Diminishing returns

[maroder]

I was just wondering what the general opinion about this feature is.

[hyperion]

If you can come up with a solution to present it in the UI would be nice Anyway, farming takes to little space right now IMHO.

[Gurken Khan]

13 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Anyway, farming takes to little space right now IMHO.

I guess you don't mean as a gameplay mechanic. And I don't think it takes too little room, don't even know what your measure for that would be.

First question: why? Second question: what for? It might be ok for certain maps, but for others I think it would be awful. I remember spawning in a hilly part of Hellas and I couldn't even place fields around my CC because of the oh so 'interesting' terrain. Diminishing yields would only make it more terrible.

[hyperion]

Diminishing returns are a thing since forever. The question here is about to drop and not about adding them.

 

As for why and what, it's complex and not something I could write up in a couple sentences and neither the ultimate truth. To give a hint, currently building a couple farms around the CC is basically all that is needed. This has implications on city layout, defense, expansion pressure and many other things. This in turn gives relatively little room of how certain game mechanics are to be designed, which leads to questionable proposals to solve problems which are at it's core mostly down to the very compact farming.

 

Anyway strengthening the S in RTS sounds like a good idea to me and as I can tell was also an original goal of 0ad.

 

Edit: Btw, if you reduce size of fields a bit and have only one farmer per field, it becomes easier to place farms while still taking more space overall, just saying.

Edited June 19, 2022 by hyperion

[AIEND]

8分钟前，hyperion 说道：

收益递减是永远的事情。 这里的问题是要放弃而不是添加它们。

 

至于为什么和什么，这很复杂，不是我能用几句话写出来的，也不是终极真理。 给个提示，目前在 CC 周围建立几个农场基本上是所有需要的。 这对城市布局、防御、扩张压力等诸多方面都有影响。 这反过来又为如何设计某些游戏机制提供了相对较小的空间，这导致了解决问题的有问题的建议，这些问题的核心主要是非常紧凑的农业。

 

无论如何，在 RTS 中加强 S 对我来说听起来是个好主意，而且我知道这也是 0ad 的最初目标。

 

编辑：顺便说一句，如果您稍微减小田地的大小并且每块田地只有一个农民，那么在总体上仍然占用更多空间的同时放置农场会变得更容易，只是说。

I think it's better to have a field with a barn that takes up a lot of land, and let 8-10 civilians work on it, which can be placed independently from the CC, just like Age of Empires 3.

[myou5e]

23 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Diminishing returns are a thing since forever. The question here is about to drop and not about adding them.

 

As for why and what, it's complex and not something I could write up in a couple sentences and neither the ultimate truth. To give a hint, currently building a couple farms around the CC is basically all that is needed. This has implications on city layout, defense, expansion pressure and many other things. This in turn gives relatively little room of how certain game mechanics are to be designed, which leads to questionable proposals to solve problems which are at it's core mostly down to the very compact farming.

 

Anyway strengthening the S in RTS sounds like a good idea to me and as I can tell was also an original goal of 0ad.

 

Edit: Btw, if you reduce size of fields a bit and have only one farmer per field, it becomes easier to place farms while still taking more space overall, just saying.

I really want to be able to drag farmland over an area, and the farmers will fill that area with 1x1 "farms". This could be faster than queing up ten farms around a CC/Farmstead, and also imo more realistic, because I think it doesn't really make sense to not be able to grow a plant on a 1x1 just because it's too small.

[alre]

after some thought, I ended thinking that it's unnecessary and complicated. I'm not arguing about diminishing returns in general, just about farms.

they are unnecessary because in the end we never see good players building more farms to distribute workers and increase efficiency. also, because farmers don't automatically spread among fields, it's an eccess of lame micro to avoid diminishing returns.

by the way, I support the aoe model "one worker per farm", indipendently on the diminishing returns issue.

also en passant, I find it unnecessary and unexpected that fields can grow themselves. is it like this in a26?

[Gurken Khan]

2 hours ago, myou5e said:

I really want to be able to drag farmland over an area, and the farmers will fill that area with 1x1 "farms". This could be faster than queing up ten farms around a CC/Farmstead, and also imo more realistic, because I think it doesn't really make sense to not be able to grow a plant on a 1x1 just because it's too small.

Something more flexible than now might be nice, could also help on maps with 'interesting' terrain.

[maroder]

2 hours ago, alre said:

also en passant, I find it unnecessary and unexpected that fields can grow themselves. is it like this in a26?

not to my knowlege

[myou5e]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Something more flexible than now might be nice, could also help on maps with 'interesting' terrain.

Yes, and Yes. It's always annoyed me and felt like pointless micro trying to arrange farms to fill up gaps efficiently and manually placing them. Dragging a box over an area would save (boring) time, look better, be more space efficient and realistic :-p. I think many people are still thinking "age of empires copy". But honestly why do we want to copy the boring parts of it?

Edited June 19, 2022 by myou5e

[myou5e]

Another Idea I had for farms. It's not super important and I don't want to push it. But what if the "farms" worked more like berry bushes, you plant the bushes, they regenerate. When they run out of food, they don't disappear like bushes do now, they just sit there slowly regenerating. You would put on as many farmers/gatherers as you need to keep the bushes low, but not so many as to run out, which would result in lost time. It would look nice too, because every civ on this farm/orchard would move from every bush to bush collecting. You could have 10 on one side of the CC at one moment, then all around the next moment. You just need to get the bushes to a good regen rate that makes sense and is comparable to present farms.

Also, these don't need to be actual bushes, we can use the same art as the present farms(rice, millet, barley etc), they just have a different internal mechanic. We can also do it for berry bushes, apple trees etc.

Edited June 19, 2022 by myou5e

[myou5e]

3 minutes ago, myou5e said:

Another Idea I had for farms. It's not super important and I don't want to push it. But what if the "farms" worked more like berry bushes, you plant the bushes, they regenerate. When they run out of food, they don't disappear like bushes do now, they just sit there slowly regenerating. You would put on as many farmers/gatherers as you need to keep the bushes low, but not so many as to run out, which would result in lost time. It would look nice too, because every civ on this farm/orchard would move from every bush to bush collecting. You could have 10 on one side of the CC at one moment, then all around the next moment. You just need to get the bushes to a good regen rate that makes sense and is comparable to present farms.

Also, these don't need to be actual bushes, we can use the same art as the present farms(rice, millet, barley etc), they just have a different internal mechanic. We can also do it for berry bushes, apple trees etc.

I don't think you would need to modify the UnitAI at all, just

• Make it possible to "build" berry bushes and farms
• To build them easily(I mean, drag mouse over a square or circular area, you don't want to sit there clicking on 1x1 squares for 5 minutes)
• Get the right regen rates, cost and obstruction area.

Edited June 19, 2022 by myou5e