Farming
I'm not liking the farming mechanic. It seemed like a good idea on paper but in practice, it's just tedious and exploitive. Here's how I'd like to see it work:
Some planets would have a Arable land tile including all starting planets. Building on these tiles produces food.
The tech tree would have a path for players who want to get the most out of those resources to get a lot of food. The arable land resource be destructable -- you can destroy it (like you can any resource btw) to put something else there. This would make food take its rightful place as an important strategic resource rather than one that is simply produced by min/maxing.
What are your thoughts?
So it would be a special resource, ala monsantium or such?
Can't say I like that idea. Food isn't a strategic resource that is super rare... And making it so, means even more problems with map balancing.
I'd argue for a background mechanic for food. Where a planet simply produces x food based on class. No buildings at all. Or with this foundation, now you can have special farmable resources that create flat food quantities.
You're now free to build cities from your global good supply that's automatically being harvested .I suspect that helps with the AI since there is nothing to min max.
Certain techs can increase the food generation from certain class planets (youre genetically engineering better plants etc.).
Continuing on this...
Planet Class/3 = Food
+
Extreme Planet Class/5 = Food
Occasional resource improvement
= Total food supply
Techs give some bonuses to the formulas. Rebalance the city food costs, etc.
Lower pop to production bonuses since we've reopened so much land for development as factories etc. As desired .
Sorry Gauntlet, but I don't like your approach very much. That would lead to a more or less inevitable food income for that you cannot and don't have to do anything, that's not what I want to see in a strategy game. I want to work for food, possibly sacrificing something else.
Frogboy's suggestions sounds better, but still doesn't feell right. I have to think a bit about that ...
I really like the idea! Especially with the separate tech tree witch would also bring much more tactic in the game. Very important for me is the question how the AI can handle this. Would it easier to give the AI the skill to handle this mechanic than the current mechanic?
S'all good. I just agree with Frogboy about it currently being tedious.
And yea... It's mostly not fun and not interesting to place farming improvements. Special resource tiles don't force a interesting decision really... So like... What's the point of placing at all?
There is still some interesting strategy to where you put your cities though, just like now.
I'm interested in what you come up with though!
Frogboy,my thoughts are probably more complex than what you will be wanting to implement.One of the things that really turns me off of this game is the strategic resources and how they are pure and total luck. If I need Monsantium, and there is no monsantium on any of the planets that I can even invade (yes I've had this happen) then guess what... a whole branch of the game is pointless.
So my suggestion. Make every strategic resource build-able projects. Rather than having it be completely and totally random, tie the resources to tech advancement and planet type. Make them expensive and a cap of 2 or 3 per planet... But as to the overall food... I agree with Gauntlet. Food, Money, and Production and Moral should be the basic always generated things each planet has by default. Building a factory increases your productionBuilding a Farm increases your foodBuilding too many factories should decrease your food (in theory) just like having too many people stresses your morale. Food is already set up as a global currency. just make it more... heck the Iconians have bio-ships... make a biofabricator or something that does both food and production.Or the frogs have hot springs that are morale and food... etc etc....The biggest issue that food has is that UNLIKE Wealth and production which are increased using the space harvested resources... Food can only be improved using the much much more rare resources.Change that and it's fine.
I think that would be fairly difficult to communicate to players.
Let me think about how to mix your idea up with mine.
True. It would be very difficult to communicate. I suspect that's a big reason pop to production is 1 to 1 .
I suppose planets could be a bit more complicated, but easier to communicate...
Each planet having two or three stats...
1) Size. Physical space
2) Adaptability. Food, Pop Cap
3) Influence. Natural bonus to morale and influence due to unique planetary features (it's pretty?)
More complicated, but you can just display these straight, rather than a formulas occurring behind the scenes.
Gauntlet03 makes a fair point: it's a bit strange that you can have a population on a planet but that population can't make any food. Should there be a certain level of food production that's automatic? I think the idea of food production being tied to Planet Class makes sense (further tied to planetary types and traits).
Obviously, if you want to grow your population - and obviously increase production - that's the reason for farms etc.
One little mechanic you might like - or might like not - to consider if you're talking about food as a resource:
Food is now a global resource - you can have Food Planet 1 and as long as that's making enough chow, you can food your 8 planet empire.
Except if the Drengin destroy the ships that are transporting it...
I appreciate this might be difficult to implement (should a player have to build Food Ships? Have to build Escorts? Hit Points? etc) but it's another path to conquest: starve Planet 5 out by killing the Food Ships from Planet 2 and wait for the white flag. A much more aggressive version of Embargo, which just stops trading with other civilizations. It means you don't need to invade - or at least buys time to get ready to invade and obviously weakens Planet 5's defence.
Ultimately, I honestly don't see food being something people ship to a planet... I think planets grow that food locally no matter what. It's not a difficult enough problem to grow food in contained environments or engineer the organism for the environment.
Trade space on those freighters will be reserved for rarer resources and premade goods.
Of course... My race just eats people when times get tough... So I'm biased.
It goes a little in the direction of Distant Worlds where the private sector is orderd to transport all the different resources and people between your planets ?
I don't understand the food mechanics at all so I just play synthetic.
Like when I build farms my population still won't grow past 3. Does food do anything at all?
It gives food. A currency spent to produce cities which increase Pop Cap and provide great bonuses. Pop contributes to raw production.
I'm of two minds. First, I'm fine with the system as is. However the AI doesn't handle it well and I often trade them food tech just to see if they'll put it to use.
City building is a two step process and the first step brings you no value at all so I think that stalls the AI. I can build a semi-circle of farms around a tile in preparation for the city I'll then be able to build within them and get the pop cap bonus from having farms around the city. This is backwards to how other hubs work.
I think the only thing having specific tiles for food will do is make the AI incapable of building anything else there, so they'll be forced to build for food. This could also be done by making the AI think of city placement first and be inflexible in that decision. Pick a tile either with a population bonus and/or a lot of surrounding tiles (consider future terraforming if there's not good options) and decide this WILL be a city and god damn any improvement that gets in its way! Then either build farms around the tile or use some isolated tiles for farms. The AI may have an easier time with food if it ignores the fact that it is empire wide and assumes a planet will need its own supply rather than waiting for somewhere else to produce it.
Ok i understand the food mechanic. I think it makes it unfair to be organic. I even liked it better in 3 classic where farms increased population with a little bit of food per turn. I stopped playing the krynn over this. I basically play the slyne. Needing to mine promethium over a period of turns is a lot easier than flat food. I dont like the ops suggestion of not fixing this by making food a resource. I think that a farm producing 0.1 per turn at least puts this on par with 0.1 promethium per turn with the starbase concept. Having to build a constructor for this is minor.
Today I'm unfortunately too ill to contribute much more since I have to go to bed now.
Only one thing: Food should not directly be dependent on planet class. Normally a planet is more or less suited to grow food according to it's type (snow ball not as good as gaia world), so it should have a base factor for food production that is multipled with the effects of all food improvements that you chose to build on tiles. There can still be special resources that provide more food on a single tile if used in that way, but that should not be the only places you can grow food.
One step further you could say that for every race the "ideal" conditions to grow food are different, but I fear that would lead to too much effort to implement.
Apart from that, I like the idea to carry around resources like in Distant Worlds since to would have to build up a working logistics chain to supply a big empire, but here also I fear that won't ever be implemented because it's too much effort (and would make another type of game out of GC III).
I think the supply chain has to remain abstract unless we want to return to constructor spam days lol.
But you can represent it in small ways... For example a siege mechanic for planets that lowers or servers their connections to the empire etc.
I don't think I like the idea of a special food resource tile. It's not like you're digging food like ore out of one specific restricted location on a planet. The current system of building farms for food makes more sense and personally I don't really find it any more tedious than building factories for production.
Allow every planet with oceans one or more tiles of water developable uniquely for fishing or fish farming based upon the size of the planet. The AI would only have one choice with the development of the tile- Food.
You could name the improvement a Fishery, it Stocks the worlds oceans with Fish.
The solution also brings a little more realism into the game considering the amount of reliance Earth has upon her oceans for food.
Well the Issue is a currency used to build population which in turn rewards the player or ai with production.
I hate to ask but how did we do population and production in GC II? Can this mechanic be simplified yet still offer the player another lever to pull to get results in game?
How about you get a minimal amount of food with the capital. Each tile has a certain amount of food capability which would work as a multiplier for whatever food building you put on it. Some tiles are real low or zero (desert or similar) and some are high (good farmland). As you build food capable buildings on it, you get more but based on the original food capability. So a desert planet will have few tiles that can make food and each one does not have a high capability. Gaia planets would have mostly farmable tiles and each one would have a high capability. You might even have some planets with no food capability beyond the capital itself. Here you might could build very special buildings that gave some food or add the ability to grow food as part of the economic space stations. You can build other buildings on the farmland but you get no food, only whatever the building is made to create such as production. If you destroy the building, you could go back to farming on the land maybe at a reduced level since you may have messed it up giving it a reduced food capability from the original amount. You could even have technology that improves this food capability over time.
Did you really think the answer was going to be "no, food doesn't do anything"?
Well yeah. I'm actually an AI so the concept of food confuses me.
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