Part of this is by design; I think it should take a very long time
to learn all of the skills, or to see all of the world. This forces
specialization, and means that there will always be new things to
discover.
I agree that starting up is too slow, and to address this I have done
the following:
o Player's initial character now starts with 5 peasants
o Player can instantly create one tower without Construction or
any workers.
o The first several turns will probably be free. This lets
players get their feet wet and get comfortable with the system
before having to pay $$$ for their turns.
One change I plan to make, but haven't yet, is to add more useful items
for sale in the cities.
Should I go further? Removing the diminishing returns from study
would double the rate at which a character could learn skills, but
I'm not sure this is a good idea. Players have overwhelmingly spoken
against increasing the number of days in a turn.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@shadow.com>