Balance: Food Production (Corral) Proposal

[wackyserious]

This is a food production balance proposal.

Quote

 

Chicken > low food cost / quick train time / low food gain

Sheep/Pig > mid food cost / mid train time / mid food gain

Cow > high food cost / slow train time / high food gain

 

Excerpts from a staff discussion. Tagging @Nescio if you are interested in doing this one.

On 6/24/2019 at 2:54 PM, Stan` said:

I guess you could ask Nescio to submit a patch

 

On 6/27/2019 at 8:41 AM, elexis said:

I asked borg- and Hannibal and they seem to agree. It sounds like one of these cases where one has the patch and the other has commit access and some others agreeing. I must say as a player I found it more benefitial to only train one type animal, since two of them were more confusing, and the units only hunt one of the type, and one can train only that one animal that is the most efficient (high cost, high gain). The other solutions are always false from a gameplay perspective? (I guess that's offtopic if it's not about art. borg- said he wanted to lookup historic accuracy, perhaps it makes some more sense with that other than the gameplay mechanics itself.)

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Meh. I prefer a more comprehensive approach from a gameplay perspective.

Like AOK monasteries and "relics" vis a via "gold" resource, 0 A.D.'s relics would be horses, sheep, cattle, goats, etc. that you capture and garrison into the corral for a food trickle (or other benefit, specifically horses and camels). 

[Freagarach]

One could combine that? E.g. capturing a sheep gives a player two options: garrison it inside the corral for a small trickle of food, or slaughter it immediately as a quick food source. Same with the horses/camel: garrison for a horse/camel production boost or slaughter for food.

[wackyserious]

I had this idea since the Gauls currently have access to both cattle and swine production and most of the Old world are doing poultry by that time.

[Nescio]

• What exactly is desired?
• This could be labelled as a “gameplay change” and such patches tend to be rather hard to get committed.
• Before domestic animals are overhauled, we probably want to have fattening ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1718 ) available first.
• Realistically, chicken, dogs, and pigs are efficient sources of meat, sheep and cattle much less so.
• Nowadays we raise cattle primarily for their meat; historically, beef was a rarity; cattle had many functions, but the most important reason for keeping them was their muscle power for ploughing.
• If animals were garrisonable (UnitAI?) then I suppose they could have a garrisoned resource trickle aura.
• Personally I think animals shouldn't be trainable; free food isn't realistic.

[wackyserious]

I created a thread to solidify all the concepts and ideas, in case a future balance should be implemented. Nothing for now, just keeping the ideas flowing.

[azayrahmad]

Bump because I'm interested in this topic.

In my opinion, it could be like this:

1. Cattle should be bought with metal, perhaps about 50 for small animal and 100 for big animal
2. Training time should be long, 1 to 2 minutes, to simulates cattle growth from baby to consumable
3. Slaughter it immediately if needed or garrison it for trickle, just like @wowgetoffyourcellphone suggested. The trickle rate should be similar to grain gathering rate for one female. Trickle can be any resources, I think, to imply the cattle is used for milk/fleece/horsepower etc.
4. Make cattle slowly lose health and unhealable. This is to prevent infinite trickle if garrisoned. So when the cattle has finished training, you need to choose between slaughter or garrisoned

This is I think not much different from fattening system, but with less code work. It should be used as an alternative to fields with similar gain but different mechanics.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

While cattle and sheep were not primarily used for food production, there isn't anything to represent those resources, which makes that kind of abstraction fair enough in my opinion.  What I don't like about training animals at corrals is how micro-intensive it is for very little in the way of enjoyment.  It's basically a grinding mechanic.  Having the animals spawn from the building would be a much better alternative to me, but the training was initially considered only placeholder use for the building anyways, which probably warrants just scrapping training altogether.  I do like Nescio's idea about auras for specific animals garrisoned.

[azayrahmad]

14 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

While cattle and sheep were not primarily used for food production, there isn't anything to represent those resources, which makes that kind of abstraction fair enough in my opinion.  What I don't like about training animals at corrals is how micro-intensive it is for very little in the way of enjoyment.  It's basically a grinding mechanic.  Having the animals spawn from the building would be a much better alternative to me, but the training was initially considered only placeholder use for the building anyways, which probably warrants just scrapping training altogether.  I do like Nescio's idea about auras for specific animals garrisoned.

I'm not a historian, @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, so if people at the time didn't eat cattle and sheep, what meat they eat? I assume they still eat goats and birds? 

I agree that fattening is a neat idea but quite impractical in multiplayer. In terms of resources and time, it's like fields but more cumbersome. 

[DarcReaver]

On 7/28/2019 at 4:25 AM, wackyserious said:

This is a food production balance proposal.

Excerpts from a staff discussion. Tagging @Nescio if you are interested in doing this one.

 

 

Why are 3 different types of animals required for 3 same effects/ why so overcomplicated for such an easy feature? Why not simply use 1 animal type per faction?

i.e.

Norse = Cow
Greek = Sheep
other = CHIKIN/pigz

Design path : Build Corral -> train animal -> get food.

Edited August 14, 2019 by DarcReaver