Balancing Gatherers

[Micfild]

Hello! I would like to start a discussion about Gathering units, namely: women and citizen soldiers.

Proposition:

Give both citizen soldiers and women the same gather rates.

Argument:

Currently women are good at gathering food and wood (to some extent), while Citizen soldiers are better at gathering wood, stone and metal. I think the leading argument for this is a historical one, where women didn't perform physically demanding tasks in most ancient societies (though my knowledge is very limited in regard to this).

That being said, the game still allows women to gather wood, metal and stone, but at a lower rate than citizen soldiers. This was probably done as a compromise between historical accuracy and gameplay balancing. i would like to propose a further compromise in favor of balance and give them both the same gather rates for all resources. 

Here is my point. 

Currently women have many drawbacks. They are frail (low HP, damage and no armor), can only be built from the civic center (unless you are willing to spend a lot of resources early game to research Fertility Rites) and are only good at gathering food and, sometimes, wood. Their advantages are their low cost and fast build time.

Citizen soldiers, on the other hand, are more sturdy, have better gather rates for wood, metal and stone, and can be built from a barracks. Their drawbacks are their wood cost and slightly longer build time.

From what i have seen, unless you are performing some sort of rush, as soon as you can maintain a steady production of citizen soldiers, you can basically halt women production completely. That is to say that, citizen soldiers are way better gatherers than women, which end up being relegated as pure farmers.

Its thinking this way that i thought it would be a reasonable idea to equalize gather rates, thus making this choice between gatherers a bit more difficult to make. Women would favor a more economic approach at the cost of early vulnerability, while citizen soldiers would be a little bit weaker on the eco (in comparison to women) but would be less susceptible to harassment.

i would like to hear your opinion on the subject and if this small concession would be acceptable, even if its less historically accurate.

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

In most 0ad games of multiplayer, women are the unit that is produced early when a player wants to boom. Players who switch to citizen soldiers or cavalry earlier will have slower population growth than those who stay on women longer. 

Keep in mind that women are only slightly slower on wood and most eco for the first 7-8 minutes of typical 0ad game is food and wood eco. To make a long story short, women are nearly equal economic units to CS in the early game, so the balance between economy and army is something players are careful with, especially in the beginning of a match.

[maroder]

It's hard to think of all possible impacts this change could have. Best would be a mod and then play lots of games to see what's better. 

[alre]

much more relevant (in my mind at least): to this day women gatherers still have lower vision than males.

this is quite absurd, and clearly has no historical justification, there's only a gameplay motive, but effect on gameplay is actually minimal, and some times even paradoxical, like women not seeing archers attacking them.

[LetswaveaBook]

45 minutes ago, alre said:

much more relevant (in my mind at least): to this day women gatherers still have lower vision than males.

this is quite absurd, and clearly has no historical justification, there's only a gameplay motive, but effect on gameplay is actually minimal, and some times even paradoxical, like women not seeing archers attacking them.

With low vision it is also almost impossible to react timely against cavalry rushes if there are no men around.