Watch let’s plays on YouTube then complain if your questions are not answered

Call me old fashioned. The game should be playable by itself. Self-explanatory. While I should be able to watch a "Let's Play" to get strategy ideas, basic issues like "gameplay," "training" and "movement" should not require an external video.

Peter, you're not wrong; the game is effectively a beta version in early access. Unfortunately Jon felt it was a good idea to release it a year early, most likely for money reasons.

Originally posted by petercorless:

Call me old fashioned. The game should be playable by itself. Self-explanatory. While I should be able to watch a "Let's Play" to get strategy ideas, basic issues like "gameplay," "training" and "movement" should not require an external video.

The tooltips should cover all that, you don't need external sources to get going.

All the information is provided in game, albeit often hidden away in the expansive tooltips system as mentioned above.

Only Active units with a Power stat may fight on the worldmap ie: Hunters, Archers, Spearmen, etc. Explorers can defend themselves, but they cannot initiate combat.

Foraging can be performed by any of the starting Active professions ie: Hunters, Reapers, Gatherers, Diggers, Wood Collectors, and later Trappers.

By "basic supplies" I'm assuming you mean raw materials such as food/wood/stone/cloth? Or are you referring to the supply limit provided by each terrain tile for active units?

Roles you should designate are uniquely subjective to each playthrough, depending on what spawns around you and the traits your clans start with. Lots of cows and sheep nearby? Make a couple hunters, and later switch them up to ranchers & butchers. Got wheat coming out your ears? Send in the reapers to forage, and later upgrade them to farmers and bakers. Chop a few lone forest tiles with wood cutters, and later set up larger logging operations in vast expanses of trees. Nothing nearby of any real use? Pack up your settlement and move it closer to where the goods are.

I watched a Let's Play (quill18), and read through a lot of tooltips. Still have problems with basic tasks. Very difficult to understand why I'd want one role vs. another.

Would help if you had more of a "balance sheet" view: how much you are likely to expend, and how much you are going to produce in a turn.

Combat system is still woefully underexplained. Archers were melee attacking bandits. There was no explanation on how to actually conduct ranged attacks.

Also, there's a hell of a lot of attrition in winter.

Wasn't having fun so hung it up for now.

btw: Thanks for the tips and encouragement. Normally love 4x games. This just seems underdone.

I think everything is very well explained in the ingame tutorial. There are problems with ui like looking at the xp bar, but the main gameplay is clear. Maybe you want some kind of interactive tutorial where every step is shown. But this takes a lot of time and many things are open for change. It is a complex game, but there are many more games which are not explained at all.

The attrition in winter is one of the most important aspects of the game. I'm 20 hours in and have barely done any combat.

The combat system is extremely simplified. Basically it's just a direct match up of your power vs their power and a bit of a dice roll. There is no melee or ranged differentiation in the game as of yet.

Winter is supposed to be punishing for active units on the map. That's a core mechanic of the game. You're forced to prepare for the harsh winter beforehand, otherwise suffer the consequences of being stranded out in the cold. That said, it's also very easy to avoid attrition damage by simply camping your units for a turn and not having them perform any actions if they're outside somewhere with low supply.

I agree that it would be nice to have a better layout for the resources, though it does tell you if you're gaining/losing certain stocks and food consumption is explained more thoroughly in the tooltips over it. Learning what you'll want to focus on is part of learning how to play the game, imo, but in general you want to focus on food production early on followed by a way to make stone blocks for permanent structures later. Any production building made of stone will not cause the resource it's built on to decay over time, which allows you to develop more stable industries.