasks that you must get done for your lineage to survive. There exist Eves with decent families who don't even build a kiln, let alone fire clay. Haven't you heard of the 'child Eve' start? Basically in that you're the daughter of some Eve and she dies early. She might not even have a sharp stone. Her lineage still survives, because her daughter has a daughter who lives or she finds a spot and builds something with her children.
this also drives me crazy, when people don't know how to gather. If you're in a new camp and it isn't obvious what to do, grab a berry and go look for basket materials, and then gather. Even just running back with 3 berries to set on the ground can be crucial to allow people to stay at the camp long enough to accomplish something.
It's better to gather onions or bananas or cactus fruit. Also, burdock if you know about a sharp stone, which the tutorial does teach you. I have sometimes complained to my children if they bring home berries in a basket to speak honestly. Now I will only complain to my children about getting berries in a basket if we don't have a clay bowl. If a single clay bowl lies around, berries should simply not get gathered in a basket. Berries not in a clay bowl decay within a certain time period. So, berries on the ground might go to waste if they do not get eaten or split into seeds immediately, and since berries take 12 minutes to grow, while corn, carrots, and green beans take only 4 minutes to grow, growing corn, carrots, or green beans can work better if players know how to eat those foods.
I wanted to make my mother's life easier for her so I went out into the wilderness to collect materials so we could do things for ourselves and we wouldn't have to resort to stealing, I made myself a basket and collected things, I made some ovens for food and collected some carrot seeds for our farm and made my last theft from the south village of a single wheat seed so we could produce our own.
Did you make multiple ovens or did you mean made what the game calls an 'oven' and you think of it as multiple ovens?
Berry pies and potatoes. It's a little early to be speaking of such bad things in any sort of good grace unless we're trying to make an April fools joke.
If your population is going through the steps to eat different foods sure making a few berry pies and baked potatoes is great however if you're not playing with a small group or playing on the main server making these things are bad.
I wasn't making an April Fools joke. Your last comment especially indicates that you don't believe that players on the main server won't take the steps to eat different foods or learn to do so. Both berry pies and potatoes are good foods. Sure, potatoes cost shovel charges, but just convert how many dug graves you see in a main server game into potatoes. At least you didn't say something as silly as:
Yum is a toy.
To the person who said that:
+10 yum often isn't all that difficult after a few generations. That's (+ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) = 55 bars of food that a player doesn't have to eat if not overfilling their pip bar, or doing so just as much as they would otherwise. That's the equivalent of 11 berries with no yum and almost an entire mutton pie plate.
Wild food yum meaning a berry, a wild carrot, a burdock, an onion, a banana, and a cactus fruit is (+ 1 2 3 4 5) = 15 yum. That's an entire mutton pie bite that a player won't have to eat. Throw in a potato and half baked potato and that's (+ 15 6 7) = 28 yum. That's almost two bites of a mutton pie possible on a trip with extra space clear to take something else home. And it's even better if a yum chain gets started with domestic foods at home like a berry in a bowl or something.
Spoonwood wrote:I think that every cooked food is more efficient than the raw form, including berry pie.
Berry pies are a poor time investment, because they require more processing for hardly any benefit. Using the wheat to make meat pies would provide much more food with a lower resource and labour cost. The potential for a yum bonus is not a good enough to make berry pies worth making, unless you have run out of options. It is a waste of time and berries.
Some foods are ONLY good for yum bonus and entertainment value. Berry pies and mango slices and baked potatoes fall into this category. Never try to feed a whole village with mango slices ...
I disagree. I really don't like the sound of 'only good for yum bonus', because the more the yum bonus gets used without overfilling of the pip bar too much when eating, the more that can get done and get done with less eating (at least... given that foods aren't too far away from each other). Berry pies are still worthy making. They just come as "worst" type of pie.
Also, I disagree strongly about potatoes. A strong use of potatoes, which isn't possible with other foods, is for long trips. Unlike most other foods which gives you 13 bars of time, a whole potato does not require a bowl or plate to stay on. I say 13 bars, because it's 6 pips for the first bite and effectively 6 pips for the second bite plus the yum bonus. So, if both bites get eaten on a trip, that clears up space in one's backpack or basket for more to bring home and can fill one up before heading for home. Potatoes qualify as better than any other food for long trips given that a player tries to keep his or her yum chain going and wants to bring home as much as possible. And keeping a yum chain going on a long trip can help out a lot.
Mangoes qualify as an intergenerational project, and I had to learn how to grow mango trees. Mango trees probably should be the last new type of thing planted, unless you feel sure that the water supply has gotten under control, and you have descendants who you believe will know how to grow them. I think I agree on those, since so many other foods can easily and can also effectively get made earlier that even eating mangoes for yum probably isn't worth the time, at least for players trying to minimize, as much as reasonable, overfilling their pip bar when eating food. I think I agree on those.
"Staple efficient foods."
I think that every cooked food is more efficient than the raw form, including berry pie. Also, if we want to talk about water and soil, we should talk a little about turkeys, cooked rabbits, cooked mutton from wild sources (which also can yield mouflon hide in the process for anyone likely to be moving through cold areas), and eggs. Eggs especially since they don't have other uses and the eggs regenerate over time... especially if you have enough ponds. Sure, maybe things get a bit more cramped with eggs, but inconvenience of space is better than starvation. Additionally, animals are less likely to harm people in cluttered villages, because animals can't harm anyone standing on an item.
DestinyCall wrote:But do not make any pies with berry. It is wasteful and, since all the pies look alike, it is too hard for people to tell them apart for yum purposes. It would be better to provide obvious pie alternatives, like stew or burritos, rather than six different types of identical-looking pies.
This is a good warning to share. Between all the available foods now, only 4 turn out to be "food loss" recipes for a village: Rabbit Berry Pie (-56 pips), Rabbit Berry Carrot Pie (-52 pips), Buttered Bread with Skim Milk (-28 pips), and Bean Burritos (-9 pips).
A cooked rabbit is 10 pips. 6 berries in a bowl is 30 pips. So, 40 pips for a rabbit and a bowl of berries. Each bite of a berry rabbit pie is 18 pips. So, a berry rabbit pie plate is 72 pips. Even not accounting for yum, where is the pip loss? Sounds like pip gain of (72 - 40) = 32 pips. Sure, they might get overeaten, but 32/4 = 8. So, the break even point on each bite of a berry rabbit pies is eating a berry rabbit pie when down (18 - 8) = 10 pips. If down more, the berry rabbit pies beat out the other two foods. Alright, so we account for yum. But, your settlement probably still has berries and has berry rabbit pies, so that evens out. Sure seems like berry rabbit pies win.
A cooked rabbit is 10 pips. 6 berries in a bowl is 30 pips. A carrot is 7 pips. So, 47 pips. Rabbit berry carrot pie is 20 pips per bite. So, the plate is 80 pips. Sounds like a pip gain of (80 - 47) = 33 pips. That's a little more than 8 extra pips per bite (33 / 4). So, the break even point is eating a berry rabbit carrot pie is eating when down (20 - 8) = 12 pips. Eating down more than 12 pips makes the rabbit berry carrot pie even better. Again, your colony has or fairly quickly can have berries and carrots still. Both foods are wild. So, again it seems like the pie wins.
I don't know how you came to the conclusion that skim milk is somehow wasteful. Were you comparing it to whole milk? Alright, maybe whole milk probably should come before skim milk. But, shucked corn is a mere 5 pips. Each bowl of skim milk is 8 pips. A whole bucket of fluid minus one (for the cream) is exactly how many bowls? It's at least 6, right? So, if it's only six, and I think it's more, that's 48 pips from skim milk. Your settlement probably has shucked corn also. So, this really isn't close. The difficulties lie in getting a suitable structure up for cows and getting the necessary tools for buckets for milk and/or getting your hands on a bow and two arrows. The math seems overwhelming really. The berry pies I talked about above have the drawback in that fewer bites exist (4 for each pie, and 7 or 8 for the raw foods), so not as many mouths could get fed. This doesn't exist with skim milk. More bites... er... drinks exist with skim milk. Skim milk wins by a landslide.
A bowl of green beans has 6 bites. Each bite is 4 pips. So, that's 24 pips. A bowl of cooked beans can turn into 6 bean burritos with the wheat. Bean burritos are 19 pips. That's 6 servings of bean burritos for 19 pips each, correct? That's a whopping 114 pips. (114 - 24) = 90 pip increase! The same number of bites for green beans and bean burritos. Sure seems like a massive pip gain to me, and what is the drawback? Sure you have to find the flat rocks, and set up a production line, cook those beans over hot coals hopefully not use the main fire which unfortunately went out to hot coals, have plates, and use wheat. But, so what. 90 pip increase and the same number of mouths to feed!
A bowl of berries is 30 pips. Each bite of a berry pie is 12 pips. So, a berry pie plate is 48 pips. That's a gain of (48 - 30) = 18 pips, which still gives (18 / 4) = a little more than 4 extra pips per bite. So, the break even point is eating a berry pie when down 8 pips, and if more, up to twelve, berry pie has even more benefits.
Alright, so the above ignores the wheat, correct? Each bite of bread is 8 pips, and there exist 8 bites on a plate. So, 64 less for each one, and even skim milk I think still overwhelming still good, I'll ignore it. Edit: Wait... wheat is either 4 raw pie crusts or 6 wheat dough. Thus, I think the meaningful number is (64 / 4) = 16 for each pie plate and (16 + 8) = 24 for a full bean burrito plate. Now, that's (32 - 16) = 16 for rabbit berry pie, (33 - 16) = 17 for rabbit berry carrot pie, (90 - 24) = 66 for bean burritos, and (18 - 16) = 2 for berry pie. But now that's all bread and less yum, because you probably still have berries or carrots or can get them from wild sources. Also, the bread will have to take time rise in bowls, unlike filling up a bowl, mashing it if needed, and then dumping it out onto a plate. So, just making bread will require more clay, and more time before cooking can get started. Even berry pie still ends up as worth it in terms of efficiency. The only deficiency is that vegetables in pies means fewer mouths can get fed at a time, but if people look for wild foods, I'm not sure that's so much of a problem.
Also, with those berry and carrot pies once those berries get onto a plate, someone can get started on regrowing those foods. Processing mutton into mutton meat is a more time consuming process than any other pie type, since sheep need to get sheared, killed, and cleaned up.
fragilityh14 wrote:At the very least, it's of enough value to vary up the pie types and have different foods around camp. Also, having a more diverse food system is generally more stable and more fun.
I strongly agree with providing a varied food supply for yum bonus, after the bakery is well-stocked with mutton pies. Meat pies (and milk) are the most labor/resource efficient foods in the game, so they should be the staple food of anyone who is NOT actively managing their yum bonus. But if your vlage has enough food variety to allow people to get +10 yum or higher ... it is awesome. Especially for the elderly, who normally struggle to work in their last ten years of life.
One word of caution, however. When it comes to pie variety, aim for mutton and rabbit pies first. Then make bread and cooked mutton. If you have enough carrots, you can make rabbit/carrot. But do not make any pies with berry. It is wasteful and, since all the pies look alike, it is too hard for people to tell them apart for yum purposes. It would be better to provide obvious pie alternatives, like stew or burritos, rather than six different types of identical-looking pies.
It can simply get done quicker and faster to make a variety of pie types than to only make meat pies and then make stew or burritos also. Also, where are those mutton pies coming from early on? I guess I've only do it in solo Eve runs, but I can easily imagine making 7 pie types before sheep in a more regular village. And if the badlands are close, or a mouflon is close enough it's possible to get all 8 pie types before sheep. 7 pie types plus berries, berry in a bowl, domestic carrots, popcorn, green beans, and shucked corn is well more than +10 yum before considering burdock, onions, cactus fruit, bananas, and wild carrots. That can also get done before a knife. I think 8 pies is enough to justify the use of kindling. The hard part though might be having those early rabbits, since sometimes prairies aren't close or no one wants to hunt a few rabbits.
Also, do you want more weaker players early on? Because encouraging people not to go for yum early on, I think, encourages more weaker players. Going for more yum, I think, will attract stronger players and encourage them to stay around, and they'll probably use those foods fairly well. Or at least that's my hope. I don't see enough to justify waiting to improve yum, other than waiting on things like potatoes, sauerkraut, and mangoes. And really I think a multiple pie approach might lead to more colonies getting things done earlier. If anything, mutton pie should be the last type of pie cooked.
All of this talk about bean burritos versus other foods considers individual foods in the abstract. Really, that math isn't accurate. Why? Because it doesn't account for yum at all. Making BOTH green beans and bean burritos in a life, I doubt would be all that difficult. One can start on the green beans, prepare the burritos, grab the beans, and then cook the burritos. Would that even take a decade? It's probably two more sources of yum for a colony. If someone complains about clay bowls with green beans, then just get them more clay. Clay doesn't decay, and it comes as hard to imagine a colony having too many clay bowls and plates (unless it doesn't have enough adobe I suppose).
Also, I couldn't disagree with the person more saying the following:
"If you have mutton or rabbit meat available, you should make meat pies."
Just no, simply no. I mean especially if it's not the all too common mutton and rabbit pie only. It's done all too often and often yucky. The cook should make rabbit pie, mutton pie, cooked mutton meat, berry pie, berry carrot pie, carrot pie, berry rabbit pie, carrot rabbit pie, berry rabbit pie, and bread or at least as many as those as the cook can get from one fire in an oven. If there exist multiple cooks, then two of each type. Oh... and cooking a turkey last also would be a good bonus, if a hunter got one home. Ignoring the mutton meat, that's still +8 yum over cooking only meat pies. That's also +8 for the last pie yum. So, in effect that (+ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8) = 36 yum from cooking multiple types of foods. If players eat other things also, then that yum is even more beneficial and powerful. 45, 55, 66, 78, 91 yum and so on, and those multiple pie types can pay off. Pie yum farming can also start fairly early on.