Paviour's Yard Balance

[bleak narwhal]

The Paviours balance/efficiency doesn't seem quite right at the moment. I'm not sure exactly if it's that the paved roads fall apart too quickly, or the paviours are just too slow, or both.

I've tested out a walled city center, I think about ~100-120m diameter, with 10 paviour buildings, fully staffed with commoners, all with access to stone resources, and they are incapable of keeping the whole area paved. They manage to keep some areas paved, and luckily my citizen's houses haven't downgraded since I increased to 10 paviour buildings.

Proposed solutions: If you're happy with the balance/speed of the paviour's, please increase the amount of workers per building significantly. It doesn't seem right that one town area should need close to a quarter of the space devoted to paviour's buildings should I want to keep it in cobblestone.

Or, increase the efficiency of paviour significantly. Or, increase the duration of paved roads significantly.

I personally don't mind paved roads being a resource sink for stone, I just don't want to spam 20+ road upkeep buildings to make a single walled area look like a proper cobblestone road medieval town.

[south zenith]

Confirmed. I have the same issue.

[south zenith]

I observed this a bit more. To me, it seems as though the Paviours do weigh for "most broken" and "nearby", but they don't seem to have a cutoff for how much durability a given tile of path has lost. Basically, they start repairing way to early, wasting loads of stones on 5% repairs, or something. 🤔 If you reduce the amount of roads to just the front of a single house, they STILL are constantly working, without ever idling.

For now, I have circumvented this issue by limiting the paviour amount to reduce the rate stone gets consumed, and just ploping down a small piece of paved road in front of each house I want to upgrade...

@bleak narwhal Could you add the tags "balancing" and "bug" to the thread please? It's easier for the dev's to find it.

[bleak narwhal]

I'll add balancing, now that I have found out how to add a tag, but I won't add the bug tag, because that doesn't make any sense in this context.

[frigid mica]

yeah I feel like the cobbled roads simply decay too quickly

[vagrant siren]

Paved roads should pretty much be permanent. I mean we still have roads dating back to the Roman Empire. 12 months in game time should mean nothing to them. Make the up front cost of paving higher to compensate if necessary. I would suggest the following changes to the paving system:

1. Paved areas are permanent, or close to it.
2. If there is any type of wear/maintenance system, they should not repair it until some low threshold like 50% or 25% or even 10% condition.
3. Do not pave anything outside the painted zone.
4. Pave ANY bare dirt in the painted zone. If wheat won't grow on it, pave it. I want to make a paved town square in the middle of town.
5. Make villagers walk faster on paved roads. Could be a 20-50% speed boost, making paved roads a useful mechanic.

[bleak narwhal]

All of this sounds good to me!

[bleak narwhal]

I am having better luck on my current play through, but it is still pretty patchy looking, and warehouses look dumpy because it wont pave under them

(or around the contours of other buildings)

[uncut moat]

Needs to be reworked for sure

[molten cargo]

I agree. Kind of crazy how permeable the roads are given they are literal stone that is almost invulnerable to human foot traffic irl.

[bleak narwhal]

There's sections of stone roads like the Via Appia/Appian Way that have been around since the Western Roman Empire, pretty sure paviour's need to go back to road building school cause I think they are using grey sand or something

[analog crescent]

I guess it depends on the stone though? You can see plenty of old medieval stairs that have deep indentations where people step

[bleak narwhal]

yeah but that's over the course of hundreds of years in many cases

[analog crescent]

indeed, I was just responding to the point suggesting that paved roads we still have right now show there shouldn't be any decay

the decay is a game mechanism anyway not really intended to be realistic I imagine

[light sinew]

yes, I do not understand why only dirt paths can be paved; it's man made, I should be able to pave anywhere I want

[vagrant siren]

I get that it is a game mechanism, but it is still too far skewed to fall apart quickly. People asked for paved roads as a feature because they wanted their towns to have a more urban, developed look. The game mechanic is fine, as long as the primary reason players want it -- aesthetics -- is also met. Right now, it fails on two counts:

1. The paving decays WAY too fast.
2. The pavers only pave walking paths, not any patch of bare dirt in the zone.