patch http://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/13405

[raymond]

Hello,

the patch #13405 changes the following:

Farm Field yield increased from 2000 food to 5000 food. Max gatherers: 5 per field (from 20).

So players need much more space for fields to have a fast income in food. Why these changes?

Better would be 4000 food fields and 10 gatherer per field (so double it and half it). Only 5 workers per field (on this big field) is to less.

Some maps are to small/not ideal to create much more fields. Or you must enlarge the blue line of the civic centre.

Building time also increased from 60 to 100 seconds?! In total: it increase massively the playing time for each game.

regards,

Raymond

Edited May 14, 2013 by raymond

[feneur]

The exact numbers will have to be tested so we can know for sure which gives the best result, but in general we do want to encourage players to expand. To build new civic centres and compete for land rather than just be able to stay in a small space and just create a lot of units without having to think about it. + It makes it easier for the enemy player to raid farms, which means you will have to think about protecting your farms, and the risk of leaving your farms unprotected compared to being able to put more units into attacking. And also to make it more useful to gather food by other means (bushes/trees/hunting/corrals once they are properly implemented).

The build time per food amount is actually decreased a lot. Now you just have to build one farm field to get 5000 food, previously to get the same amount of food you'd need to build three fields (with a build time of 60 that would mean 180 seconds, which is obviously a lot more than 100 seconds.) True, you'd then have some more food left, but even if you just count two fields (and thus compare 4000 at 120 seconds to 5000 at 100 seconds) it's still a benefit in terms of build time for the new stats. Sure, it takes longer to get your farming going, but once you have things going it should definitely not be that much of an increase in playing time. And to the extent it is it should hopefully add some new room for strategy and fun

[Lion.Kanzen]

that works fine, may be Alert like message to beware to player about a Exhausted Farm would be nice.

[raymond]

Just decrease the cost of the civic centre from currently 500 each resources to (maybe) 250. Also a little bit the building time.

I do understand encourage players to expand, but this way is not the right one, I think.

Another thing: it is also very hard to defend because of a wide area and the field hp is decreased from 120 to 100. So maybe you need to make turret cheaper or give more hp?

Edited May 14, 2013 by raymond

[Lion.Kanzen]

Or make palisade more strong and fast to build cheaper and a upgrade to have double wooden wall.

[raymond]

Yes. It is not only one thing you have to consider...

[Lion.Kanzen]

Maybe a upgrade to have more capacity to 7 workers. Colony farmland or migrant workers, it can be the name.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I'm just playing around with stats. Nothing is set in stone. Hopefully soonish (within an alpha or two) the way farming works will be completely different than it is now.

[alpha123]

So players need much more space for fields to have a fast income in food.

This doesn't affect the farming rate at all.

I only use 3-5 workers per field anyway. It really doesn't require many at all. I can max out off fewer than 8 farms, which is not much space.

Why these changes?

Probably so players don't have to rebuild farms as often.

Some maps are to small/not ideal to create much more fields. Or you must enlarge the blue line of the civic centre.

It is easy to fit 10+ fields in the territory of one CC, and that's including room for things like mills and barracks.

Building time also increased from 60 to 100 seconds?! In total: it increase massively the playing time for each game.

1) 40 seconds is far from "massive".

2) It will build faster if you use more than one builder (specifically I think it's pow(numBuilders, 0.7) but I'm not 100% sure).

I do understand encourage players to expand, but this way is not the right one, I think.

I'm not really sure how this encourages players to expand. I tend to farm off one or maybe two in a very long game CCs anyway.

Another thing: it is also very hard to defend because of a wide area and the field hp is decreased from 120 to 100. So maybe you need to make turret cheaper or give more hp?

1) Nobody attacks farms directly; it's much more effective just to go for the workers.

2) Towers are a great bargain already.

3) This won't be any harder to defend than it used to be. It's not like fields got huge or something.

that works fine, may be Alert like message to beware to player about a Exhausted Farm would be nice.

Farms will be infinite eventually (soon?) so it would be wasted effort to implement this.

[Lion.Kanzen]

For Island maps, some island are enought big, for farming so maybe a pair of technologies one get maximum workers against other give more food rate per worker. But is if changed think in that.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[feneur]

For islands maps you should be able to use fishing

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yes i was though that too, but is not infinite. We can sea farm?

[raymond]

Yes, it is not possible that the fish population grows slowly?

Edited May 15, 2013 by raymond

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yeah I like that. Is good idea very good. Its Can work together with corral idea.

[sanderd17]

It's already planned that fish, land animals and berries will grow slowly again, but that has yet to be implemented.

[alpha123]

It's already planned that fish, land animals and berries will grow slowly again, but that has yet to be implemented.

I'm not sure about land animals, but soon I will work on regenerative fish and berries. Respawning land animals might be nice, and would make hunting more viable, but I don't really know if the team wants that. It has its pros and cons.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Is for optimization that desition of respawn animals?

[Oimat]

Hi,

This kind of modification is a major modifcation in the game. When we played first time with alpha123, we though it was a very big bug and ended the game xD

However, i think the 5 women limitation is too low. Firstly, there is NO place where it's indicated : some text MUST tell us that it exists a limit of women per farm.

Secondly, 5 women is very low. The first idea is to force players to expansion their territory, but i don't think it's really usefull to do that, since the one who has more CC has more place to attack from the enemy and more ressources to gather. The one who controls the map has a big advantage, and putting 5 women per farm isn't pertinent, in my opinion.

[McAllisterw]

My experience with farming so far been that food is the one resource which seems in limited supply, so this is welcome.

One thing I have noticed is that for raising sheep, the sheep yeilds double the cost in food to raise it, but the butchery process is quite slow, so this combined with the time taken for the sheep to be 'trained' means it doesn't seem like breeding them gives you food much faster as opposed to just carrying on harvesting the field.

[alpha123]

Hi,

This kind of modification is a major modifcation in the game. When we played first time with alpha123, we though it was a very big bug and ended the game xD

...I thought we ended it because the pathfinder was being very buggy? (It was a primarily water map, after all.)

However, i think the 5 women limitation is too low. Firstly, there is NO place where it's indicated : some text MUST tell us that it exists a limit of women per farm.

See #1871.

Secondly, 5 women is very low.

More than 5 is too high, especially when farms will be infinite. I never use more than 5 gatherers per farm anyway. You just need to change your play style a bit.

[Mythos_Ruler]

More than 5 is too high, especially when farms will be infinite. I never use more than 5 gatherers per farm anyway. You just need to change your play style a bit.

I think ideally there wouldn't be a hard limit, but rather a "diminishing returns" variable where you're better off just spending the resources and building another farm field once you get 5+ gatherers on a farm field.

[sanderd17]

I think ideally there wouldn't be a hard limit, but rather a "diminishing returns" variable where you're better off just spending the resources and building another farm field once you get 5+ gatherers on a farm field.

That's right. But one problem is: how do you make the farming rate clear to the user, so he can decide how many farms he builds. Could it be possible to display the total gathering speed of a field with the current workers on it? So you can see, if you swap a male for a female, how much difference it makes, or if you add a citizen, how much your speed goes up.

I also think such UI element will be needed to find good parameters. I tried calculating some parameters, but it's rather hard. I optimized it, so that when you have 20 workers, the fastest way to get 1000 food is by building 4 fields. Also using those units to first gather the needed resources, and assuming a farmstead is close, so walking time doesn't matter (which is mostly the case). Of course, it depends on the amount of food you want. If you want over 5000 food, you'll need to build two fields anyway. There are some things I didn't take into calculation btw. If you would concentrate all your workers on preparing one field, you would get the first food from it a lot faster. So if you have your first food faster, you can start producing new units faster, which speeds up the entire process. I just let everything happen in parallel in my little calculations.

As I have no idea how much it will change to the time needed, my calculations aren't worth a lot, but anyway, here they are: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Albk4pIn1-QYdEJRR0pCd0M0V1JFb0RzYVRLbjA3Nnc#gid=0 you can play with some parameters if you want.

[raymond]

Any definitely changes for future releases to trigger expanding of the base, except changing building time of farm fields, more yield per farm and less workers per field?

Thanks for the discussion so I hope that are not the last changes regarding this intension.

Edited May 26, 2013 by raymond

[Donner]

I think an upkeep system is more effective at encouraging players to expand their resource base and empire (mainly with metal and stone but could also work with food).