Foundation

Wer darauf steht, gemütlich, mit dem richtigen Tiefgang und Abwechslung, zu siedeln ist bei FOUNDATION genau richtig aufgehoben. Im Gegensatz zu klassischen Aufbauspielen, muss man nicht selbst jedes einzelne Wohngebäude oder die Wege der Bewohner platzieren sondern markiert einfach eine Bauzone und lässt die putzigen kleinen Bewohner selbst ihren Platz für ihr neues Zuhause wählen. Die Wege entstehen ganz automatisch und werden breiter je mehr sie benutzt werden. Mit dieser originellen Spielmechanik entstehen ganz natürlich, wunderschön anzusehende Dörfer und Städte. Wuselfaktor 10 von 10. Alle anderen Aspekte die man von einem Aufbauspiel gewohnt ist, sind natürlich ebenfalls vorhanden. Umfangreiche Militärschlachten muss man jedoch nicht erwarten, dies stört jedoch überhaupt nicht. Die Entwickler sind nämlich nicht nur bzgl. dem Bau von Wohnhäusern neue Wege gegangen und so bietet dieses Spiel eine angenehme und spannende Abwechslung zu den alt bekannten Aufbaumustern. Ich habe bereits viele Stunden mit der EarlyAccess-Version verbracht und kann sagen, dass die finale Version sehr gut umgesetzt wurde und mich dieses Spiel immer wieder in seinen Bann zieht. Von mir eine klares Must-Have für jeden Aufbauenthusiasten !!!

Actually it is a nice game. The music is amazing and it makes fun to play it as long as your villages are small. However the game is very buggy and as soon as your village is big enough, the bugs are blocking further expansion. One example is the logistic system. If you have multiple producers and multiple warehouses for corresponding ressources, there is a bug that producer storage is full and warehouses are not collecting from the prucuders but the transporters are just idle. This is a bug, which is quite often reported over the last years and has not been addressed so far. This Game is one of the cases, where a really nice and cozy Game with good atmosphere is just spoiled by low quality programming.

Good game for the most part. The issue that makes me say no is the building concept. Once you get a lot of people in your town they start leaving because of no housing even though I've set aside a HUGE spot that has been beautified with all the stuff needed for housing. Why don't they make houses instead of complaining and leaving? It should allow you to put down house BP's or at least make it to where they will build houses like they're supposed to.

And of course this turns into a DLC farmer, instead of just adding content for future popularity. Ignore this !!

Muy buen juego de construcción, ameno y fácil de jugar. Quizás se me hace un poco pesado esperar a que lleguen nuevos habitantes. Me gustaría mas que pudieran tener hijos, dando paso a la construcción de un sistema educativo para los estamentos altos o que pudieran derivar en el clero o apredices en los oficios y el envejecimiento de la población y poder hacer efectivas esas lápidas que solo son decorativas para tener cementerios funcionales.

Amazing game until the villagers waste every ounce of materials to downgrade houses just to rebuild them in a constant cycle. It's a game breaking mechanic, unfortunately. I want to recommend this game BEFORE you reach this cycle of illogical construction. However it has caused me to search for an alternative.

Very disappointed in this game and can't recommend unless major improvements are made. Cute graphics, some interesting mechanics. Haven't encountered any bugs, although some functionality quite possibly could be bugged. I've played on easy setting and ended up restarting the game 3 times because I ran into problems beyond recovery because some concepts were not clear. Here is how it went down. - On the first try, I ran out of wood. The woodcutters cut the available woods clean and forest doesn't grow back by itself at all. Turns out you need to build a Forester immediately when it becomes available. It is part of the tutorial but it's marked a optional. It absolutely isn't. At least in early game, wood is important because you need tons of it. Additionally, you're getting quests that require to sell wood. You can skip it once, but then eventually it comes back and next time it turns into blackmail: give us wood or lose reputation. - On the same try, I also lost time on setting up tax collection. This mechanic is not different from Anno where taxes are the only source of money, except for random quests. However, in this game, quests are almost non-existent (or require materials you need yourself), so taxes are the only option. This is not explained by tutorial, however. The tax building requires "light fortification". It is in the research tree but very far down the line. But it turns out that Church building provides that, so you simply need to place tax building close by. You need to know this and plan for this, there is no clear information in tutorial or Help. - The "procedural" building option in this game manifests in the residential buildings. Unlike in Anno or Manor House, you just "paint" a residential area and then residents build houses there. How many houses? Who knows! You have no idea. Combined with oddly shaped territory (more on this later), you think you're painting enough for 4 homes but somehow end up with 3 homes plus oddly shaped useless gaps in the middle. Yes, you can blow up houses, but it leads to major loss of resources (you cannot move buildings for free and destruction refunds only part of resources). At first, I thought it's cool that I don't need to build each house but the more you play the more annoying this concept becomes. - The territory. In campaign mode, you pick a piece of territory you start with. You have no idea what's in that territory and especially when just starting the game, you have no way of knowing what's important. The tutorial doesn't provide any hints on this. Small pile that looks like rocks turns out to be iron, for example. The territories are weirdly shaped and very small. Some games are like that and you need to manage city within given confines. But in this game, this concept is taken to a ridiculous level. You can't control residential buildings. You need lots of building for supply chain (e.g. tool production needs 4 buildings!), and on top of it, some buildings have a "dirtyness", like in Anno. (This isn't explained or even mentioned at all, but you can connect the dots when you see the brown "aura".) So you also need an "industrial park" setup. And you need to maneuver around resources, natural features like water, all on a handkerchief-sized plot. Granted, you get a second territory quickly enough, but then it is just as quickly consumed by residences and service buildings. In order to build a nice castle like in the ads, you need to play forever and save money for lots of territory or play in sandbox only. - The money. As I said, taxation without representation is the only source. However, you need to spend money for almost EVERYTHING in the game. Decos? Money. Research? Money. Buildings? Money. Territory? Money. Promote citizens to the next class? Money. Very quickly you reach the point where you need hundreds but only earn like 10 coins per turn. I don't know what the solution is supposed to be. You can't get more people because you need more territory and to buy territory, you need money. This is like "my modem driver is on CD but CD player driver is on the Internet". - Ridiculous warehousing system. A warehouse can store only 4 items (update: you can research and buy an expansion later but it's a rather palliative improvement of poorly designed system), even though there are way more resources even in early game. The goods must be assigned to the warehouse in order to trade them. Trade, of course, is also very limited because goodness forbid you earn more money. And if you realize that you have no space and need to "unassign" some goods, then you lose them. - As others noted, total lack of information that is needed in a city builder game. On first try, I had full warehouse of berries with just one worker. On the next, with 4 workers, barely any berries. I have no idea why. The bushes were abundant. You don't know when the traders are going arrive and how much would they buy. E.g. I started producing lots of meat for trade but then trader arrived and was like "oh thanks, I'll just take 10" when I had 50. Update after giving it another chance. - Still playing with tutorial, it turned out to be not very useful. E.g. one of the tasks was to pick a specific Edict. The edict comes with some penalties but you think ok, I'll just change it (like policy in Tropico or similar concepts in other games). But it doesn't tell you that you can't simply change the edict! You need to (a) have a bailiff (research + building) and (b) pay bailiff to "remove edict". That's just asinine. - You need to look very, very carefully over the whole knowledge tree to plan your path through it. Tutorial doesn't hint at the fact that there are dependencies on items from different "branches" (and each branch has its own requirements and increasing cost that isn't just coins but some "mana" that you need to accumulate who knows how). - Some things are not explained at all. E.g. you can unlock glass maker but it needs quartz. Where do you get quartz? It's not even mentioned in help, you have to go to Reddit to find. You need to send a bailiff to "prospect" the mountains somewhere on the map. And you don't know if you ever find quartz and where. I'm already 5 prospects in and so far no quartz and no gems. - I'm further convinced that "vibe housing" is a terrible concept. In Anno, you know what is coming, what will you need and how much. Here, the villagers just randomly decide to do a home reno and whoop, there goes 40 planks. - Most annoying thing of all: useless notifications. "No access to this or that". Where? How? Why? In Anno or other games, service building have a known zone of influence that you can see. Here, it's anyone's guess what is happening. Some of the notifications are just completely meaningless and disappear on their own (like villager can't find a path - they totally can, as it turns out). And OMG, never build the Inn. You will never see the end of "no space" notifications from your Foundation Hilton. - Regularly, some messengers arrive and vaguely ask you for "help". What exactly do they need and how much? Ooooh, they won't tell. What will you gain? Mysterious "trade route improvement". - You can't set production limits. I started the bow production per tutorial task. I only have 5 bowman but forgot that production building just kept cranking the bows. No hint like buddy, you might not need that many. - The game gets laggy already at 100 villagers. I have a decent gaming rig that ran a huge empire in Anno before. My conclusion is this game actively wants you to not succeed even in "I play to relax" mode.

Mostly AFK time because the game doesn't really grab your attention. Build orders are janky as all get out. Cloisters are hell to design. UI leaves tons to be desired (accidentally deleting buildings is a real concern). It's a very pretty, but also very basic city builder with less than ideal controls. I think I have about 40 hours in it, enough to know I am not going to play anymore. If you are a fan of genre, this offers nothing new.

Hyperfixation goes hard. I've hardly slept since I started playing this, but at least my city is prospering, even if I'm not. ETA: Semi-regular crashes starting around 1300 population, turning down some of the graphics settings and hoping that helps.

Fun when it runs, but crashes too often, hope it gets patched up soon