The entertainment building newbie-trap

[Jedibob5]

Tried out this game recently, and my first settlement got hit by an aggravating problem resulting from a mistake much earlier in the game that I had no way of knowing I was making.

At a certain point in the game, my settlers started leaving my settlement in droves because they had no way to satisfy their entertainment need. The problem was, the first entertainment buildings were locked behind multiple techs in the research tree, so there was absolutely nothing I could do about it in the short-term besides just watch them leave.

I was enjoying the game up to that point, but this absolutely killed any interest I had in it. The game gives no indication of when lack of entertainment will become a problem or how bad it will be, then absolutely starts wrecking you with it, and if you haven't beelined the tech there is absolutely nothing you can do. The tutorial hadn't even mentioned entertainment up to that point, either.

This is a baffling design flaw, and I'm surprised I haven't really found much of any discussion of it anywhere. Screwing new players over for failing to research techs in the "correct" order multiple hours ago with no recourse isn't engaging or challenging, it's just sadistic.

If an absolutely essential building is going to be locked behind multiple layers of a tech tree, there should at least be some kind of stop-gap solution available earlier on. How did this issue make it through development and playtesting??

 

[GoHeat1988]

When I started playing this game, I did see 'unhappy' face symbols over settlers, and made the effort to highlight those settler(s). It then tells you why they are unhappy (whether it be Entertainment, food, etcetera). So then you realize that you have to satisfy those needs, and focus Research on that. I had to restart a few times before I learned more of the nuances of the game. The game doesn't spoon-feed you everything...

 

[Jedibob5]

When I started playing this game, I did see 'unhappy' face symbols over settlers, and made the effort to highlight those settler(s). It then tells you why they are unhappy (whether it be Entertainment, food, etcetera). So then you realize that you have to satisfy those needs, and focus Research on that. I had to restart a few times before I learned more of the nuances of the game. The game doesn't spoon-feed you everything...

I mean, sure, I could tell in the early game that there were a number of things making them unhappy, and that it wasn't possible to fix them all right away. The problem isn't that the entertainment need exists or even that colonists will leave if it gets too low, it's that it's a challenge with a single, specific solution and no other counterplay beyond "make a different decision several hours in the past."

Your settlers start out with several low needs that can't be reasonably satisfied right away, which indicates that they're going to have to put up with hardship for a time while the settlement focuses on pure survival. Of course, it's normal to expect that you'll have to provide more comforts as your settlement grows, but those problems will present themselves when the time comes.

The game does convey that your settlers can leave if their overall mood gets too low, but doesn't specifically call out that the entertainment need alone can trigger it. Given entertainment buildings' deeper placement in the tech tree, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a lack of entertainment couldn't be balanced out by keeping settlers' other needs high while the colony establishes itself.

After all, given that there are three prerequisite techs to the first entertainment buildings, wouldn't that indicate that those techs shouldn't be absolutely necessary before naturally reaching that tier of the tree on a balanced research strategy? If beelining a fourth-tier tech is necessary before even getting through the second tier of most other tech branches, the tech tree itself becomes an illusion of choice - if there's only one "correct" path, why not just make the tech progression linear?

Even if you do assume that failing to rush a fourth-tier tech in the early game is a genuine strategic error at the fault of the player, isn't it usually a good idea in game design to allow for some kind of counterplay to mitigate and recover from the effects of a mistake? A settler's entertainment need drops at a consistent rate, and settlers  will leave when the need bottoms out, and there are no other ways of raising entertainment without the right techs.

Given the growth curve of a settlement involves an early initial spike followed by a period of low subsequent growth, by the time the first wave of settlers declared that they were leaving, a large majority of my population had very low entertainment levels and were sure to follow soon after. This was almost certainly going to happen before I would be able to locate and scavenge enough research sites with my specialists to unlock the two techs needed, make the building, and get the settlers to use it.

I'm not frustrated because I made a strategic error and encountered negative consequences for it, I'm frustrated because I was already doomed to lose the vast majority of my settlement's population before I even knew I made a mistake.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

I'm not frustrated because I made a strategic error and encountered negative consequences for it, I'm frustrated because I was already doomed to lose the vast majority of my settlement's population before I even knew I made a mistake.

This makes no sense.

If you had known you make a mistake you wouldnt have made that mistake of course. You made a strategic error because you had not colony morale in your priorities which ist exactly arcane knowledge.

Also at a certain population size morale becomes again less of an issue, you can recover from that.

 

[al103]

You made a strategic error because you had not colony morale in your priorities which ist exactly arcane knowledge.

It is arcane knowledge. Because people would leave faster over having no entertainment than over having to eat raw bugs or sleeping in cloth tents in winter. It's not normal human logic.

 

[ellacharmed]

It is not the Entertainment need per se by just the Happiness-type buildings, it is the overall Happiness meter that caused a colonist to leave if the score is not improved in time. That time factor is what is arcane, I suppose. There's no way of knowing how long they would wait before they pass judgment and leave. Propaganda and Witness Decaying being the most devastating ones to really tank that Happiness score.

And if the Ultimate DLC is installed and you have Hope/Despair mechanic (dlc#2 Shattered Hope) and also Anguish (dlc#3 Rebirth), it changes the whole Happiness scoring all over the map, especially when the production rates of buildings are nerfed so we need the boost from making Alliances (dlc#1) and Overtime. The balance is all out of whack.

Makes me wonder if the Ultimate DLC underwent a QA process for a playthrough that has all the added mechanics - to see if they play well together - up to and beyond the Bunker completion stage. At least to clear the 365 days Achievement for first time players. And to test if it is even possible in difficulties higher than 200%.