move fields away from the CC

[maroder]

To keep this discussion productive: I created two versions of farmlands, so that everybody can test how it would influence the game. It is important to note, that both options still allow you to build fields wherever you like (including directly around your CC), but the farmlands should give a strong incentive to build on them and outside of the CC range.

Option 1: Player buildable farmlands

farmlands.zip

• can be build by the player (should work with infantry and women)
• cannot be build in the city

Option 1:  Farmlands on random map 

farmlands-on-mainland.zip

• Works only on the map "Farmland", which is a modified version of "Mainland"

 

To recap, what are the goals and consequences of this approach:

• more realistic city layout
• no restriction of player choice, you can still build fields wherever you like
• if you use the farmlands, farming gets more risky, therefore rushing is easier

 

Notes: [The mods are for a24]. I choose relatively random values for the positive farming aura, so don't get hung up on those. This same is true for the amount of gatherer per field. Also, as I said, I have no experience in random map creation, so don't be surprised if they are not balanced. Further discussion points: size, number and effect strength of the farmlands.

So please try it out and me what you think. Is this how you imagined the farmlands? Does this fit into the game? Does it change the strategy too much?

Edited May 15, 2021 by maroder
update mod files

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

21 hours ago, maroder said:

Option 1: Player buildable farmlands

farmlands.zip 7 MB · 1 download

This is neat. I like it a lot.

 

21 hours ago, maroder said:

Option 2:  Farmlands on random map

farmlands-on-mainland.zip 7 MB · 1 download

• Works only on the map "Farmland", which is a modified version of "Mainland"

Pretty cool too. Too bad about the farmland getting put inside forests. 

[maroder]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Too bad about the farmland getting put inside forests.

yeah, I am working on figuring out how to fix that.

[maroder]

Should be fixed now.

[maroder]

@Stan` it seems like there are a number of people who would like to comment on this topic but they don't have access to this forum. Maybe it would be better to just move this thread to the gameplay discussion forum.

[Stan`]

Done.

[LetswaveaBook]

What do people think of the Empire Earth way to do it? In that game you build a granary and 8 fields spawn around it. That would be different from placing it around the CC. We could have a feature were you could place fields individually or for a reduced price with a granary.

The transparent grey building in the middle of the fields is the granary.

Edited May 7, 2021 by LetswaveaBook
I am starting to believe I am getting dyslectic. At least English is not my first language.

[maroder]

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

We could have a feature were you could place fields individually or for a reduced price with a granary.

Not sure how much this would change. As the CC is still the most defended area, I believe people will just build like this:

Only depended if 8 fields are aromatically spawned (left) or if you get a reduced price for placing a field close to the farmstead (right).

[Auron24015]

7 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

What do people think of the Empire Earth way to do it? In that game you build a granary and 8 fields spawn around it. That would be different from placing it around the CC. We could have a feature were you could place fields individually or for a reduced price with a granary.

The transparent grey building in the middle of the fields is the granary.

I'm a very big fan of this idea, given i want the whole farms-only-around-mill buildings thing anyway. The Reduced price thing wouldn't add much game-play wise though... people would probably just choose the individual farms anyway given we can have 5 people on them and that will sustain you for at least 5 minutes until you need another one. The pay more now for discount 20 minutes from now thing probably wouldn't be favorable. Unless we reduce the farmers to just one of course.

We could of course make the CC not be a food warehouse anymore, but that COULD end up with bad results so maybe not.

Man EE it's been so long, i need to give you a try again.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Auron24015

[Lion.Kanzen]

50 minutes ago, Auron24015 said:

We could of course make the CC not be a food warehouse anymore, but that COULD end up with bad results so maybe not.

I am not in favor of that, there are better solutions.

[LetswaveaBook]

On 07/05/2021 at 5:42 PM, maroder said:

Not sure how much this would change. As the CC is still the most defended area, I believe people will just build like this:

I didn´t mean to do it literally that way, but I would rather say it was in the same spirit. We could for example say that fields generated by a granary are a different type of crops, which is gathered 10% faster and where only 2 citizens can gather per field. In that case it would seriously impact city layout as you cannot place 40 citizens around your CC with this method.

If you combine it with giving CCs positive auras for buildings, you would give players reasons to do things differently. Ideas for that would be markets near CCs get 5% barter price and blacksmiths near CCs give citizen soldiers produced from the CC a small bonus. That way every player probably wants to build the market and blacksmith near the CC and scarify some farming space.

I think we need an entire arsenal of tools to supply a change of city layout if we want to do it an a soft way, since placing farms around CCs makes a lot of gameplay sense.

Recap: I am in favor of adding a second way so players get to chose whether they want to use the granaries or the original fields.

[alre]

I'm a big fan of EE fields spawning around farms. However, they mostly make sense if fields are only allowed one worker or very few anyway. If you only need one farm in your whole city, that is not going to look more natural or realistic.

[hyperion]

Currently you can build your city as you like, but don't like how others build their cities, so to make all follow the same ideal let's add more restriction. Or add some boni no matter whether they can be reasonable communicated through the UI, people just can check the code (open source after all). How many people are aware of diminishing returns for instance?

 

Some changes towards your goal easily discovered by players (whether they are desirable is another question):

• drop default arrows
• reduce garrison limit
• have CS have the same gather rate as woman

 

[maroder]

@LetswaveaBook your idea sounds like a similar mechanic as the farmlands to me. The difference would be that you would probably don't want to use a minimal distance? I mean yeah sure, as long as it works I am not opposed to it. The only problem is that people don't seem to like "convoluted" bonuses.

@hyperion You can build your city as you like, but there is only one way that is hugely benefits you in the game. And to my frustration it is the way that makes the city look like one big farming area. Speaking of UI and communication. How does the visuals of the CC relate to its functions? There is no indication that is has huge defensive capabilities or that it would be a good storehouse.

A solution like the proposed farmlands on the other hand, clearly communicate: "this land is good for farming", so I a not sure to what proposal you are referring to in your comment.

[hyperion]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

How does the visuals of the CC relate to its functions

That you can drop food at the CC you have to try once (well, the units will even demonstrate it for you), then you know how it works -> very easy to discover

1 hour ago, maroder said:

A solution like the proposed farmlands on the other hand, clearly communicate: "this land is good for farming"

Clearly communicate as in a code comment, a forum post or some press release? -> awful discoverability

About farmland itself: Where are the boundaries of farmland? What happens when the field is partially on farmland? What are the exact effects and how to present them in-game?

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 07/05/2021 at 8:34 AM, LetswaveaBook said:

What do people think of the Empire Earth way to do it? In that game you build a granary and 8 fields spawn around it. That would be different from placing it around the CC. We could have a feature were you could place fields individually or for a reduced price with a granary.

The transparent grey building in the middle of the fields is the granary.

I had already thought of that. we need, a game feature, called "socket".

@Freagarach

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, hyperion said:

About farmland itself: Where are the boundaries of farmland? What happens when the field is partially on farmland? What are the exact effects and how to present them in-game?

Fair questions, but not insurmountable problems.

 

Quote

Clearly communicate as in a code comment, a forum post or some press release? -> awful discoverability

Tutorial, tooltips, simple in-game prompts.

[maroder]

9 hours ago, hyperion said:

Clearly communicate as in a code comment, a forum post or some press release? -> awful discoverability

To me this looks not like poor discoverability. It uses the same aura concept and visualization as heroes, healers, temples and the old rotary mill, therefore it is not "invisible" as the diminishing returns. So I can't really follow your argumentation. I would be happy if you try the mods and tell me in more detail how the the communication to the player could be improved.

And yes, I agree it should be obvious to the player without checking the code. I also agree that is is bad to restrict player choice (I don't like the minimal distance between towers for example), but I came to the conclusion that some restriction actually help the gameplay and the realism. Otherwise we would have the discussion: Why can I not just use my houses as dropsites? why can I not build champions in P1? why can I not build 20 wonders?

These restrictions help with the narrative and the realism.

Also, please note that farmlands are not the only options discussed. Disabling the CCs dropsite abilities and reducing its arrow count was my original proposal, which would not be such an "artificial" (meaning visible) restriction as a minimal distance, but it seems like people would like the CC as it is now.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

21 minutes ago, maroder said:

Why can I not just use my houses as dropsites? why can I not build champions in P1? why can I not build 20 wonders?

Indeed. Games have restrictions. These help define the parameters of the game. lol

[Lion.Kanzen]

10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I had already thought of that. we need, a game feature, called "socket".

@Freagarach

@Stan` How's the sockets feature going on?

[Stan`]

Well @Freagarach was the last to work on it, but it's not one of their priorities right now;

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, maroder said:

why can I not build champions in P1? why can I not build 20 wonders?

That would be the equivalent of bringing in the elite soldier (,US Navy seal? British Royal army) to try to defend a village in a rural country.

 

You train "cheap" soldiers, if there are resources, more infrastructure is created.

 

Then you build a city full of comforts and pleasures, but contributor pay taxes. And private security is top notch 

[hyperion]

9 hours ago, maroder said:

To me this looks not like poor discoverability. It uses the same aura concept and visualization as heroes, healers, temples and the old rotary mill, therefore it is not "invisible" as the diminishing returns. So I can't really follow your argumentation. I would be happy if you try the mods and tell me in more detail how the the communication to the player could be improved.

This is indeed looks like a rebranded rotary mill, vastly different from farmland in DE as in one of the poll options. If you'd called it building wells with an irrigation aura I wouldn't have been confused. The issues I raised are with the farmland concept which is vastly different from what you did.

"Farmlands" is basically attaching a fertility value to terrain (per tile for instance). This doesn't only allow farmlands but could also be used to reduce yield in deserts or on top of rock. Wow had to settle with a hack in DE because proper support for this feature is lacking. Reverse importing this hack is something I'm strictly against. On the other hand the concept sounds interesting and can give map makers another tool to create unique content but needs quite a bit work design and implementation wise.

On 10/05/2021 at 8:54 AM, maroder said:

Why can I not just use my houses as dropsites? why can I not build champions in P1? why can I not build 20 wonders?

Having prerequisites and restrictions are different, requiring a phase or tech like gunpowder to build cannons is fine. Restrictions on unique entities in history like hero or wonder aren't an issue either.

Making houses dropsites or CC not being a dropsite are fine from a discoverability point of view. Whether people will like it is an other question.

[maroder]

On 12/05/2021 at 6:38 PM, hyperion said:

This is indeed looks like a rebranded rotary mill, vastly different from farmland in DE as in one of the poll options. If you'd called it building wells with an irrigation aura I wouldn't have been confused. The issues I raised are with the farmland concept which is vastly different from what you did.

Yes that's why I uploaded the mod to show people the difference.

At the moment it seems like most people would prefer the farmland option, although I am not sure if what I made would be the option they had imagined. Also the second most voted option is to change nothing, so I am not sure what to do with this topic.

 @Stan`and the rest of the team, is it worth making a ticket/patch for this? Even if it will be probably only a reference for future discussion?

[alre]

I don't know how reliable the poll is, as many options were added later, but if I'm to say what I think, it's that it makes no much sense to me to try to take farms away from the cc. It's not going to make the game more realistic because the cc itself is not realistic. 

A defendable dropsite/store makes a lot of sense in itself, unfortunately though, that is no way related to the meaning of the words "civic center" or to they way the building is depicted. If I start a game with just a defendable dropsite, I will of course make fields around it, while civic centres were built by cities that were already populated, fed and defended.

Agoràs were built in the middle of the cities because people needed to go to the agorà to participate in democratic decisions, public trials and whatnot. Were they used as dropsites, they would have been built in the countryside.

In other words, either we accept the way the game works, with its weird but gameplay-wise functional city layout, or we change the game radically, by not giving a cc to players at the start of the game, but just a defendable dropsite that also looks like one. Here a slightly more developed idea:

Moving the farms to less defendable positions is another bucket of worms and is a thing we can do regardless by enforcing one worker per farm, as @Feldfeld said. Also automatic spawning of fields around farmsteads would help (reseeding, kind of), but neither of these will change the fact that at the start of the game players have one preferential spot where to build farms, which is around the cc. It's only logic.