Lo-Fi Games

Hiya!

Haven't played in 2 weeks, can't remember city names totally. Came back to me throughout the post. I updated for clarity and yours/mine sanity.

So maybe not on this game/map, but on the next predecessor, Kenshi 2.

Your towns are nice, but as I was thinking of using your world for a world in a DnD game (updated to include the creatures of dnd), I thought of the towns and cities. I thought of the towns and cities in most games. They are small apples.

These are supposed to be cities, not outposts.
Clownsteady is small and Drifter's Last is "smaller" (it does have an outside area for farming included though).
Last Stand is relatively big too, but not much there and it's destroyed.
Rebirth is big but empty of life the few times I went there. I usually just ran through the place, didn't interest me.
I haven't played in two weeks, but only 3 cities live up to their names. Blister Hill, Solitude, and World's end.

Back on topic; In Kenshi 2 I would ask for larger cities, larger towns, larger farmsteads. Blister Hill would be nicer to be 2-5 times bigger. I feel like B.H. is the most prosperous city.
Solitude and World's end have decent sized areas within the walls, but not much life (i mean sure a lot of shinobi guards to combat the ever relenting fogmen, but....)

I'd ask the map be bigger overall to accomodate these bigger cities/towns/farmsteads. Optimization is key to being able to do that with this game, but you have been making good strides in your optimization with your updates for sure.

Your current map is big, and we can only see half of it right now. But I want to see bigger cities, and thus I think a bigger world would be needed to accomodate those.

Citys grow and expand based on their population. most of the cities/towns in Kenshi only house 20-100 people. so having giant sprawling towns with sky scrapers is a bit much.

its also important to note that life on Kenshi is harsh, and seemingly without very advanced or common healthcare. its safe to assume the child mortality rate would be quite high. and with the dangers in Kenshi from predators that are far fiercer than anything on earth . (well potentially). it stands to reason that the life expectancy on Kenshi probably isn't more than 15-20yro at best. while there are no doubt people who will survive beyond that given life on Kenshi it would probably be quite rare.

so the sizes of the cities reflect the life and the population of people in Kenshi. or atleast on this specific continent/island.

there are also indicators that would suggest most of the walls and buildings in Kenshi are probably quite old. which means they probably haven't expanded much over the years. and with the constant warfare an threats from other creatures it makes sense that they wouldn't expand to much. its also important to note the amount of food they can harvest in the assorted towns.

It hurts to hear, but understood.

My two rebuttals don't hold up to game logic in this case.

Health care actually seems doggone good, when we can regenerate so quickly.

I find the low populations increase the feeling of desolation and danger in the game. It's more populous now, I believe, than in the original map, and that was a nice desolate desert. The more people there are, the more the land seems overcome. Otherwise the landscapes themselves feel downright intimidating.

I think it's a nice little perspective as is, as well.

Kind of like medieval feudal society, where there's a patch of land, and several fairly small castles scattered across it with lords constantly warring each other on the disputed lands.

So yeah, almost every town ingame is a fortress of sorts, because dangers, and fortresses are never large.

Fortresses weren't the entirety of a population, though. Usually they supported surrounding villages.

"From the tower of the watchmen to the defensed city" is an ancient saying, and it describes the progression nicely. Lookouts on the faction perimeter to warn the people in the unwalled towns when to flee to the walled cities.

The Holy Nation sorta has that, as do the Swamp dwellers. The Shek, UC, and Hivers, not so much. Mongrel and World's End are more one-offs (which is cool).

Mostly I wonder where everyone gets their food. The Holy Nation has the only significant farms, and I don't think they're supporting everyone. Seems like they could just starve out the Shek.

I do think there's plausibility space for a bigger city (although the engine might not support it). Even our ancient world had its standout cities, and this world has more tech than ours did.