Should I bother continuing?

[Kay]

I think I've gotten off to the worst start ever. The first game year went well enough, but after that, it's been going downhill. The problems started when my second harvest, in spite of plentiful seeding, cultivation, and processing facilities, managed to produce an amazing, hang on, 11000 units of grain(!). I then had to start cutting my population and relied heavily on fishing. The next year, the harvest was marginally better, weighing in at approximately 13k units. However, unlike the previous year, I had no significant grain reserves, so I had to tighten the belt even more. Now my population is too low to support the buildings I've made. My first army, which I sent out to annex more farmland yesterday, deserted. I just recently demolished my sawmill, but I still can't support the remaining buildings.

To make things even worse, the client seems to have a few problems in critical areas under OS4-update 1. Such as the fact that I can't ever seem to establish contact with other players. And that it crashes if I, by mistake, click on somebody else's land or units, forcing a reboot. Which, on my particular system, takes 3 minutes. It also crashes when entering the barracks. I only managed to enter it once using an older version of the client, and that was pure luck, as that version normally crashes on the first screen. Pretty much everything in the tavern crashes as well.

So, what do you think, is there a chance to turn things around? Or am I wasting my time? Can't say I'm having any fun with this game right now.

Kay

[Godefroy]

Hello Kay,

at very first you will have to aim on increasing your population to a limit,
where you have at least enough workers for grain. If you haven't switched to
manual cultivation yet, do it now! Put all your workers into fishing and in
springtime into harvest. Since your soldiers have already deserted, cut down
taxes, this won't harm any more.
It's not that complicated, you will find your way.

Regarding your problems on AOS4. We were running Tales of Tamar relatively
successfully on an A1 at the Games Convention in Leipzig. We surely had the
problem, that the whole system was not entirely stable and crashed a couple
of times along these 4 days. But there were no errors like the ones you described.
All screens were usable and the Map screen too.

Unfortunately I'm not that used to A1 and AOS4, since I have only AOS3.9 and Mac OS X.
So I can't say to that part really much.
But we have a couple of players using AOS1 or MorphOS.
Hope someone with A1 at hand will post here too to help you.

Kind regards,
Christian aka. Godefroy

[Wolfen]

Hey kay,

i already told you or one of your friends that you will propably need a never version of ToT for the map crash. If the last official version even has the problem, then contact me at eternity@pride.de and you will get a beta version which will work.

[Kay]

@Godefroy

Thanks for the advice regarding cultivation, I'll do as you suggested. I've used manual cultivation so far, but I've wasted some food by putting workers on both harvest and fishing for all seasons. I'll do as you say and hope things straighten out. I just hope the poor start hasn't slowed me down too much. What worries me most is that I've lost two seasons of research (and will probably lose at least two more), and that other people will be able to claim the surrounding land before me. I recon this could cost me something along the lines of 6-10 fields, which will be significant. Anyway, I'll play for a little while longer, and see if it's worth bothering.


@Wolfen

I am using the latest version available on your webpage, and I'm running the latest developer pre-release of OS4. I think the problems are only present on the updated pre-release, not the initial one. Vir, who is running the first pre-release doesn't appear to have these problems. I'll email you about the beta, and see if that works better.

Kay

[Wolfen]

ok

[Kay]

I can confirm that the beta you sent me works far better with the updated OS4 pre-release. The map crash is completely gone, and I am now able to establish contact with other players.

Now, if I could only get a decent harvest. :-/

Kay

[Wolfen]

Good to know.

[Kay]

11700 units of grain.

Kay

[Kronos]

May I ask how much you used as seed ?

Useing to much will turn the soil "sour", and it might take years to get it back to normal.

And a fast tip:
Put all your workers on ONE acre, and move them to next as soon as you came close to what the workers can reach on the acre.

Grassland is offcourse best, followed by your town, swamps and high-hills are probraly not worth to bother for you atm.

[Kay]

I think I used about 3500 last time...the first year I used 6000, though, following another tip of using about 2000 units per mill, or more. I had no idea the soil could turn sour. I will follow your advice, and see if things improve.

Thanks.

Kay

[Kay]

I have another question:
Is my drill ground supposed to disappear without me demolishing it? If not, there is some program error about.

Kay

[Godefroy]

Hi Kay,

I have another question:
Is my drill ground supposed to disappear without me demolishing it?

of course not!
What did you do the round before? Demolishing another building?
Do you get the playground offered to build again?

Kind regards,
Christian aka. Godefroy

[Kay]

If memory serves, I demolished the sawmill on the turn before. That was probably a mistake, but at least it was a mistake I actually made. I thought buildings would be torn down automatically if I could not pay for the upkeep, so I took down the most expensive, least critical, one. Next turn, both the sawmill and the drill ground were gone from the building list, although the sawmill was (and still is) visible in the city view. When I look in the "build up town" view, I see I can build the drill ground again (or could, if I had the required amount of wood), but not the sawmill.

Kay

[Kay]

24-25 000. About time!

Thanks to those who gave me advice on harvesting, I'm back on the right track now. With some luck, I might be able to send out a new army in a year's time.

That is, if I can have my drill ground back...if not, it might take a long time, as I do not have enough wood to build another one. :-/

Kay