Hello, thank you!
- Positive income: The economy is very crude with many random numbers, so it's okay now. You should make sure, that meierhofs have all fields cultivated (enough corvey forces) and a lot of animals and that all dominical buildings are repaired.
- Managing: Yes, direct managing of individual serfs will never be there, because it didn't happen in real world. There is a long way to make it look live, but it's one of the goals. And since you mentioned Banished, I like it in many ways, but its economy works similar as in other games of the genre – everything is centralized, all produce goes to one place and all people are just workers that work in facilities you build. Which is quite far from (central european) early modern reality.
- Construction: Actually, there will be some "this constructs there", but only in cases, where it historically makes sense. It will mainly apply to the facilities of the manor, which are in the noble's direct possession. As for serfs' homesteads, in the next version (already released in Czech, not yet in English), there will be possibility to give a serf just a plot of land, on which he will build new homestead himself. The location of plots for new households is however predetermined in a way, that the villages naturally grow in some directions.
- Learning: Yes, one of the goals is to present, how an central european manor actually worked in early modern period.
- Names: In the (very far) future, there will be different manors based on real ones and the people's names should always reflect the language and era. In this case, it's based on manor of Žacléř/Schatzlar, which is in Sudetenland and therefore the names are in German and use old German way of creating female surnames by addding "-in". (I actually used real names of people of this specific manor from archival documents.)
- Vacant positions: There is a lot of information in the game and will be much more, but some of the important things should be easily visible at every time and this is one of them, because the lord would definitely know that some important position is vacant in real life.
- Landscape: I'm glad that you like it. Graphics aren't priority at this stage, but I'm gradually trying to make it look at least a little decent.
- Mid and long term objectives: You mean in the development or for the player? If for the player, there aren't really any yet. Now it's just about getting a good income and having a good renown, but the renown mechanics mostly aren't implemented yet. There will be more.
- Strategies: Buying of households by serfs gives you money, but you lose some control of the household (at this time it's just inability to expel the serf from the household). But with the control, you also lose some responsibilty (e. g. repairs, not implemented yet). Historically, most of the households were buyed by serfs through time, so it should be beneficial as well in the game. The problem is, that the emphytheutic law is quite complicated and I have to study it more. (It's not just buying and selling as we know today, and after buying, the serf didn't own in it the way it is today. It was something between ownership and renting. There was a lot of dispute around it among historians.)
- Other cities: Although each manor was kind of a self sustaining world of its own to a certain degree, interaction with neighbouring manors and cities happened a lot, so it will definitely be in the game.
- Mill repair: The maintenance must be set to certain level and manager must be assigned. Then the condition will get gradually better (the repair is not instant). Maintenance, repairs and improvements of the manor's facilities will be more complex in the future.
- Future of the game: There will be more of both. There were certaily more possibilities to interact both within the manor (officials, personnel, serfs, church) and outside of it (other manor, cities, authorities, church etc.) in the real life, that can and will be implemented in the game. But it should stay focused on the administration of the manor, so there probably won't be things like some dynastic stuff of the lord and so on. Interaction with king was also very rare for some countryside noble (if he didn't have for example some rank at the court). But I am certainly open to any ideas, what should have priority in the gameplay.
Thank you very much once again. If anything from what I wrote is still unclear or some other questiong or ideas arose from that, I'll be glad to answer.
Btw. how is your game going? Will there be a new version any soon? :D