Hi Aprone.
Well I've spent the last good hour and a half letting my peasants run around the map and build stuff. Deffinately an interesting game, and in fact I can see the similarity to dwarf fortrace sinse the point there was you didn't control each dwarf either but setup for instance an area as a dumping ground and let the dwarves use it, ---- though the dwarves would sometimes go a bit nuts!
Firstly, well done on the ai and getting the game complete, however I do have some comments.
One thing I found, was that because many of the peasants had long names, I'd only get the peasants' name spoken before a second message, eg, mcenzie, without saying what he did.
while I love the named peasants (it makes them very individualized), perhaps something to make messages easier to hear could be added, for instance instead of "ezekial drops of meet at the tavern" something more like "meet dropped at the tavern by ezekial.
I'd also suggest perhaps for common actions in the game, eg, dropping off of item x at location y, making bricks or cutting down a tree, sounds could be substituted instead, sinse it doesn't seem absolutely necessary to know who does what with those sorts of actions.
Another way to cut down spam, would be able to cycle through each building or construction site and see how much of a given resource was there, for instance, how much food at the tavern, how many logs at the saw mill etc.
Cycling buildings would also be a nice way to get an overview of what you have and where each thing is as well, sinse while I did! build enough houses for two of my ladies to have children, I wasn't sure if I'd need another or not and this would've been easier to calculate if I could've had an overview.
I also would like a full description of what each building does and how the jobs and resources interact, just as in Lunimals, sinse while some are no brainers, some are not.
I made the mistake of building a textile mill because I assumed my hunters would take their kills there, but that didn't seem to happen and I'm not sure why.
On the food front, I found something rather strange, which was that by building up a good reserve at the start, I could have 1-3 hunters and fishermen to keep the population going, sinse I tried to stay away from foods that looked like taking lots of man power and resources to make, eg, bread which presumably takes a wheet farm, a mill and! a bakery all with jobs to do as well.
You might actually considder reducing someof these production steps sinse currently I just can't see a circumstance where bread is viable, ---- perhaps by assuming the cook can bake bread quite successfully in the tavern, sinse afterall a bakery is more a business than a necessity sinse while butchering is indeed a specialized trade, baking bread can be done by any reasonably knolidgeable cook (I've done it myself on occasion).
Ditto with vineyards and barrel makers, ---- unless either the barrel maker or vintner do the actual bruing of wine and there is no specific job for this.
I like the graphics for the game, though much as in towers of war, it'd be nice to actually see the buildings on the map and thus get something of an overview of what was where, especially sinse placement and distance are so important.
Lastly, I'm afraid I have a bug to report.
Once I saved the game, my builders stopped building! This was most irritating.
I've got some work to do this morning, but will try again later.
Deffinately another interesting game and one with lots of potential for expantion in terms of different missions, maps etc, ---- in fact missions as in lunimals might be a nice way to ease players into the game a bit at a time rather than throwing them in at the deep end.
Btw, why isn't the barrel maker called a cooper? ;D.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)