Food!

[Swisspike]

Hi all.

I downloaded and played the demo a couple of months back, but I ran out of food almost immediately.

Tried the game three more times, and each time, ran out of food again.

I blew the demo off the hard drive, and waited for a patch, or at least indications that this issue was thoroughly fixed before I spend my money on this game.

....which looks AWESOME.

I did a search through the forums, and couldn't find what I was looking for. I saw one reference that food requirements may have been lowered, but I wasn't sure.

Has this game been play-balanced with regards to food availability and consumption?

Are you able to create a military force of sufficient size and scope to have a tactical --and strategic-- reserve?

Is resource gathering in line with consumption? Are there chokepoints (like the new Muzzylane game...which is HORRIBLE, btw) in resources?

Any information is happily accepted.

I hadn't checked on this game for awhile. My buddy Rich12545...HI RICH!!! keeps telling me how terrific this is, so I am quite close to pulling the trigger on this; just tying up loose ends.

[aka_Hawk]

You can easily set the level of all resources whenever you start a game. In fact, you can set almost any parameter to your liking.

[rich12545]

Hi. You must have a different name on another forum.

You can increase food availability in the game as aka Hawk said. The best option imo is to set resource requirements in the ruleset. You can easily reduce food needs to your preference or, as I've done, eliminated resources altogether. You need the full game to do this but it's extremely easy.

So essentially this is a non-issue.

[Brit]

Hi all.

I downloaded and played the demo a couple of months back, but I ran out of food almost immediately.

Tried the game three more times, and each time, ran out of food again.

I blew the demo off the hard drive, and waited for a patch, or at least indications that this issue was thoroughly fixed before I spend my money on this game.

....which looks AWESOME.

I did a search through the forums, and couldn't find what I was looking for. I saw one reference that food requirements may have been lowered, but I wasn't sure.

Has this game been play-balanced with regards to food availability and consumption?

Are you able to create a military force of sufficient size and scope to have a tactical --and strategic-- reserve?

Is resource gathering in line with consumption? Are there chokepoints (like the new Muzzylane game...which is HORRIBLE, btw) in resources?

Any information is happily accepted.

I hadn't checked on this game for awhile. My buddy Rich12545...HI RICH!!! keeps telling me how terrific this is, so I am quite close to pulling the trigger on this; just tying up loose ends.

You're playing the DemoMap, and not the tutorial map, is that correct? There were some adjustments to the resources placed on the map by the random-map generator. I should update the DemoMap and Tutorial maps because they were generated under the old system - which was more resource poor - and not updated when the map generator was adjusted.

[hoolaman]

I think you should really consider making cities self-sufficient in food and oil only let resource limitations apply to supplying armies. After all rationing and local farming would allow the cities to more or less look after themselves. It could even be a good idea to make cities actually produce food, or at least putting a food resource nearby every city on random maps.

As it is it is frequently more worthwhile bypassing neutral cities than capturing them because of the food and oil burden they put on your empire.

This is a big "suspension of disbelief" problem with the game IMO. The resource chokepoints should encourage competition and expansion. The cities should become strategically neccesary to capture, and provide a net benefit to your empire.

[rich12545]

There's a fine line with resources. If there's not enough then this stifles current units maybe critically which makes the game not much fun. If there's an abundance then resources don't mean anything because there's more than enough. I think maybe the best way is to make resources rare but use them only for building new units, not for maintenance.

[hoolaman]

Yes I've also reflected on that fine-line. I'd say its almost impossible to get it in the middle. Economics tells us that there is always scarcity of resources. Part of the problem may be that there aren't really any choices to be made on the domestic management side of things. If all your excess resources could be employed somewhere in your empire to some benefit it would be OK, but they just pile up usually. The other problem is that trade does not have any tactical or military considerations. You can buy limitless oil, without a thought about how to get it to your cities. You can export steel to another empire without ever building a ship.

Your suggestion to make resources only for new building is a pretty good one. Its a shame that the possibilities of the resource system don't seem to come into play very often. Eg. Oil shortages forcing you to move only x or y unit sounds like an interesting game dynamic, but most often you have lots or none at all.

I've even considered making a scenario that has no resources on map, but giving each player a massive stockpile that they have to budget over the whole game that can only be replenished by trading for cash. You'd inevitably run out I suppose. But in conjunction with high HP units that can be repaired by money alone, you could be forced to make some strategic choices about what you build.

[jeep]

It's easy enough to change the resources used by cities in the editor. Probably would be a good idea to try out some differences to see how it plays out.

You could make cities consume no food/oil, but increase the resource cost of building / maintaining units.

[Brit]

Yes I've also reflected on that fine-line. I'd say its almost impossible to get it in the middle....

Yeah, I've been thinking about this since the topic came up again. Right now, there's a hard-line between having enough and not having enough. Admittedly, the game penalties depend on the severity of the shortages. Taking a hint from the real world, I suppose one way to deal with this would be to have less severe penalties for small shortages (example: food rationing), and maybe some ways to increase production but at some cost (example: if there isn't enough food, then other less-productive land could be put into service creating additional food - but at a higher cost). Excess oil leads to lower costs (transportation, heating, construction costs) resulting in lower production costs. Oil shortages lead to higher costs.