Prisoners, Serfs and Large Kingdoms

I'll start by saying I love this game. I've got a ton of hours in Rimworld and this game has the potential to far surpass Tynan's success. After having an experience with a bug, seeing the dev response to some random Steam forum post I am very excited for the future of this game and very willing to help in any way I can. I hope you guys don't regret being awesome. Anything I say comes from a place of love and admiration.

I understand that kingdom size limitations are most likely implemented to keep the game manageable, as at some point too many objects can just wreck Unity, but it seems like the concept of Nobles managing Serfs and Prisoners is foundational to the game. In the current iteration though, with Prisoners and Serfs counting as normal population, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to engaging with this feature. While they switch to the obedience system and no longer require prestige, this only means they need multiple full-time guards forever instead of one or two high level preachers following them around for a cycle. 

Given that Unity can be optimized to run small to medium MMOs, I assume optimization will eventually allow for larger kingdoms, but I'd suggest even before that Prisoners shouldn't count as population at all and it should probably take 2 Serfs to equal one Noble in terms of population. The PC I use is above average and it can handle 30 population without issues, but I can see how a minimum/average spec machine or console would struggle and that might seems a severe limitation in early access. I would suggest a warning to players that playing with more than 16 population can cause problems on potatoes and allow players to test what the game will be rather than limiting the game as is so everybody can play it smoothly.

Another seeming benefit to a class based society is that the player can limit lower classes to simple foods, but cooking and food doesn't make a lot of sense as they appear in game currently. Cooking meals, or cooking in any form, really, is a penalty. Raw ingredients seem to offer more nutrition per food item, though prepared meals provide prestige. Unfortunately, the prestige offered isn't really needed and the cooked meals decay so much quicker than the raw ingredients that not only does a player need to dedicate a noble to the cooking task, they also have to manually manage the amount of meals on hand in order to avoid waste. It actually makes more sense to avoid cooking altogether and preach nobles into vegetarianism and maybe enjoying raw meat. 

I would suggest that cooked meat should be more nutritious instead of less, and simple/fine meals offer increased nutrition per unit, then only Nice and Fancy meals add substantial prestige to the level of nutrition provided by fine meals. It would also be nice if additional prestige were added for food variety on offer, or if that were tied into needs and wants. Along with this the cook should add some randomness to what they prepare, or the player should have more control over that.

I do really like the addition of Frostcaps and refrigeration, but I feel like the fact that they can nullify the problem of decay seems to have been balanced by rarity and a requirement for the player to keep a constant eye on their coolers to make sure they are being refueled. The rarity can be fairly easily overcome and losing 400 nutrition of food because you forgot to check on your coolers for a couple of days is never going to fun or satisfying gameplay. I previously suggested in https://noblefates.userecho.com/communities/1/topics/1360-granular-priorities that we should be able to increase the priority haulers place on refueling because the current mechanic just makes raising babies and handling coolers tedious micro-management. In a game like this, every problem demands a solution other than "you should have checked on that," or the player will resent those times they are bitten by their lack of attention to being forced to micro-manage something important.

I think there's enough typing above that most people will have given up by now, so I will talk about exploiting the game's mechanics. As modern gamers seem to be all to eager to ruin games for themselves I'm trying to hide this, though I feel like discussing can be potentially useful since devs don't typically get much time to play games. Please feel free to edit this next part out of this post. I love that you have allowed users access to sliders in settings that can put the game on super-easy-mode, and I hope you leave that in as a permanent feature. Easy-mode mods are always the first to come out on a new game, so adding those sliders removes the pride of exploiting a game to a large degree. That being said there are several game mechanics that, as they exist, are easily exploitable. To illustrate, I'll step though beginning a game. Get a coffee...

The first thing to look at is creating initial colonists. While the ability to individually edit each character could be simply removed, children and juveniles are mostly just as over-powered as this feature, so let's start breaking the game before it begins. I can replace my first character until I get someone with the equivalent of two 90 point traits. I then edit that (later all) character(s) to be dwarven and erase the traits they have. Dwarves are over-powered already, but I make them sterile, needy, greedy, very stubborn and a *very slow learner (*with two character exceptions.) This leaves me a huge pool of points to make them very wakeful, a very fast worker, a very fast walker, lifter with points left over to make them inaccurate and a berzerker/parrier if I want them to be a melee fighter, or just add sharpshooter if I prefer them to be an archer.

*My Builder and Crafter will need to advance naturally to level 5 ASAP, so for that reason only I need to not hinder them with very slow learner. I could just leave this trait alone (no + or -) and add all the negative traits and they will still be super-nobles. As soon as I start making plussed-up gear I won't care about learning, and at crafting level 5 I'll have that capability.

Very wakeful, very fast worker and very fast walker more than make up for any learning bonus I won't even really need. The negative traits really offer no real long-term penalties as none of them need preaching, needs are easily satisfied once money becomes trivial, and ambition is super easy to overcome with well-crafted gear that is favored along with a snazzy apartment.

Moving to the opinions tab, I start by making them hate all skins and leather as well as all types of monster and humanoid meat. As stated above, I could also make them hate animal meat as well, or just the cooked versions, but I will already have enough points by now to let them love all animal meats and vegetables. They can hate all drinks other than woodsky and strawshot (cheapest ones, and they can not care about or even slightly dislike those) and be ambivalent to animals. Moving to gear, they should not care about axes and hammers but love swords, hate grappling hooks, costumes, crowns, disguises, helmets, blouses, cuirasses, skirts and generally not care about cloth gear, love all the metal armor and hate all the leather stuff, as we can completely skip this step in the armor progression. Now I can make them love all races and job types with opinion points left over as unneeded. They are all basically identical, except for skills, and they all love doing everything I want them to do and all the stuff they would have gotten anyway.

Next, on the skills tab, I remove all skill points and take potential down to minimum for building, crafting, preaching and cooking (with the exception of character intended to specialize in those skills,) which leaves me room to give them each max potential in nursing as well as neutral or positive wherever is needed for whatever I intend them to do. The only ones that really matter are building and crafting, though ranching helps a lot for everyone. The main thing is, everyone agrees on everything, so preaching, while very powerful and important, isn't needed at all for quite some time. Additionally, having the leader make friends with travelers is still very easy since sharing loves and hates is more powerful than likes and dislikes.

I'll set up a builder, crafter, farmer, hauler and at least one other character as a floater and eventual dedicated preacher in this way, then start the game. Since everyone is a lifter, moving all the stuff to a stockpile happens as soon as I assign jobs. Everyone gets 1 in firefighting and 2 in nursing and those stay on priority, then the specialists get 3 in their specialty skill. Everybody then gets their next points in logging, foraging, hauling, mining, ranching, farming, cleaning... doesn't really matter in what order since all work can be done in batches under priority, but more in depth adjustment to individual job orders can be useful here if you don't want to fool with them later and you know how they work already. Specialist skills can stay on priority unless their help is desperately needed on some job.

Turn off bandits altogether. After having them clean me out first thing in two different games, nearly destroying my fledgling kingdoms, they should be avoided until balanced. Set up your food table to restrict anything your nobles don't love and all drinks save woodsky and strawshot, then limit those to the last 1.5 hours of the day. Remember to keep an eye out for dwarves that fail to get their booze as they will take a mood hit, so you'll have to make them drink manually if that happens.

Immediately set up a corn farm and a pasture, mark a crafting table for building along with some tanning racks and then lay out a 9x3 3 story wooden structure for building. Ramshackle will get up graded to wood soon. The upper floors can be accessed by ramps and then later stairs. Mark the area under this for digging out a cellar with one additional hole for stairs and close it off with a door. Mark 30-40 mature trees for logging, all the flowers in the immediate area for cutting, a few cows for taming, all the cotton on the map for forage (cotton will replenish about 4-5 times each season, so repeat when ever you see them ripen) and then a few copper deposits for gathering. The crafting table should be set to build about 20-30 wooden hammers (for equipping and selling) and about 500 wooden arrows, which should be enough to level the crafter up sufficiently to start crafting shortbows with a few bonuses. When the cotton starts coming in, he can start replacing everyone's clothing and adding missing pieces, rebuilding any non-bonused items until everyone has a ton of skill points in whatever they need. This is why learning doesn't matter. 

This will be done before Fall hits and cold weather sets in

The farmer can join the others in logging and foraging as soon as all the corn seeds are planted, and the first travelers appear. Sell any flowers and flower seeds (the only real use they have) as well as anything else not needed, especially un-needed hammers. Buy corn and pumpkin seeds whenever you can. Later on, grab any gold or silver, woodsky and strawshot as can be afforded. Soon there will be plenty of money to grab any metal gear/weapons with good bonuses you happen across while you buy all food that your people can eat. Always sell off any inventory you won't use so your stockpiles don't get out of control, overloading your haulers. The only wanderers you should be interested in convincing to join are the occasional juvenile that might show up. Whatever their traits, they will quickly gain adulthood and then you can rebuild their traits as explained above to make them OP. Always turn away joiners fleeing another faction. I've never found one worth the risk of losing a noble in an unnecessary battle.

As soon as your builder is able, he should build enough beds for everybody then about ten more for visitors to rent once the second story is completed. As they can, the builder should upgrade them to the finest quality available and as many as can fit on the top two floors. The bottom floor should be for the crafting tables and stockpiles for cotton and gear. The cellar should be for food, and can be expanded to lower floors when needed. As soon as the builder is able, use the copper to put locks on the doors that allow humanoid visitors but restrict visiting animals, as people bring pets that will eat every bit of your food. Kinda want to do this as soon as dwarvenly possible.

As cows get tamed, build a fence around the pasture and lock the gate the same way to at least slow devils and rabid animals, etc... from murdering your cows. You only need 2-3 to start out, but should grow the herd as milk is a valuable food source. Don't forget to mark them for milking and keep an eye on them to make sure they are getting fed. (Ranching for deer, boar or wolves makes no sense since animals can't breed, but feel free to try it. If the extra meat is ever needed desperately I find it easier to just buy animals/food from visitors, but more on how that is better in a moment.) As you get established, you can reset job priorities as appropriate, but it is wise to keep ranching as a high priority for most nobles as the job doesn't take much time and hungry cows don't produce milk. They live forever apparently, unless you starve them to death or you let rabid animals, etc... wipe them out. Everyone should get some skill points in ranching and farming from their clothes. As soon as summer hits, plant all your pumpkin seeds and keep planting any corn and pumpkin seeds you get. If you happen across a trader with a big supply of either, stock up. Corn seeds will usually maintain themselves as eating corn creates a lot of seeds, so its easy to maintain a stockpile of around 1000. If you can maintain 500 pumpkin seeds you're doing OK. 

For farming, those are generally the only two crops that make sense. Grapes don't produce enough. Farmers just replant any mealie beans they get before anybody can eat them and you can't require them to plant only one version (if that changes you can quickly harvest a few crops as unripe and restrict them from being eaten or cooked with so you can stock them up as seeds, then harvest the rest as ripe/over-ripe and allow those for eating/cooking.) Planting Octoberberries can be useful, but they take a year for the bushes to produce fruit then they need to be replanted. Easier just to forage and even better to buy, but they are so low in nutrients making refrigerated space for them is painful. Grass is plentiful but your ranchers will feed your cows corn anyways because there's no way to force them to prefer straw. Flowers serve no purpose other than quick cash for your first traders. As explained above, there's just no point to cooking anything at this time.

The above food crops might be useful for brewing alcohol, but brewing has a very high resource cost so its much more efficient to just buy cheap booze from traders and make your nobles hate the expensive stuff. You can try it though. You can also try grass farming if you want. If you can get haulers to store it in a shed right next to the pasture, they will get fed less of your corn but you just can't stop it completely and hauling 2000 grass just never gets done. You can just as easily mark all the wild grass in the area for cutting and set logging to priority for a day. Same thing goes with cutting down trees. It will all mostly stay where it lands, so if you are stocking up for winter mark the areas closest to your village for logging so people don't freeze to death trying to get wood (or get cold and drop it before they get home.)

When you plant your crops, best to have many small fields so they can be tilled quicker. Farmers won't plant a field until it is fully tilled, so small is better and make sure you get any debris cleared  as they will till around mineables and logs and the tilling job will never be done 100%. As soon as spring and summer hit, prioritize everyone you can on farming (watch those cows though; might want to prioritize both,) for as long as it takes to get your fields full. Even with multiple full time farmers they will struggle to keep enough food in your fridge if you don't commit to some micro-management. For a nice food bonus, by the way, in forest and mountains search the map at the very end of winter and butcher up all the dead animals that died from frostbite before they thaw. Wild animals probably shouldn't die en masse every spring, but even the easy biome is a harsh mistress here on Noberia.

I'm only focusing on the mechanics that can be gamed easily. This isn't a real walkthrough or guide, just a lot of (well-intended) criticism, so I'm not mentioning the excellent cutting tool or the mechanic of cutting/foraging mature stuff only. There's a lot of awesome I'm not mentioning here. No offense. Again, I love this game!

When the alcoholic dwarf shows up to teach you about frostcaps, feel free to give them drinks to find a few caves, but stop when they demand 16 drinks because you want them come back forever. Most likely they will not reveal any good caves and sometimes they can direct you to caves with no frostcaps at all, but that NPC will be useful when you do eventually get around to needing refrigeration (usually around the beginning of your third cycle since there's no point to doing this in fall or winter.) Once you have the ability to make advanced coolers (skip the basic model,) build a stone 5x5 room with stone floor and ceiling, hopefully underground and surrounded by terrain, and place the advanced cooler on the center tile and set it to maintain the temperature at 31° F or -1°C if you don't believe in freedom units. Fill the room with as many tall shelves as possible and mark them for high priority for all food save alcohol, drybars and travel meals, then also allow frostcaps. Mark all the shelves at priority #2. Always save priority #1 for emergencies. Even still, you will need to regularly police the map for piles of spoiling food. Whenever the frostcap dwarf shows up, chat them up to get them loving your leader then just buy all the frostcaps they have. Like all traders, they will dislike you more and more every time they come back (though this contrived difficulty scaling feels bad) but its easy enough to talk them into loving you again temporarily. 

Hopefully you will get lucky and find a large grove of frostcaps. In two playthroughs I was able to find groves that had 300+ harvestable caps, so I could get 100 at a time (~1/3 of the grove,) allowing time for regrowth. All other caves I've found I couldn't harvest more then about 10 at a time, and the dwarf never pointed me to any nice groves. Even if you find 5-6 of the small groves, you won't be able to reliably sustain even one freezer. Both large groves I found were near the center of the map and very deep underground (~-13.)

First things first... I got ahead of myself. Let's go back to that first cycle:

Once you get your first communal building completed, making sure to add 2 regular hearths with chimneys at either end of the top room (where your people should be living since those beds will be the best) before fall, then its time to start mining copper. Its fairly easy to find a copper vein just by looking around on the ground for bits of copper terrain. If you also see iron on the surface, that's a great place to start mining as some iron usually means tons of copper with more iron below. Using job priorities, put as many people as you can on mining. As soon as possible, switch your crafter over to making bronze armor for your nobles, starting with the small pieces and working your way up to chausses and pauldrons, then swords and shields. Once you start getting pieces with skill points, you can replace the shortbows with crossbows (skip longbows) with +skill points. All nobles should have a shield and a crossbow, equipping whatever gives them the best skill points usually, then crossbows to start any fights. Using gear skill points, make sure everyone has at least 3-4 in hunting, or everyone will die from friendly fire in battle. More is better, of course, and you can isolate your sharpshooters off on flank as they are much less likely to shoot their friends. A good volley is always best at the start of battle, however, and most fights through mid game won't even require melee unless you have people that are just incapable of using a crossbow effectively. 

As cloth gear is switched to bronze, you can sell it or recycle it if you think you might need the cotton later. Basic cotton robes are all your nobles will ever need as its easier to get bonuses from the lesser gear and they are better for warmth. You will want a small stockpile of nice gear for future nobles, and its always good to have several rounds of upgrades to get everyone in the best gear possible. Keep that crafter crafting.

The only real battle danger is if you allow raiders to get to your cattle or babies/children, or if devils spawn where they can get to them. In the event of a devil spawn, pay close attention to those areas. When battle starts, enlist everyone and place them at your most vulnerable point. If you have stragglers on the far side of the map (you really shouldn't be assigning any solo tasks that far out after year 2) it may be best to make them wait out there until the battle is over rather than risk them getting killed on their way back to base. (Frankly, there needs to be a ward that can be placed to make it so devils and kin can't spawn deep inside your base. There's just no fun in that unavoidable catastrophe.) Kin and devil meat/skin make a good source of early game sales material, but at some point it just makes more sense to turn them off as they become fairly annoying with no remedy. (I've not smashed a portal yet, nor dismissed the god... I need to test those mechanics so I could be wrong here. Fairly sure there's just nothing to be done about kin though.)

If a raider uses the ignore ability, the best thing you can do is run away from them for the next minute. This is an extremely unbalanced ability so you should definitely pick it up for your own people whenever possible. Remember: your first priority in battle is your own people. If you get bleeders, unenlist a nurse and micro-manage them to avoid unnecessary deaths. If they try to flee or wander off re-enlist them but they won't properly nurse if enlisted. Only after your base is secure and everyone is healed should you worry about your guests. If they die, you get their stuff. Loot the dead and sell the bodies. Nobody cares.

Back to mining and armor... Mine tons of copper. This should start during your first fall or winter. Early bronze armor will make any fights much easier for a long time and excess copper is the easiest currency to come by. Once you can clean out every trader that visits by selling them copper money will mean nothing for the rest of the game. You can start buying anything you want, but never stop buying seeds you use and cheap booze. With a sufficient supply of copper, you can now simply start a trade with every visitor on your map, one-by-one whether they like you or not, and buy anything they are selling (as long as you need it or can use it) at a blue or green price, then find the wanderer in each group that will buy copper at the best price and take all their money. Well, no need to be miserly and worry about getting it ALL... they will give you anything left over in rent. You can also sell them the tons of dirt you've dug up while mining. I usually reserve that treatment to people that hate my leader and won't offer reasonable trades. They get to leave broke with a truckfull of dirt. That'll teach em to be judgemental.

Copper is so plentiful that you can also sell off any non-plussed armor or weapons your crafter makes. No need to recycle bronze stuff. I usually set the forge to 10 heumes, 10 vambraces, 10 sabatons... etc... and then repeat until everyone has amazing gear with tons of appropriate skills. Everyone should have at least some gear with bonuses for battle skills as well as other useful job skills. Good time to make your preacher high level now too, as you can now start growing your population as you want. Obviously snag any juveniles, placing them on as many different jobs as possible to increase their potentials to at least 0 before they become adults, but also look for decent young elves. They generally suck at everything, but you are mostly just looking for cleaners and haulers you can gear up for some menial task and that will live basically forever. At some point you will also want someone that doesn't hate crafting to take over the tanning and arrow crafting jobs so your main crafter can remain focused. If you plan on building a huge castle or something, an apprentice builder will be helpful. Just don't be tempted to bring in an older noble. If they seem to have high skills you can use, remember you are using gear for skills and they will die soon.

Preach at any newcomers until they love the job you assigned to them and they don't hate guarding and hunting. Longer term, try to make sure they love corn and pumpkins and don't like booze (unless you hired a dwarf.) They may dislike you a little for loving a job they hate or hating a type of hide or leather they love, but that doesn't matter as long as their mood is positive. You can get super-culty and individually prioritize preaching them into complete conformity with all your other followers, but when you get too preachy the context menu for assigning actions to any npc gets so long it obscures actions like transferring them. You do want to have preaching assigned for anything you might want to preach about during a speech at a feast, and you should as that has a much stronger effect than what a preacher can accomplish quickly. Once you can build the Cornucopia and have plenty of food in stock, use that to abuse feasts to make your newcomers fall in line.

You shouldn't have to worry about satisfying anyone's ambition at any point, as they will be overjoyed with their gear, but since everyone is needy they will tell you when they want a better place to live. As they request it, build them each a stand-alone 5x5 with a nice bed and assign the whole building to them. It will only be a shack with just a bed, but that will satisfy most of them for a while. Make sure to leave a gap between buildings, though you can fill the gap with dirt if you are building underground and care about that. If the stand-alone buildings touch they combine to become a commons building and you can't assign those. Giving someone a whole building offers more prestige and they will demand shacks and chateaus as time passes. When they want more, add a stone table with 4 chairs and put a weapon rack on the wall, which will make their shack with a bedroom in it a low level chateau with a tier 4 apartment on the cheap. As they want lamps or whatever, provide them. Adult dwarves really don't need heat for the most part, but it won't kill you to put a basic hearth in each building... though eventually keeping lamps and hearths refueled becomes problematic. It won't take long for them to start needing lamps made of gold or silver and other such nonsense, which is why you should have been stocking up on precious metals whenever you saw them up for trade. Since nobody wears crowns that's the only use for those metals. When they start asking for unreasonable things you can't possibly supply, like a chair that's worth 96 prestige, you can give satisfying that demand some effort (just mark it as rebuild then order your best builder to work on it, over and over until they either succeed or you get tired) but unless that unsatisfied request severely affects their mood, you can safely ignore them. Just build up their esteem as best you can otherwise and they will eventually get over it.

Unless a baby enters the picture. If one of your non-sterilized nobles gets knocked up, you will need to pay close attention to the baby when it comes until it turns into a child. Keep the room brightly lit and hearth always warm (68° is fine) even if you have to manually direct a hauler to refuel every other day. Keep multiple babies (in case of a baby pandemic) in the same room and force someone to clean up any messes as soon as they happen. This will take way more attention than should be necessary, but if you don't take these steps, not only will the baby's development points suffer, you risk losing nobles because everybody gets mad if the baby isn't in a pristine environment. Also, restrict milk from everyone's diet and make sure it is enabled for noble babies, so everyone can make sure it gets fed.

One more thing (on children,) the second a baby turns into a child, immediately assign it nice gear from your stockpile of armor or clothes. On two occasions I had a child that was so angry at their clothes they literally sat in bed pitching a tantrum until they turned juvenile. There's no way to dress them or console them into putting on the clothes you assign after they go nuts. You'll just have to wait it out until they become a juvenile. Assign them to as many jobs as you want just to get them to raise their proficiency to at least 0, though you can try for ++ in something you want them to do if you want. Skills come from gear though, so no worries really. The main thing is you want to get them preached into being just like everybody else because as soon as they become an adult you want to arrange their traits as described above, which means they will be very stubborn. Again, you probably want to do this as soon as it pops up because the first thing new adults want to do is have sex with a stranger (snip snip) and you really don't want to be flooded in babies. They can be over-powered but they are a pain in the butt. At each level of development (child, juvenile, adult) you can assign whatever trait points they have, and you can rearrange them at any stage, so start with fast learner, very fast learner, etc so they burn through potential quickly (I think; not sure) and then erase all that and give them the full trait package at adulthood.

As for serfs and prisoners, there's just no point in them at this time unless you enjoy the role play (as explained above.) Your nobles will likely not appreciate someone they hate being granted nobility, but again, esteem is not hard to manage when their living quarters and gear are really nice. 

This is the game on easy mode, defeating nearly everything that makes the game a challenge. Unfortunately, in the IRL age we live in, there will 100 youtube videos explaining this in detail on day 1 of 1.0, and kids will follow this step by step and then complain that they just ruined the game for themselves (see Starfield.) I know you guys are working on this stuff and likely have plans for everything, but I thought it might be helpful to see the game through the eyes of the average gamer trying their best to find exploits.

A couple other random notes and follow ups: 

If a visitor or retreating raider dies on the map it can be nearly impossible to find them. On one hand, nobody seems to care if there's a dead body in the dining room, which is weird in and of itself, but there should be a way to locate them for loot and proper disposal. 

I assume we will eventually have more than basic graves and maybe even funerals and other mood related aspects of how we treat the dead. 

Poop bucket and monster ward.

When I set up a caravan to travel, it looks like the leader is included by default. If the leader doesn't get included, the trip takes forever and seems super likely to fail. I had this happen once and was super confused about what was going on. I feel like every caravan should have a leader and be manageable, but I also don't use the ability to possess the leader and I'm not sure how important that is to you guys. Real kingdoms tend to have hierarchies and maybe you are working toward that. Would be cool.

Can I control who succeeds a dead leader without marriage being in the picture.

Oh, and marriages are cool but there's no joint ownership of rooms and no penalty for bastard children other than having them. Seems like just flavor or RP (for now, I assume?)

Wanderers always seem to provide exactly whatever you need if you are patient. Seeds, food, whatever. This seems intentional, and I'm not saying its bad, but when you have infinite money (via copper) there's really no need to get worried about anything if you have a little patience. 

Bronze is copper alloyed with tin. Just sayin... Would also be cool to eventually be able to wear cotton clothes under armor, or maybe add padding as an upgrade to metal gear. Metal armor should be terrible to wear around all the time, especially in winter.

I'm sure you guys are aware already, but there's just no good way to break up a fight peacefully, and as long as it doesn't involve your own nobles, there's no reason to. Free loot with no consequence. Idea concerning this below.

A leader with high preaching skill should be able to use their charisma to good effect with traders.

Mood effects are all over the place. Nobles will get pissy if the leader doesn't share every single love/hate they have, and leader shares everyone's displeasure over everything that makes anybody upset. Parents get mad at every little thing that isn't perfect and wonderful for their child, yet won't lift a finger to wipe up its piles of poop or light a lamp and their anger lasts much longer than than the child's. Its common to see a mom or dad suffering huge mood penalties from an accumulation of every time their offspring was in the dark or a bit cold when the child itself doesn't care one bit. Suggestion concerning this below in the construction area.

Training books are far inferior to just putting a person to work. 

Hauler/guest priority.... this is different form the granularity thing. As mentioned above, if someone picks up several piles of various items, intending to take them wherever they go, they can get hungry or cold or otherwise distracted and drop all the stuff in whatever random place they may be, often making it less likely that they or another hauler will prioritize finishing that hauling job because of revised location, as if the items are placed at the bottom of the hauling que. Not sure, but granularity adjustments for haulers as suggested wouldn't fix this with guest helpers. They do seem to respond to manual rush settings, so maybe the global hauling cue could prioritize unfinished jobs and update to reflect item decay as being more important than the time the item was dropped. 

I talked about cleaning before, but a big part of the problem with cleaning and hauling is that visitors just drop purchased trade items and rent/food purchase money/items wherever they stand. ideally, they should put things where they go, honestly, but maybe we could have a donation container for rent and stuff like that and cleaners might consider dropped items litter and do something about it. In a large kingdom, there's just stuff all over eventually. I find myself instituting priority hauling days for everyone just to try to keep the clutter down. On that note, its not very clear to the player that travelers will substitute trade items for rent/purchases or that they can buy your food without asking. I really like that aspect of travelers, though, and there's room for expansion on it. 

Let's say I buy all the food a traveler is carrying and I trade them out of all their coins. They have to eat! Maybe they could pick some berries or shoot a deer for food. Maybe they should have to ask for permission for that, or maybe they could just do it without permission or even steal food and that could be a problem if I wanted it to be. Maybe I just give blanket permission for visitors to do that, or maybe I institute harsh penalties for breaking my laws. Maybe my laws regarding visitors could affect whether visitors desire to drop by, and generous policies could affect their attitude about my kingdom. Below I suggest a method for dealing with fighting that could be used when someone is caught stealing as well. In any event, people need to pick up after themselves.

Work schedules are much too simple. Not that they have to be overly complex, but there's no real way to anticipate when a worker might stop to eat or sleep or socialize, so if I want someone to spend say 2 hours training on a dummy at a high priority every day, that's likely never going to happen. I could schedule everyone to start their day with a couple hours of cleaning, for instance, but that won't replace one dedicated cleaner. Hate to say it, but maybe look at rimworld for this. Hourly schedule for rest, relaxation and work types (might have been a mod.) Dead simple. If you work them too hard or don't give them time to socialize (or get hammered in the case of dorfs) they get a bad mood.

As mentioned above, I can use negative opinion to restrict dwarves to only cheapest booze and then give them a slight dislike for the rotgut stuff. They will treat it as medicine and get their socialization with a drink a day just fine. Super efficient and I don't have to deal with everybody getting blasted and passing out all over the place every night. If I don't exploit the mechanic like this, say I make everyone love all booze, there's no way to restrict them from getting wasted every night. If dwarves need one drink every two days, I should be able to make that a policy specific to dwarves only.

It is never a good idea to select a temporary skill at 5/10/15/20 level ups unless its ignore (which is really unbalanced,) and it makes me sad to get only bad choices on those rolls. I've never even used the ability to rush a crop cycle, as that would just leave a ton of food lying on the ground to spoil and a field that needed to be planted in a hurry. Much better to shoot a couple of deer or even buy some berries from someone. If I already have a field planted, I will soon have enough of that crop to survive on. Even the temporary battle buffs don't seem to add much, though I do click on them. I'd much rather have a permanent +2 to melee than a brief window of +3, and a temporary buff to a noble's hauling, cleaning, mining (etc) skill really serves no purpose. I've tried using temp building and crafting buffs and it feels like RNG results are much more powerful.

Assigning tasks on a bench should have a skill under requirement as well as over. I'd love to have anyone assigned to crafting, even a guest, making  arrows or tanning hides rather than my level 20 crafter spending all day doing that instead of making iron armor. There's also the issue of a guest crafter starting a piece of armor and leaving with it incomplete.

As above but bears repeating: Please let me choose what my 79 year old cows eat. Grazing would also be nice. I might have to have several pastures and move them around.

Being an evil kingdom doesn't really seem to be a big deal, and it doesn't open up much in the way of evil choices. Alignment is just one of many equally weighted (it seems) factors in like/dislike, and is super easy to affect with preaching. Same can be said for good alignment as well, really, save butchering people.

Neutral alignment seems to be ok with butchering humanoids, though there definitely are NOT, and every alignment can be just find with eating even their own species and wearing their skins around. I only built one evil kingdom, but I didn't test if they are fine with butchering humanoids, though I suspect they should be or there's no reason to have it in game (that run was to test serfs and prisoners.) I'm not really into war-crime gameplay, honestly, so I only had one playthrough concerned with it and the leader not only took a bit hit to mood with every instance of butchering a fallen enemy, they also hated the person they ordered to butcher the person for following that order. That bad feeling about their own noble seemed to be related to how much the leader was disposed to like or dislike that dead person with no regard to them being an enemy combatant. So, I ordered that pile of dead enemies to be butchered for meat, and for every one the cook asked if I was sure about that. I told the cook to just follow my orders, but afterward I resented the cook for each individual instance of butchery, even more for butchering dwarves because I happen to especially love dwarves. I also hate myself more and more for every time I ordered a humanoid to be butchered. I'll even develop an additional mood debuff against the cook just because a noble I hate so much is even a part of my kingdom. This is even worse than mood debuff downward spiral caused by childbirth, as the leader will eventually remain at 0 mood unless you force them to drink booze several times a day or lay off the butchery for a year or two. Those debuffs last FOREVER. Lots of unfinished work here, but let's talk about something less gross...

Construction: Would be great to be able to build a roof in an underground room, which I can do but I have to dig out the cells above the roof to be able to build what essentially is a floor for those cells. Its workable (and I suspect I might be able to do this if I go into control mode for my leader but haven't tested that... I don't really use that feature much) but if there's a way to access the floor level of the cell above that might solve a few other minor problems. For instance, if I dig out a 2x2 shaft so I can make a long circular staircase to access a room several layers down, I have to set blueprints level by level and if I'm mining/building down as I go, not only do I risk trapping a miner if I'm not paying attention but I have to remember the orientation of the above stair piece to connect the next piece down. If the floor segment of the upper cell were usable/visible my digger would know they could jump up to a staircase and I might be able to easily build the lower stair piece as I could see maybe the bottom step of the above stair piece and it would probably just snap. This functionality would also be great for building a complex duct system to vent smoke out of a deep area up a standard staircase. Angled ducts would be cool too.

I imagine there's already a huge internal to-do list for features, but :D... As problematic as keeping a large kingdom clean is, if that becomes easier it would be nice to see more of a relationship between environment and mood. Dust, for example. If I'm living in a ramshackle shack with a straw roof, I should have a more dusty environment than if I moved into a nice stone building with a stone roof. If I'm living in a carved out cave, well... good luck to me keeping that clean I guess. But if a room is assigned to me, I should be concerned with keeping that room tidy. Part of my *personal time* each day should be spent on cleaning up my own messes... and this would go double for mothers with poop fountains... I mean babies. You could go crazy with it and make hygiene a trait that some nobles value more than others, and parents could scold their messy children if they don't keep their rooms clean. This kind of fits in with building because I imagine it would require work with areas and rooms.

Tangent: I kind of feel like traits should just be blended into other aspects of the nobles. Nothing quite so simple as adding traits to preaching, but maybe (since I mentioned hygiene) if I get a noble that's very unhygienic, they would be dirty and smelly and other nobles would like them less. Maybe as their esteem rises, not only do they like their leader more but they develop more of a desire to fit into their community. Instead of just random comments about liking human skin and whatnot, we could see insults about being filthy or smelly, being a slow walker or a lazy worker, which might slowly influence their behavior in that regard. A peer pressure dynamic to some degree. This kind of harkens back to rimworld's pawns insulting another pawns toes, etc... but it could turn it into a feature. Instead of starting fights being related to a pawn's mood being low, it could start with a noble that's fed up with being called smelly. The other nobles should be able to break the fight up and the parties involved should be brought before the leader, who would hear why the fight happened and (in this case) suggest that the smelly noble take better care of their hygiene, which gives them a boost in their hygiene and makes any other pawns concerned with the smelly one feel better about the situation. This mechanic could work with visitors and their fights as well. Maybe we could have a court/judgement mechanic! Back to construction related things...

Right now, if I am building (in particular) an underground settlement, I have to be cautious to separate rooms if I want them to be assignable as buildings. So, if I intend to build a wall of rooms, for instance, I might dig out an area and build a row of 5x5 shacks with a separation between them. If I try to cover that gap with a wall or join the buildings with a sidewalk, they join into a common room. While I can still assign the bedroom/apartments individually, I can no longer assign the individual buildings. This takes some time to figure out how to provide for nobles needs when they start demanding shacks and chateaus and I want to build underground. The space requirement is actually fine probably, but my great dwarven underground kingdom shouldn't require dirt walls and sidewalks everywhere. Not sure how complicated this be to implement, but I feel like I should be able to have an assignable building that connects directly with a common room as well, like if I have a large dining hall surrounded by ownable abodes. Maybe theirs a functionality that could be added to doors without locks being strictly necessary. 

I think it would be nice to build a "big house" for my leader, but if I build a really nice Tier 4 Chateau and assign the building to my leader, I can no longer assign rooms inside for other nobles or rent them out. It would seem the game really lends itself to castle/keep designs, so this doesn't seem to fit. I feel like I should be able to have a king that lives in a castle/chateau that has community storage, rooms to rent for important visitors, a kitchen and maybe some workbenches available for community use. Maybe my most important warrior would live in the castle as the Man-At-Arms, etc...

On that note, maybe I haven't quite figured it out yet, but when an envoy visits from another kingdom I feel like that should be an opportunity to improve relations with that kingdom. Maybe I could assign the envoy to a really nice room in the above castle and they would be awed by their beautiful surroundings (btw... could awe for a kingdom in general be a thing?) Often, they show up broke, but maybe I'd like to offer them a few really impressive meals. I know I can go through the normal conversation options to make them love my leader personally, but does that transfer to the opinion of my leader held by the envoy's leader?

I've noticed that if I completely wipe out the coins carried by any visitor and then add extra items they can't afford to the trade I get a prompt that they will gladly take such a good deal, and that travelers opinion of my leader has a neutral effect that notes my leader has given them fair deals whenever they've traded with my kingdom... I think it would be nice to be able to use trade to influence opinions along with any other methods so I'm not just restricted to conversations. I mentioned above that visitors seem to like my leader less and less with each visit, and it would be nice to have options to deal with that if it exists for balance reasons. Discounts selectable for certain traders maybe? Temporarily assignable rental rooms with discounts? Would be really cool to be able to make trade deals with preferred traveler groups like offering them a "quest" to find me pumpkin seeds and bring them back as they can...

Honestly, I don't have suggestions for a lot of the things I've mentioned, and usually that would mean I wouldn't complain about something if I couldn't offer a solution, but in this case I think most of what I am saying won't come as a surprise and you already have ideas. I love crafting armor with bonuses to skills, but it is indeed overpowered. On the other hand its really hard to craft gear with bonuses to battle skills, but I think that's more because a lot of jobs don't really benefit from higher skill. Cleaning, Mining, Foraging, Logging... either throw a lot of people at it for a day or just wait a minute until your specialist levels up. Maybe consider combining traits and levelups with gear bonuses somehow to make all systems work better? Less random as well, ie D&D (minor boots of speed, major vambraces of lifting, Spectacular cursed axe of the greedy battlemaster...)

Again, all this is said with love. Your game is awesome and your attention to fixing problems quickly sets the gold standard. I am more excited for this project than anything I've seen in a very long time, but if this stuff isn't helpful please tell me so and maybe make a suggestion or two and I'll gladly help in any way I can. Also, please edit this to hide all the cheaty stuff.