It's a great game in the making, but currently, the balance is way too hardcore.

You never reach a plateau.

You're always tense, constantly outgrowing yourself. There are tools to mitigate immigration, but they are counterintuitive: it's either terror or paying to discourage travelers. Additionally, you don't really want to reduce immigration since your goal is to grow. However, when you let it happen organically, you really have no breathing space.

Rutabaga is not satisfying, and then rutabaga fever arrives. Depending on the map, your options for growing rye and transforming it into flour are really limited. Plus, moonshine is also unsatisfying, so you must divide your rye production between brewing beer and producing flour. You can pig farm to produce meat with rutabaga, but the ratios are really brutal all around. Meanwhile, you need an army, books, and a chancellery pretty quickly once you reach around 70 citizens because your lords have to not only give instructions but also entertain themselves, lead armies, conduct diplomacy, have sex, have their desires fulfilled, etc., etc.

There's no safety net. If one of your lords dies too early, you're spiraling, and buildings are decaying, while even a single cutthroat can blind your lord. You can avoid this, but then soldiers are needed, and you need to maintain them and pay for their equipment, which also degrades. Etc., etc., etc.

It's a great loop. It's mainly a matter of tweaking, in my opinion. It's just too tight for now. Things pile up, and you can't really engage with the subtleties as you're always running behind the curve.

But they know. They know, they know. Let them cook. It's EA for a reason. The first two patches already show they are conscious of their own "expert" bias.

It needs more space for creativity and expressivity. But I bet you $20 it'll come, and when it reaches 1.0, it's going to sit at 85%+ review scores.

Bravo to the dev team <3

It's a great game in the making, but currently, the balance is way too hardcore. You never reach a plateau. You're always tense, constantly outgrowing yourself. There are tools to mitigate immigration, but they are counterintuitive: it's either terror or paying to discourage travelers. Additionally, you don't really want to reduce immigration since your goal is to grow. However, when you let it happen organically, you really have no breathing space. Rutabaga is not satisfying, and then rutabaga fever arrives. Depending on the map, your options for growing rye and transforming it into flour are really limited. Plus, moonshine is also unsatisfying, so you must divide your rye production between brewing beer and producing flour. You can pig farm to produce meat with rutabaga, but the ratios are really brutal all around. Meanwhile, you need an army, books, and a chancellery pretty quickly once you reach around 70 citizens because your lords have to not only give instructions but also entertain themselves, lead armies, conduct diplomacy, have sex, have their desires fulfilled, etc., etc. There's no safety net. If one of your lords dies too early, you're spiraling, and buildings are decaying, while even a single cutthroat can blind your lord. You can avoid this, but then soldiers are needed, and you need to maintain them and pay for their equipment, which also degrades. Etc., etc., etc. It's a great loop. It's mainly a matter of tweaking, in my opinion. It's just too tight for now. Things pile up, and you can't really engage with the subtleties as you're always running behind the curve. But they know. They know, they know. Let them cook. It's EA for a reason. The first two patches already show they are conscious of their own "expert" bias. It needs more space for creativity and expressivity. But I bet you $20 it'll come, and when it reaches 1.0, it's going to sit at 85%+ review scores. Bravo to the dev team <3