Adobe or MudBricks

[Badger_Bishop]

I was on an 8 hour trip to visit some friends and go to a business meating yesterday and I was bored, having left my book and ipod at home, so naturally I was thinking about H&H and what I could do to have more fun. That is when it struck me, Adobe! or mudbricks would be a great way allow noobs/lazy people to produce better Qulity bricks without having to traipse around the map digging for Q90+ clay.

There are pros an cons to this of course:
Pros:
Basic clay would be able to be turned into better than average clay with the use of high Q straw or plant fibers
Anyone who has taken the time to cultivate wheat will be able to produce better than basic bricks
Alternate styles of buildings can be added with an adobe look to them
Another use for sand, meaning people will actually need more than 29 sand that is currently needed(9 winebottles and a wineglass)

Cons:
Anyone who already has access to high Q clay also probably farms even higher Q wheat, so they's be making even better bricks than anyone else
Due to the nature of making adobe bricks you'd need to add a tool to make them in(something with 2 "fuel bars" one for water, and one for straw, then a window for sand and clay)
If you add adobe bricks you pretty much requires stuff to be added to use the adobe, buildings and alternate looks for stuff made from them





TL:DR
Adobe bricks could be nice if implimented and they'll allow people who can't get high Q clay to make due by farming and using straw in conjunction to basic Q10 clay/water/sand to produce the better Q items needed to run a city.

[bitza]

seems to me this is a bad idea, since clay quality is a building block for damn near everything, having clay be incrementable by a skill (farming) would lead to the same insanity as psyche and jewelry (q1000 thanes)

[Badger_Bishop]

seems to me this is a bad idea, since clay quality is a building block for damn near everything, having clay be incrementable by a skill (farming) would lead to the same insanity as psyche and jewelry (q1000 thanes)

I have only been playing for a few months, so I can't really speak on the q1000 thanes. But would being able to creat higher quality bricks really be that bad? It's pretty hard to get any decent quality clay without having to spend hours looking or gathering to trade for it. Why not allow people who farm to accomplish the same things as the people who find farming boring and instead wander around looking for hotspots.

If you could explain a bit more about the "psyche and jewelry" bit I would be more than willing to try to understand the point of view and conceed if it's valid.

[AnnaC]

Well, it would undermine the value of local regions if you could just farm your way to better bricks. The only way to really balance this is to make farming more related to the local soil quality as well.

[Badger_Bishop]

Well, it would undermine the value of local regions if you could just farm your way to better bricks. The only way to really balance this is to make farming more related to the local soil quality as well.

The trouble with your arguement is clay quality isn't the only factor in brick quality right now. The fuel, and the kiln quality make a difference. If you made adobe, then you would have a chance to augment a lack of high quality clay with the high quality straw instead and you would still be dependant on your brick mold, and probably the herbalist table for drying them. Its a matter of putting in extra steps and a ton more materials to get the same affect.

Here is a example that assumes a player who farms instead of wandering and finding the appropriate hotspots:

I put a Q90 coal into a Q90 kiln with Q90 clay, I get Q90 bricks
Quality of a brick is determined by: ((2*ClayQ) + KilnQ + FuelQ) / 4
I had to trade for the coal, and clay, as well as the clay that was used to make my kiln.

To get the Adobe you'd be using Q10 sand, Q27 brick mold*, Q90 herbalist table, Q24 water, Q29 clay**, and some Q360 straw, to get the same Q90 bricks
In this case you would have undriedt brick quality determined by: (clayQ+strawQ+waterQ+sandQ+Brick MoldQ)/5 (or make one item loaded and make it /6 instead)
Then you'd have to dry it, and it would be capped by the Q of your herbalist table

*: I can get boards of Q27 and assume boards would be the primary component of the mold.
**: Even I have been able to find Q29 clay and Q24 water

The diffence is the efforts put into them. Sure,if I find a Q90+ spot I can use that to make 10-20 bricks a day forever but I had to find the spot, otherwise I have to trade for the clay/bricks. If I use the adobe method then I had to go through 72 cycles, minimum, of planting wheat to get to the Q of straw I need, as well as having a 360 in my farming skill. The trade off is that I don't have to gather a thousand cavebulbs to do this, because I only had to trade for the Q90 herb table. There are pros and cons to the idea, and it's not perfect, but it is an idea that could be implimented and used by lots of people to add a nonlinear progression of the game. Something that gives more options for the same outcome.

Adobe isn't a fix all for not finding high Q clay, but it would augment the ability for new players to produce things that were worth trading to the established cities.

[spectacle]

The problem is that the big cities will be using the same method but with q500 straw and q300 herbal tables as well as q90 clay and water to make bricks of quite ridiculous quality, and the new cities will still be left behind.

[Badger_Bishop]

The problem is that the big cities will be using the same method but with q500 straw and q300 herbal tables as well as q90 clay and water to make bricks of quite ridiculous quality, and the new cities will still be left behind.

Very true. I guess the only thing that might have made it a good idea was using all those things to produce a couple bricks from a single combine, but there isn't anything in the game that makes more than one at a time. Also that fails as an idea because it would mean that the big cities get to use the Q90 clay/water/whatever and produce more bricks from the same amount of clay instead of making it higher quality. That of course would make it more accessible to the new cities as a the big cities could produce good stuff with less effort and keep the costs down.


I think this idea has officially failed because it would only give the well established Villages more ways to out produce anyone who is trying to get established.