Question about woodlines and fish

[Sp00ky]

I am playing a lot as of late and I realized a problem that I honestly don't know if perhaps is a mistake of mine when playing or of the game. I mostly play random maps, and "unknown"  a lot.

Generally speaking I struggle a lot to get lumber in the early stages of the game. And notice that woodlines tend to run out very quickly, and in some maps woodlines are not there at all, it's just straggler trees all the way. This leads to build a lot of storage buildings which also cost lumber, so sometimes is not worth to build them to just get 3 or 4 trees. Sometimes the woodlines are out of reach of my influence which in early game is a pain.

I also found out that in the water maps, water is a bit useless. There are few fishing spots and they run out really quick, they are not worth contesting over nor microing fishing ships. This is particularly true in maps with lakes. Also Food is extremely easy to get in this game and it's not worth wasting wood (which is hard to come by) on fishing ships to get food (which is very easy to get).

 

So my question is: is that something by design and maybe I am playing the game wrong? is maybe a problem with some map generators not being balanced? How do you guys handle lumber early game?

[NitroVicky]

Some maps are designed to be resource-scarce hunger games maps. On those, you have to be clever and think about other ways to survive, e.g. mercenaries. 

Most maps however, do offer plenty of wood. I would recommend sending all early units except 5 or 6 women (gathering berries) to the forest. In total you will need about 20 workers lumbering. Also try to get the wood axe technology as early as you can. 

Please see the first few minutes of the attached replay for some ideas, I didn't struggle with wood.  

Maps such as Acropolis Bay, Sanhyadri Buttes, Gulf of Bothnia, Mainland, Gear, Lorraine Plain, Ratumacos and Continent all have reasonable amount of wood available. 

metadata.json commands.txt

[Gurken Khan]

44 minutes ago, Sp00ky said:

some maps woodlines are not there at all

Easy: just don't play those maps!

When I generate a random game and it's a hunger games map at least that's what I do.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

There are a lot of maps that aren't much fun to play. Its a bit more serious in multiplayer too, where 80% of the time mainland is the map of choice. If I recall correctly, someone was working on a series of multiplayer optimized maps, which would be lovely to see.