Fishing

[temple]

I thought I'd suggest these changes to make fishing more attractive.

Currently it's hard to fish efficiently. The gathering rate is equal or faster than berries (it depends on how far away the fish are from the dock), but only three or four fishing boats can gather at a time (plus a few more travelling to/from the dock), so it's hard to rely on them to support your whole economy. Fishing boats take time to build and after fish are exhausted, they're useless.

The fishing boat's tooltip says "Fish the waters for Food. Garrison a support or infantry unit inside to boost fishing rate." I thought that was a nice idea. Military units add arrows to ships, so why can't workers add poles and nets to fishing boats? My tentative proposal is to increase the garrison limit to five units, and have each unit add +80% to the fishing boat's effective gather rate. See D657 for details.

There is micro involved in garrisoning units, but since they gather twice as fast as farmers and you can have up to 15 or 20 gathering at a time, I think this should make fishing an attractive alternative to fields (until the fish run out). That in turn should make water control more important, which should lead to more interesting games. People won't have to make as many fishing ships which means they'll have fewer to delete later on. Fishing boats could also be used to transport small groups of units (no cavalry or champions), although that's dangerous since they're slow, have little health and vision, and can't fight back.

Let me know what you think.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Can nice increase fishing even in the rivers.

[causative]

I like the idea of being able to transfer workers to fishing and transfer them back later.  A problem is that garrisoning 25 units into 5 fishing ships would be a major pain, considering the problems with garrisoning units in ships.

Good players do fish, though.  So I don't think fishing is something that necessarily needs a buff.

A problem with fishing is the fish are a finite resource.  It's not realistic because AFAIK overfishing wasn't a major problem for ancient people - they didn't have the technology or the population to overfish.  And it does leave you with a fleet of deletable fishing ships after the fish are gone.  A good change would be, after a fishing spot is depleted, there is a random delay and then it will regenerate.

[Grugnas]

The idea is nice!

my personal opinion is that perhaps 5 units garrisoned in a fishing boat seems too many for a couple of reasons:

1) the fishing boat is too small to accomodate 5 units in it. maybe the bonus could be raised from 80% to 100% and a garrison limit of 3 units

2) Training fishing boat often boosts food production reducing the population required to work on food

3) fishing boats have quite low hp if compared to the damage that warships can deal and perhaps having units garrisoned in a fishing boat could make loses much high.

[temple]

I had another idea: Only men can fish.

6 hours ago, causative said:

I like the idea of being able to transfer workers to fishing and transfer them back later.  A problem is that garrisoning 25 units into 5 fishing ships would be a major pain, considering the problems with garrisoning units in ships.

Good players do fish, though.  So I don't think fishing is something that necessarily needs a buff.

A problem with fishing is the fish are a finite resource.  It's not realistic because AFAIK overfishing wasn't a major problem for ancient people - they didn't have the technology or the population to overfish.  And it does leave you with a fleet of deletable fishing ships after the fish are gone.  A good change would be, after a fishing spot is depleted, there is a random delay and then it will regenerate.

If fishing is twice as good as farming for garrisoned units, then 25 fishermen = 50 farmers = 10 fields, which is quite a lot (and that's not counting the fishing boats themselves).

Good players fish, but they can't rely on fish to feed their whole economy like they can with berries or hunting. (Or am I mistaken?) That's what I'm trying to change here.

Regenerative fish is a nice idea, although I'm not sure it fits with the current game, since then there should also be regenerative berries and woods (and animals)? There are other threads about this. A better fit would be having infinite fish like with infinite fields, but I'm opposed to this idea too, because the real gather rate depends on how far away the fish are, and unlike storehouses and farmsteads, the dock can't be placed closer to the fish, it's stuck on the shore. Players with fish close to the shore will then have a big advantage throughout the game rather than just until the fish is exhausted.

 

[Imarok]

Fishing doesn't really need a buff.

[sphyrth]

The farther the fish is from the land, the better the catch (more fish).
Fighting sharks? (This is a microing headache, so I'll just put it here)
Since Naval Battle is unattended at best and broken at worst, it's difficult to judge how interesting it would be to make fishing boats engaging.

My only real suggestion is that the fish should be placed on strategic points instead of seemingly randomly spread out. I'm referring to Skirmish Maps of course. But I think Random Maps should have a similar algorithm.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Terra Magna have some similar fish battle from Zapotecs" canoa"