Farms

[tribalbeat]

Will we ever see a button on farms that allows the citizens farming them to automatically reseed them once the food is depleted from the farm? It would be a lot easier to manage than ordering my farmers to build a new farm every few minutes. I don't know how hard it would be to code, sorry.

[plumo]

Will we ever see a button on farms that allows the citizens farming them to automatically reseed them once the food is depleted from the farm? It would be a lot easier to manage than ordering my farmers to build a new farm every few minutes. I don't know how hard it would be to code, sorry.

Personally, i hope farms will have unlimited food... less micromanagement, but slower food supply than hunting or fishing.

[tribalbeat]

Personally, i hope farms will have unlimited food... less micromanagement, but slower food supply than hunting or fishing.

I feel farms need to be reseeded for a price to prevent someone from just being able to turtle the entire match.

[Jubalbarca]

Or you could limit them to 5 gatherers. Then you'd need an area of farms large enough that it would be cost-ineffective to turtle defend it, and so it could be a prime raiding target.

[feneur]

The Design Document (DD) says farms will have infinite supply, but will be limited to one gatherer and will decay if left unattended for a while. The DD also says they will only be possible to be built on "vacant lots" around the farmstead (each farmstead would come with a limited number of vacant lots and you'd only be able to build 2 farmsteads in each territory), we'll see how we do with that but in either case limiting the number of farms in one way or another is likely. Or at least their efficiency.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I think that aspect of the DD, with the farmstead "slots" is kind of unnecessary and would hinder gameplay. For instance, you might need to build more than two farmsteads in order to take advantage of some berry bushes you just discovered. We still need a slot system for the Settlements, but I think we can leave Corrals and Fields and Farmsteads as free range structures, like the rest of the structures (sans Civ Centre of course). Making fields "infinite" supply is okay. Not so sure about 1 unit per field, though I am open to playtesting it that way. It just seems awfully constricting.

[oshron]

well in Empire Earth, farms COULD expire, but had so much food in them that they would only expire if you left the game alone for, like, three days straight

i think the farms should have lots of food in them and eventually need to be reseeded, but there should be something to allow those farms to be reseeded indefinitely and at the cost of wood for each reseeding. otherwise, as mentioned before, you can just turtle with an infinite supply of food

[Pureon]

I agree with oshron on this one. Lots of food, but eventually they run out and need to be reseeded. Agree an option could be added to make them reseed indefinitely (if wood resource is available).

[gudo]

Do it like AOK. Farms start out fairly poor (low food/cost ratio), but sink some research into it and they get better. Also, a button on the farmstead to automatically reseed farms would be great. It wasn't a toggle switch. Rather, you "pre-purchased" a number of farms and when one would expire, on of your pre-purchased farms would automatically be planted.

[oshron]

to give an idea of how that could work, in Empire Earth 2, there was an option on construction buildings where, in addition to queuing units to be built in a certain order (say, either 1 swordsman over and over or maybe 2 swordsmen, a spearman, then another swordsman and repeating in that order), you could also press a button that would allow you to continue training that queue of units indefinitely as long as your resource stockpiles and population allowed it, this way, you wouldnt have to queue up a dozen units at a time and then go back after it was done in order to make a large army

incidentally, in regards to population, there's only gonna be 200 units per player, right? i dont really disagree with that, but there should be an option for scenario design to allow more or fewer units (i think the ultimate maximum should be 500, though)

[feneur]

to give an idea of how that could work, in Empire Earth 2, there was an option on construction buildings where, in addition to queuing units to be built in a certain order (say, either 1 swordsman over and over or maybe 2 swordsmen, a spearman, then another swordsman and repeating in that order), you could also press a button that would allow you to continue training that queue of units indefinitely as long as your resource stockpiles and population allowed it, this way, you wouldnt have to queue up a dozen units at a time and then go back after it was done in order to make a large army

incidentally, in regards to population, there's only gonna be 200 units per player, right? i dont really disagree with that, but there should be an option for scenario design to allow more or fewer units (i think the ultimate maximum should be 500, though)

Even if we put a maximum it will be easy to change, so I think everyone should be satisfied in that regard. That doesn't mean that the game will run great with an infinite number of units of course though

[Mythos_Ruler]

What about "slots" like settlements for Farmsteads. Build a Farmstead on a Farmstead slot and the Field foundations show up around it, 3x3. Each territory can have three of them (or only 2 for Desert maps).

[Pureon]

I'm not too sure about that. Maybe following the AOK system is the safest and least controversial way of doing it.

[oshron]

nah, id go with vacant lots (perhaps designated by small fences and including a small gate/opening on each side) instead. this may be a nostalgia factor for me: in Empire Earth, what you did was build a granary and then your farms appeared around it, as long as it wasnt obstructed. this will also prevent people from just building a million farms

for the number of farmsteads, i think it should instead be that you can build three of them on particularly fertile maps (iirc, one of the random maps thats being made is "fertile crescent"), two of them on standard maps, and only one on unfertile maps like deserts. if possible, there should also be changes to the farms themselves where you cant build them on certain terrain (like solid rock); this would add to realism and, on certain maps, force you to do what people really do in those situations and raise animals instead of crops

[av93]

I my opinion farmstead mustn t be limited... Other possibility is that you could build farms only in specials terrains like Caesar series

[plumo]

I feel farms need to be reseeded for a price to prevent someone from just being able to turtle the entire match.

First: Reseeding is a tedious job. Remember the first age of empires: it was a pain in the @#$%. In AOK:TC it was much improved, although when you are occupied sieging and attacking in the final part of a game, i tend to forget about my farms.

Second: Turtling with farms can have considerable disadvantages, if the devs make it the slowest source of food. If your opponent turtles with farms, you can hunt the wildlife, pick the berries and get the fish, thus providing you with much more food. Drawback is some more micromanagement.

[oshron]

as i said before concerning re-seeding, there could simply be an option in the game to reseed farms indefinitely as long as you have enough resources to do so. this way, you have one person working each farm, they go and do that forever, while you have other guys chopping down trees so that you can keep reseeding those farms

incidentally, i think the cost of planting and reseeding farms should be slightly disproportionate to their cost. here's a rough outline of how farming, its cost, and its efficiency could work:

• by default, lets say that a farm will cost 80 wood to plant and replant, and provides 150 food. this means that a single farm will provide enough food for 3 villagers (i know there's no dedicated villagers, but this is just an example) before having to be reseeded, and thats three villagers that could be tasked to a forest to gather more wood to reseed the farm. your villagers at the farms at this point will gather food at a rate of just 1 unit of it per second
  
• after your first upgrade (say, Irrigation), your farms will still cost 80 wood to seed and reseed, but will provide 200 food and you can now gather food at a rate of 1.5 units of food per second
  
• the second upgrade will add a bit more food to the cost but make it more efficient: it now costs 100 food to plant a farm, but it provides 250 at a rate of 2.5 units per second
  
• the third and final upgrade adds to teh cost again (120 wood) but now provides 300 food before having to be reseeded
  

[Mythos_Ruler]

My idea with Farmstead settlements prevents people from turtling too much, because you can put these Farmstead settlements at a distance away from the Civ Centre settlement that is prohibitive to wall off. Anyway, I like how you're think oshron, although I think farms should be a little more(a lot more) profitable than the numbers you are using since you guys want to limit them so much.

[oshron]

as i said, im just giving an example as to how it could work. as an aside, i think that farms should look different depending on what civilization is using them instead of it always just being grain. this could work to the end of adding realism and historicity. like, just as a random and inaccurate suggestion, one civ could farm grapes while another farms grain and yet another farms some kind of herb

that reminds me, could it also be possible that you could plant orchards as an alternative to farms? orchards could perhaps have a slower yield (the fruit, etc, needs to regrow over time) but only need to be planted once. in a sense, this would be less realistic because the fruit would regrow faster than it would in real life. its just an idea, really. this could maybe tie in to fruit trees that you find where the fruit is deposited at a farmstead and you then have the option to plant that kind of tree

btw, how exactly are farmsteads, farms, corrals, and vacant lots gonna work? i get the idea with farmsteads--theyre like granaries in Empire Earth--but are farms, etc, otherwise built independently? for scenario design, can vacant lots be placed independently of a farmstead so that you could just have a random farm or corral set out in the middle of a field? do farmsteads work as dropsites? and are the foundations of farms and corrals set up from the farmstead or by workers?

Edited May 23, 2011 by oshron

[Yihka]

I myself think that you should not limit the amount of stuff you can make in any way. But that's just my opinion. It's one of the things I loved about Age of Empires, no limits.

However Age of Empires 3 gave you limits, which is why I disliked it more.

Looking at the idea of farms, don't limit them! Let them be placed anywhere you want and let them run out of food and remade by villagers automatically if turned on at your town center? (Default = on)

With any game you have to think: How much farms do I need to make what I want? 6 ? Ok. If a player decides to make 20 ( And also need to make 20 villagers to run them leaving him with 180 pop left ) then that's their choice but from what i see it's making more food than you need. The only good side of it would be that when yo uget attacked your food stockpile will stay high!

Also you have stone and iron, you can't simply turtle with only farms. In AoE you had the ability to create weak men with just food and wood. A player that had gold and stone too was far stronger than their enemy!

What I'm trying to say is, don't limit the game too much because too many limits will make a game less fun. Farms is one of those things you shouldn't give a limit. Any pro player will know that making more than you actually need is highly inefficient (And I mean making SO MUCH that you won't actually use it in the end, even in an emergency)

If you are going to implement a limit I would say look at rise of nations, now that game has implemented territories really nice. You build a city and near that city you can build x amount of farms etc. xP It's my favorite RTS game next to Age of Empires.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Yihka

[Alpha of the Eagles]

I'm not too sure about that. Maybe following the AOK system is the safest and least controversial way of doing it.

I agree. I think that system gives you exactly what you need: an investment that pays back in food (with research, greater reward and faster gathering) with some micromanagment (select guy, right click the empty field; it's not much to do like in original AoE). But, how about a compromise? You can only build farms in an area around the mill (research will expand this area)? Also, the gathering should initially be very slow, with research neccessary to increase the gathering rate.

Oh, and a unique tech could be irrigation which would allow for building a farm in arid or barren areas.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I disagree about the entire concept about farms costing wood though. The logical thing to use for the planting a farm is a seed which would mean that they should cost food. As for farms being limited, I don't really see much realism. It should probably be limited by the fact that they only yield food at one period of time. The rest is spent taking care of it by plowing the soil, fertilizing it, planting, and weeding. I don't find much purpose for tons of different kinds of farms unless you want crop rotation as a graphical implementation. The primary resource that people collected from farms at that time was probably wheat. Nevertheless, it would be cool to have soil be drained of nutrients, making farms far less as profitable so that you would have a sense of realism in farming.

[Arthur_D]

I agree with the last poster.

IMHO, farms should be reseeded automatically, but the farmer will have to wait a while after each reseeding until the crop has grown before he can cut any food from it. This will make for less micro-management, and more realism.

[gudo]

I worry that a system like that would actually increase the micro. I don't want to have my farmer just twiddling his thumbs while waiting for the farm to be re-plantable. I'd probably re-assign them to some other job, then have to swap them back to farming. That sounds like it would make for bad gameplay, and gameplay trumps realism.

instead, just increase the amount of time that re-seeding takes. If you want some added realism, you can make animations for the farmer doing chores other harvesting. Such as watering the crops/feeding the animals/etc.

[oshron]

well i dont think the farmer would really just be doing nothing; he'd be working towards reseeding the farm (ie, building it) and then get right to work

Edited May 25, 2011 by oshron