Confusing village/building design choices

[MauveCloud]

Over the past couple of months playing the new 1.12 port of Millenaire, I've noticed some oddities in terms of design choices for villages and buildings, and I wanted to post them together, in case anyone could explain the logic behind them. Pointing out other oddities that I've missed is also welcome.

1. Indian and Mayan villages have more elaborate (and I think larger) groves than other cultures, despite wood being a less-used building material for both cultures. For comparison: a Byzantine village gets one 10x10 grove with fences, an Indian village (except the palace) eventually gets two 15x15 groves with mud brick walls (later upgraded to cooked bricks 3 blocks high), a Japanese village gets one grove sized either 12x9 or 14x8, a Mayan agricultural or religious village eventually gets two 10x10 groves that start with "dirt wall" blocks surrounding it (later upgraded to cobblestone, then stone, then stone slabs; the military village only gets the single starting grove), and a common Norman village starts with two groves (size choices are 10x10, 12x9, and 14x8; a Gros Bourg has no grove, and hamlets only get one grove each).

2. Indian and Japanese villages need significant amounts of white wool, even though neither culture raises sheep as far as I can tell (at least in the game, I haven't checked whether that's historically accurate). Indian villages use it for upgrading the bazaar, Japanese villages use it for building or upgrading the market, bathhouse, archives, some of the town halls, and small amounts in several other buildings. Mayans also use a little bit for upgrading one of the variants of the maize farm and building some of the player housing.

3. Norman agricultural villages blacklist the quarry building, and if hamlets are grouped together with their "parent" village (since they normally spawn together, and I'm guessing they're supposed to be able to trade between each other to handle resources produced by one hamlet but not another, even if I haven't personally seen that working properly), it is the only village type in any culture that has no quarry (or equivalent building). I'm not sure whether this means the village is overspecialized or the other cultures' villages are underspecialized.

In regards to 2 and 3, my understanding of the underlying logic of village design is that villages are supposed to be able to produce most of their own resources for building, though the player(s) can speed things up by selling them resources, and valuable resources like iron, gold, and I guess colored wool can only be provided by the player(s).

Edit: 4. Looking at the blueprint images, a lone lumberman hut has log pillars (and the taiga version seems to be made almost completely from logs), despite being house and grove combined. Is there anything to prevent the lone lumbermen from chopping the logs that are part of their own houses? I had one near where I built my own house, and later found it had been mostly destroyed. The door, some of the floor planks, and the locked chests were there, but that was about it. The missing planks might have been from lightning starting a fire when I wasn't looking, though. Edit 2: I checked in a creative test world, and apparently the lone taiga lumberman refrains from cutting down his own log house, but I was unsuccessful at finding the lines in the java code to explain why.

[felinoel]

Over the past couple of months playing the new 1.12 port of Millenaire, I've noticed some oddities in terms of design choices for villages and buildings, and I wanted to post them together, in case anyone could explain the logic behind them. Pointing out other oddities that I've missed is also welcome.

1. Indian and Mayan villages have more elaborate (and I think larger) groves than other cultures, despite wood being a less-used building material for both cultures. For comparison: a Byzantine village gets one 10x10 grove with fences, an Indian village (except the palace) eventually gets two 15x15 groves with mud brick walls (later upgraded to cooked bricks 3 blocks high), a Japanese village gets one grove sized either 12x9 or 14x8, a Mayan agricultural or religious village eventually gets two 10x10 groves that start with "dirt wall" blocks surrounding it (later upgraded to cobblestone, then stone, then stone slabs; the military village only gets the single starting grove), and a common Norman village starts with two groves (size choices are 10x10, 12x9, and 14x8; a Gros Bourg has no grove, and hamlets only get one grove each).

AFAIK no reason other than a pacing choice

2. Indian and Japanese villages need significant amounts of white wool, even though neither culture raises sheep as far as I can tell (at least in the game, I haven't checked whether that's historically accurate). Indian villages use it for upgrading the bazaar, Japanese villages use it for building or upgrading the market, bathhouse, archives, some of the town halls, and small amounts in several other buildings. Mayans also use a little bit for upgrading one of the variants of the maize farm and building some of the player housing.

I believe they produce wool blocks from other means

3. Norman agricultural villages blacklist the quarry building, and if hamlets are grouped together with their "parent" village (since they normally spawn together, and I'm guessing they're supposed to be able to trade between each other to handle resources produced by one hamlet but not another, even if I haven't personally seen that working properly), it is the only village type in any culture that has no quarry (or equivalent building). I'm not sure whether this means the village is overspecialized or the other cultures' villages are underspecialized.

I believe this is to promote player interaction

In regards to 2 and 3, my understanding of the underlying logic of village design is that villages are supposed to be able to produce most of their own resources for building, though the player(s) can speed things up by selling them resources, and valuable resources like iron, gold, and I guess colored wool can only be provided by the player(s).

I am being assured that this is no longer the case though it sure did used to be the case.

Edit: 4. Looking at the blueprint images, a lone lumberman hut has log pillars (and the taiga version seems to be made almost completely from logs), despite being house and grove combined. Is there anything to prevent the lone lumbermen from chopping the logs that are part of their own houses? I had one near where I built my own house, and later found it had been mostly destroyed. The door, some of the floor planks, and the locked chests were there, but that was about it. The missing planks might have been from lightning starting a fire when I wasn't looking, though. Edit 2: I checked in a creative test world, and apparently the lone taiga lumberman refrains from cutting down his own log house, but I was unsuccessful at finding the lines in the java code to explain why.

If a building is marked as a grove there is no way to prevent logs from being chopped, this is a definite design flaw.

[MauveCloud]

2. Indian and Japanese villages need significant amounts of white wool, even though neither culture raises sheep as far as I can tell (at least in the game, I haven't checked whether that's historically accurate). Indian villages use it for upgrading the bazaar, Japanese villages use it for building or upgrading the market, bathhouse, archives, some of the town halls, and small amounts in several other buildings. Mayans also use a little bit for upgrading one of the variants of the maize farm and building some of the player housing.

I believe they produce wool blocks from other means

Really? I searched the goals for "output=wool_white" and didn't come up with anything.

3. Norman agricultural villages blacklist the quarry building, and if hamlets are grouped together with their "parent" village (since they normally spawn together, and I'm guessing they're supposed to be able to trade between each other to handle resources produced by one hamlet but not another, even if I haven't personally seen that working properly), it is the only village type in any culture that has no quarry (or equivalent building). I'm not sure whether this means the village is overspecialized or the other cultures' villages are underspecialized.

I believe this is to promote player interaction

I don't object to that in general, but it still seems strange for the Norman agricultural village to lack a quarry when the other 4 cultures include it in their agricultural villages (although perhaps at lower priority than other village types)

In regards to 2 and 3, my understanding of the underlying logic of village design is that villages are supposed to be able to produce most of their own resources for building, though the player(s) can speed things up by selling them resources, and valuable resources like iron, gold, and I guess colored wool can only be provided by the player(s).

I am being assured that this is no longer the case though it sure did used to be the case.

The Discord is a bit hard for me to keep up with sometimes, but the gist I got is that now only initial construction of common buildings needs to be possible without player intervention. Later upgrades and non-critical buildings (such as archives) are allowed to require player-provided materials. I guess I'm okay with that, especially since I'm not trying to design new buildings.

[felinoel]

2. Indian and Japanese villages need significant amounts of white wool, even though neither culture raises sheep as far as I can tell (at least in the game, I haven't checked whether that's historically accurate). Indian villages use it for upgrading the bazaar, Japanese villages use it for building or upgrading the market, bathhouse, archives, some of the town halls, and small amounts in several other buildings. Mayans also use a little bit for upgrading one of the variants of the maize farm and building some of the player housing.

I believe they produce wool blocks from other means

Really? I searched the goals for "output=wool_white" and didn't come up with anything.

Maybe I am thinking of the Byzantines...

3. Norman agricultural villages blacklist the quarry building, and if hamlets are grouped together with their "parent" village (since they normally spawn together, and I'm guessing they're supposed to be able to trade between each other to handle resources produced by one hamlet but not another, even if I haven't personally seen that working properly), it is the only village type in any culture that has no quarry (or equivalent building). I'm not sure whether this means the village is overspecialized or the other cultures' villages are underspecialized.

I believe this is to promote player interaction

I don't object to that in general, but it still seems strange for the Norman agricultural village to lack a quarry when the other 4 cultures include it in their agricultural villages (although perhaps at lower priority than other village types)

In regards to 2 and 3, my understanding of the underlying logic of village design is that villages are supposed to be able to produce most of their own resources for building, though the player(s) can speed things up by selling them resources, and valuable resources like iron, gold, and I guess colored wool can only be provided by the player(s).

I am being assured that this is no longer the case though it sure did used to be the case.

The Discord is a bit hard for me to keep up with sometimes, but the gist I got is that now only initial construction of common buildings needs to be possible without player intervention. Later upgrades and non-critical buildings (such as archives) are allowed to require player-provided materials. I guess I'm okay with that, especially since I'm not trying to design new buildings.

I'm not ok with that, but yeah...