Shuttling Resources is Problematic

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Simply speaking units of different speeds, regardless of the proximity of the resource, are going to have different gather rates.  More time walking back and forth means that there is less time actually working; it's simple math.  

How would eliminating or reducing the effects of unit speeds on their economic efficiency be bad?  Frankly I find it absurd that say a skirmisher is a better lumberjack than an archer due to their uses in the battlefield a questionable thing.  

Of course they have different gathering rates. But that isn't a bad thing. It introduces different dynamics into the game. It introduces choice. It introduces strategy. Let players build more storehouses. Or research techs. Or just make different units that are quicker gathers. Or make units that counter quicker gathers, so you can try to rush the other player that is going for boom. What you propose eliminates all of the aforementioned choice and strategy. One of the main lessons to be learned from a23-->a24 is that making everything the same and uniform is a stale, lazy way to balance and is actively disliked by players. What we have now isn't broken. Let's not try to fix what already works. 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

15 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Of course they have different gathering rates. But that isn't a bad thing. It introduces different dynamics into the game. It introduces choice. It introduces strategy. Let players build more storehouses. Or research techs. Or just make different units that are quicker gathers. Or make units that counter quicker gathers, so you can try to rush the other player that is going for boom. What you propose eliminates all of the aforementioned choice and strategy. One of the main lessons to be learned from a23-->a24 is that making everything the same and uniform is a stale, lazy way to balance and is actively disliked by players. What we have now isn't broken. Let's not try to fix what already works. 

Standardisation is not a lazy, stale approach.  That said, I'm not against some units having better economic purpose within the framework of citizen soldiers or other units.  Rather, the point should be that merely because one unit is faster should not mean that it is inherently better at collecting resources.  When making one unit more efficient, there should be intentionality behind that design choice, and at times a military advantage should not translate into better economic advantage.  Simply speaking, by streamlining resource collection, the game can be easily changed to accommodate the intentions of the designer rather than translating into a system where one simple change can have have massive unintended effects.  

The point of the matter is that this that even if it does eliminate some emergent strategies that occurred because of unit speeds, these can be still reintroduced, and I believe in the opening post I pointed out a number of ways in which depth could be used for the system I proposed.  Undoubtedly other viable alternatives can offer similar if not more interesting approaches.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I would argue that unit speed is actually not that important in woodcutting. If you add up the effects of unit rotation, pathfinding, and storehouse proximity, these things matter much much more than skirmishers being .5 to 1 m/s faster. If the storehouse is close as it should be, unit rotation takes up a greater portion of the time to move between the tree and storehouse too.