Goods Simplification Proposal

[OzzyKP]

Those of us who enjoy the We the People mod enjoy the complexity of the large number of goods (otherwise we'd play other mods). But I think you can have too much of a good thing. I like goods that have multiple uses (like Down which can be used for furniture and coats), and I dislike intermediate goods which just serve to lengthen supply chains and add complexity without adding fun.

Here is a modest proposal to trim the goods and simplify supply chains a bit, nothing radical:

Remove:
Peat - The only use of this is to make pottery. I'm unclear if peat is actually used to make pottery in the real world anyhow, so it seems an unnecessary complication.
Geese - I don't see a need to have both chickens and geese. They provide the same resource, down, so why have both? I understand they are bred on different terrain, but... why? It seems unnecessary to have both. Cut geese, or replace both with "Poultry".
Milk - Milk is useless on its own. Not a valuable trade good (and honestly, how are you going to ship it across the ocean without it spoiling?). Eliminate either the milkmaid or the cheesemaker and have the remaining one just produce cheese directly without needing an intermediate step.
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - I think this also creates an unnecessary step in the process. I propose Cloth + Dye = Clothes. It is unnecessary to include the intermediate step of dying the cloth.
Cacao - Another intermediate good that should be cut. Also from my quick read on the subject, most of the use of cacao is for chocolate anyhow, so why not cut out the middle man? Go straight to chocolate. Maybe make some space in the market for some confection that uses bakery products, sugar & vanilla.

Now, I don't want to mess up the grid of goods or throw in extra spaces or weirdness in the actual screen, so I propose replacing these goods, primarily with goods that can't be produced but need to be purchased. I think this would enhance the triangle trade mechanism of the game.

Add:

Tea - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Porcelain - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Silk - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Jewelry - Either a Europe only good, or something that can be made with silver, gold & gems.
Books/Paper - Another Europe only good. Though maybe paper could be an interesting manufactured good to create using hemp or lumber. I dunno.
Saltpeter - Combined with charcoal to make gunpowder. Significant sources in Chile.

Adding a port in Asia is probably beyond the scope of the mod (though it'd be cool), so those goods could just be available for purchase in Europe as expensive luxury items.

 

[bogwart]

Agree on Peat. For Pottery production, it could maybe replaced with Charcoal?

Agree on Geese. Exchange it with general Poultry and let it grow on Marshland, Wetland, Shrubland, Tundra.

Don't agree on Milk/Milkmaid/Cheese. The maids boost reproduction rate of Cows, Goats, Sheep. Which could be crucial e.g. in some hilly environment where food is short and you don't have food for an extra goat herder. Milk and cheese are also products which make the colonists happy. (Yes, it's unrealistic to send fresh milk over the ocean and sell it there but AFAIK the game concept doesn't allow products to be sold in the colonies only, isn't it?)

Don't agree on Colored Cloth. Weavers make Wool or (Cotton) Cloth, and Dyers make Colored Wool or Cloth. Wool and Cloth are in the 8+ gold range, their colored equivalents in the 17+ range. I like that you can produce/sell the simple/cheap as well as the refined/expensive product.

Don't agree on Cocoa pods and Cocoa, which can be sold on domestic markets as is or (refined) as Chocolate. In my current game you can sell Cocoa pods for (E/A/P) 4/3/3 gold, Cocoa for 8/8/10 gold, and Chocolate for 19/17/21 gold. So if you're in a jungly region you can make tons of money after building a Roastery and Confectionery.

As for the grid problem - yeah maybe two additional buy-only goods would be the easiest solution. But as we already have Luxury Goods, IMHO it doesn't make much sense.

 

[raystuttgart]

Well, modding and gaming is personal taste.

Personally none of these ideas are appealing to me ... but also I am taking a break now anyways.
I like the goods / yields the way they are ... otherwise I would not have modded it that way.

Also, so much effort has been put into the Buildings, Professions, Experts, Balancing ... that it is unlikely to be changed again in WTP base mod.
From what I have heard, the team also really likes it the way it is. Nobody said that he is interested to change Production Chains anymore.

The great thing in modding: If you want something, simply create it yourself to your liking.
So if somebody wants to create a modmod like that (and maybe publish it), go ahead.

Spoiler :

Otherwise the topic of Yields has been discussed so many times after WTP 4.0, that I do not feel like discussing it again.
Some people love the new Yields in WTP 4.1 ... some people hate them ... that is just the way it is in life ... you can never make everybody happy.

Also it is unlikely that there will be any real feature release of WTP core mod in the near future anyways.
(The only things that are currently happening is stuff like improvements, bugfixes, graphics and maybe small events.)

If you really want something like that, most likely you have to create a mod(mod) yourself ... or become a team member to have a say in WTP development.
Otherwise the chance that somebody else will invest 50 to 100 hours of effort for your own personal taste is extremely low.

 

[OzzyKP]

Agree on Peat. For Pottery production, it could maybe replaced with Charcoal?

Agree on Geese. Exchange it with general Poultry and let it grow on Marshland, Wetland, Shrubland, Tundra.

Ah yea, charcoal would be a good idea. I like goods that have more than one use. And yea, I figured if we consolidated to just chickens or just poultry it would be raised in all the terrain chickens & geese currently can breed in.

Don't agree on Milk/Milkmaid/Cheese. The maids boost reproduction rate of Cows, Goats, Sheep. Which could be crucial e.g. in some hilly environment where food is short and you don't have food for an extra goat herder. Milk and cheese are also products which make the colonists happy. (Yes, it's unrealistic to send fresh milk over the ocean and sell it there but AFAIK the game concept doesn't allow products to be sold in the colonies only, isn't it?)

Yea, I figured that the newly combined profession would still have the reproduction boosting function of the milkmaid. Maybe just change the name to dairy maid and she produces cheese instead of milk. I guess I didn't realize that milk was consumed in the domestic market too, but still, if we're replacing milk with other consumable goods then that won't be disruptive.

Don't agree on Colored Cloth. Weavers make Wool or (Cotton) Cloth, and Dyers make Colored Wool or Cloth. Wool and Cloth are in the 8+ gold range, their colored equivalents in the 17+ range. I like that you can produce/sell the simple/cheap as well as the refined/expensive product.

Don't agree on Cocoa pods and Cocoa, which can be sold on domestic markets as is or (refined) as Chocolate. In my current game you can sell Cocoa pods for (E/A/P) 4/3/3 gold, Cocoa for 8/8/10 gold, and Chocolate for 19/17/21 gold. So if you're in a jungly region you can make tons of money after building a Roastery and Confectionery.

Yea, I'm saying we get rid of the Dyery and Dyers altogether. It would give us more space in the city for another building (like a workshop/laboratory). I know we can sell the intermediate goods, but it just seems like an unnecessary step nonetheless. I mean, in theory, you could have a profession that converts sugar into molasses, then the distillery converts molasses into rum. Molasses could be sold separately, but... why? Would that be more fun/interesting than just going sugar to rum? I think it is just clutter and overcomplicates things for little gain. And it gives us more space to add different, interesting goods (like tea, silk, etc).

As for the grid problem - yeah maybe two additional buy-only goods would be the easiest solution. But as we already have Luxury Goods, IMHO it doesn't make much sense.

Finding the right balance between granularity and abstraction is the key. A five step process to get clothes (sheep->wool->wool cloth->colored wool cloth->clothes) seems far too granular to me, and lumping together a dozen or more products into Luxury Goods seems too abstract to me.

I see it as a balance issue as well. As discussed in this thread, there is a problem with too much money in the mid to late game. You produce everything you need and don't have anything you really need to spend money on. If you had more goods that couldn't be produced, but needed to be purchased it'd give you something to do with all that money. Plus it would enhance the realism of the game. The colonies were never self sufficient. There was always quite a lot of goods they purchased from Europe. Simplifying production chains not only makes the production part of the game more streamlined and fun, it also provides space to better model the need to purchase goods overseas.

 

[Brosso B.]

and I dislike intermediate goods which just serve to lengthen supply chains and add complexity without adding fun.

Complexity =/= depth.

Milk - Milk is useless on its own. Not a valuable trade good (and honestly, how are you going to ship it across the ocean without it spoiling?). Eliminate either the milkmaid or the cheesemaker and have the remaining one just produce cheese directly without needing an intermediate step.
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - I think this also creates an unnecessary step in the process. I propose Cloth + Dye = Clothes. It is unnecessary to include the intermediate step of dying the cloth.
Cacao - Another intermediate good that should be cut.

Personally, I think there should be more intermediate steps, for example when you pick cotton, it becomes cotton bolls, then you need to either separate the fibres from the seeds by hand or invent the Cotton Gin to make that process easier and quicker. This produces cotton lint. The next phase is to create cotton bales from the lint, which can now be traded (It's impossible to export or sell the earlier products, except perhaps to natives to troll them). From that you can produce threads, which then can become cloth. By combining thread, cloth and needles you can produce further products that are actually useful (if we're feeling generous). Note that if trade unions are implemented, then the "needle threader" profession should only be open to expert needler threaders, otherwise the rest of the factory goes on strike.
Needles should have their own production chain, with at least 10 steps. The more the better, though.

About Cacao, it was implemented a lot earlier than a lot of these other products; I think it was just chosen as a standard cash crop for tropics/jungles for mechanical and balance reasons. It's a bit like the green Coca plants you get from tropical hills. I wouldn't think too deeply about it.

Adding a port in Asia is probably beyond the scope of the mod (though it'd be cool), so those goods could just be available for purchase in Europe as expensive luxury items.

This Asia thing is a really cool idea, even if it might be a little unrealistic or whatever. It would be a good excuse to have some yields you can't get elsewhere, and give a benefit to settling both East and West coasts. Imagine you have to import Asian products via Europe early/mid-game, but by having ways of accessing Asia directly you could cut out the middleman. I think incentive structures like this would genuinely add depth to the game.

I like the goods / yields the way they are ... otherwise I would not have modded it that way.

As the saying goes, the reason they don't put erasers on the ends of pencils is because no one ever makes mistakes.
At least that's what I told my son when he asked why ours doesn't have an eraser.

 

[raystuttgart]

the reason they don't put erasers on the ends of pencils is because no one ever makes mistakes.

The word "mistakes" would suggest that there is right or wrong in matters of personal taste.
And all discussions in gaming and modding are basically nothing else.

I like what I like ... others like what they like ... opinions simply differ.
But every modder is free to work on whatever he likes and to ignore whatever he does not.

I can only tell you that the WTP team is currently happy with the Yields / Production Chains.
Most of our fans over at discord also told us that they really like the new Yields and would never want to go back.

I am not claiming that everyone loves everything we do ... that would be illusional.
But we also never tried to make everybody happy ... it would be unrealistic.

We mostly mod simply for ourselves ... the stuff we want to play ourselves.
Sharing the mod in public is more or less only a side effect though, not the ultimate goal.

So the good thing ... I have no boss in my spare time.
In modding I can do whatever I like ... which may also includes taking a break from modding as I do now anyways.

-----

Thus feel free to create a mod(mod) of your own in any way you like ... if you are willing to invest the required time and effort.
Because in the end only the people that invest the time and effort actually decide what will be implemented or not.

Still ... keep having fun discussing.

 

[Darnokthemage]

A simplification modmod would be great, And we can keep discussing it, even if nothing comes of it. As has been said earlier, one of the biggest problems is dividing goods into things that for gameplay or historical reason have no reason to be seperated.
Down and wild bird feathers have no reason to be seperate, wild birds were a really important source of down in colonial times.

Geese and chickens could be combined into "fowl", producing down and food (representing eggs and slaughtered older roosters).

Cowhides/Goatskin/Pigskins could be combined into "hides".

Milk should be removed, and the milkmaid too, Milking was made on the farm itself by women and animal tenders. Replace it with cows producing food, hide and cheese, if cheese would be kept.

All the dyes should just be reunited into a "dye" resource. etc

 

[Brosso B.]

If anything I would support different dyes over goods that are 'city based'. Things that are map dependent; varying by climate and are rarer are good for making it more interesting and important to interface with the way the map generated and to plan out your city placements and development, it can also incentivize expansion or wars to gain those resources.
At the end of the day, I think the root mechanic of the game is generating a map and then playing out those cards as they were dealt. In general I'd say things that minimise the map and terrain detract from that core (though obviously it doesn't have to be 100% slavishly all about the map). Stuff that you import and then produce regardless of the terrain also contributes to games feeling 'samey' because that option is never contingent. This is also part of the reason I like the smaller city radii (1-tile radius instead of 2). The larger the city radius, the less important the city placement becomes.

For similar reasons, I think* wood should become less renewable, but you should get a bigger 'lump-sum' when you chop them down entirely. And it should be more profitable to sell back to Europe. This would open up a legitimate strategy of expanding early for the purpose of logging and getting a headstart financially.

Edit: *I'm not certain about this, it's just a passing thought

 

[HiFiPanda]

Quick review of original post.

Peat - agree, this one is just weird, it was used pretty much only for heating, it's a poor alternative for coal and wood and nothing else. Unless someone wants to add Heating as mechanics. Peat can go and won't be missed.
Geese - I won't mind it even though it's a small bloat, but if we want to change it somehow, you could just merge it with chickens into Poultry
Milk - problematic part is indeed lack of ways to preserve it in game's timeline. If it was up to me I would make it a product that can't be moved outside of settlement
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - dyeing was a huge industry through the ages and it's way more complex than it might seem to someone who never looked into that topic. No reason to change it imo.
Cacao - you are so incorrect here, so much incorrect here that I expect you next to claim that Cleopatra was black. Until XIX century people were drinking chocolate, nobody shipped to Europe chocolate as we know it nowadays, because it wasn't a thing. If anything it's the Chocolate that should be considered for removal. Or just like Milk turned into end product just for local market.