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Food Balancing Issues


Soul

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N3rull - I bet you think all the later Rocky films were better than the original : )

It was a general comment I made but does have an application to EoS. But I have played all the iterations of Empire and know that increased complexity did not always make it a better experience. Perhaps less fun as you juggled with more and more variables. Possibly the AI coding becomes more iffy with many more units to build and play ..... just wondering.

But eoS looks good in its own right. I am concerned that the 1900 technology has the ability to drill deep sea wells from year 1. Would it help to have land based ones and with increasing technology levels the ability to drill off shore. Possibly finite production from land based oil .... that may be too far but ocean oil wells does seem a glaring problem with time line.

As for the technology speed ...er well um ... NO.

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I suggest a modest increase for food between 20-40% should do it

Or have the cities build a farm similar to an oil refinery.

I understand food is supposed to limit how many units you have, but by for example turn 90+ your cities account for over 75% of the food consumption.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I see other people have posted about the food issue in other threads so I gave this one a bump.

Seems like that mostly everyone agrees that food needs a slight buff, or some building similar to an oil refinery for food consumption.

Once you enter the late game stages with your cities ranged from 12-18 population, these cities consume over 2-almost 4 per turn. So your production grows over time but you can build less units over time. I think this is something which needs to be fixed

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i think a 'farm similar to an oil refinery' and connected to tech level is not a bad idea.

bumbing up 40% i, tentively, now don't agree with. i had problems with food in other games, some worse than others. last game, started roughly middle of the map and by turn 60, had almost 1000units of food. when mechanical unit count went up, though, i was now faced with a sudden lack of oil. in other words, resources depend on where one starts on the map.

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Only that everything eats food regardless of whether it moves or not (unlike oil) and having no food has DIRE consequences (your cities irreversibly get massacred), unlike having zero of anything else.

It is easy to get a lot of food early, but as you have more cities and many more units, food truly becomes a menace. I have ~10 cities in my current game, each has ~2-3 units of infantry for defense (i learned it the hard way), plus 5 spy planes, 3 transports, about 10 tanks and 5 battleships. And I am losing 25 food per turn with nothing I can do to stop it, except trading other resources for it every few turns. It really is a PITA.

The bottom line is, though, that Food escapes your pool fastest with whatever you do (if you plan on winning, that is) and having zero of it is the worst thing you can do to yourself, worse than losing a city actually.

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I find it hard to gauge how big the problem is as, obviously, the number of Ai players on this small map must have a significant bearing on peoples comments. I have briefly played one multi-AI game.

I have finished one where te sole AI player resigned on Turn 96 when I attacked his sea based resources on turn 95. I was astonished to see that his game total resources were if I recall 80 gold and 440 iron togther with reasonable amounts of food and oil. At that stage I had 4000+ of everything and perhaps 1000 gold.

Seems from comments here that this could become a resource luck of the draw game. Those acid comments on non-resource preferring gamers now seem, in the light of resource luck, to seem unfortunate.

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I lol @ you guys with 1000s of resources.

I have a feeling that you either haven't yet found how to increase research funding or you actually conquer the map using two battleships and one unit of infantry, abusing AI idiocy.

Or you're playing against 1-2 AIs.

Try playing a full game with 7 Elite AIs, now that's some resource management required if you don't want to face enemy C6 tanks with your class 2 infantry.

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And your point is? The thread is about resources and there are some interesting postings from people reporting their experiences. Funding research is simple enough for an idiot to understand.

If resources are crucial, then your starting position presumably can be fatal. I don't know but I do know the AI is not very aggressive in expanding at the easy level?

Expansion though is a separate subject compared to aggressive military action and in the game I quoted the lack of development is surprising - particularly given how bereft it was of iron. This suggests an AI problem.

The question I am curious about know is how many players should be on a map this size for optimal play ? Null how many games have you played with 7 elite AI and what have the results been. Judging by your heavy garrisoning you must have lost one or two. Have you won any?

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I've won about 5 such games after losing my first. I have also quitted from two, because I would clearly win anyway (ehm... 8 battleships and 30 tanks vs 3 tanks and a destroyer, anyone?) but I forgot about the food drain, nasty thing, so I rage-quitted ;p. When all you can hope for is capturing two small islands plus 5 sea resource nodes and then find out that you are surrounded by enemies, you really have to carefully manage everything. If you leave your cities open, unprotected, you will quickly find a transport heading for them.

Still, even this kind of game is relatively easy because AIs usually go to war with each other more often than they do with you. Which shifts the thread to diplomacy issues, so I'll break it now.

It is, however, some challenge to win such a game, cause oftentimes you will be fighting superior enemy forces (like, class+2 estroyers rampaging your navy).

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Still, even this kind of game is relatively easy because AIs usually go to war with each other more often than they do with you.
I believe that to be the reason. AI battles pretty effectively, only that it usually doesn't chose to battle the player first.

Maybe it's exactly because I chose to keep all cities garrisoned.

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This is what happens when you put resources in a game that shouldn't have them. For multi I can maybe see their worth, but not solo against the computer AI.

What's really needed is the option to eliminate them so the AI and human players can concentrate on strategy instead of spending all that time looking for a food resource.

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Tried a game with the new resource balance, I will say Brit it works WELL. As in I can produce an actual army to defeat an opponent instead of having to weaken my defenses to attack someone.

For example, with a typical garrisson 1 inf 1 tank 1 flak and 1 missile launcher, plus pop usuage and roving units, I can actually afford an offensive army for transports and taking out other players.

Before you had to weaken your defenses, because you would run out of food fast before you could mount an assult on a heavily defended island

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