Not 2 food, 2x food, big difference there.

I am just saying for just building a town of like only houses and gardens. I'm not saying you need almost every type of building possible. So you can still specialize. (I like research worlds, factory worlds!)

Yeah, I'm with you on this.

I didn't like to have to spam gardens all across my cities, but I thought that was kind of the point- you have a fixed number of tiles and you have to balance between food, housing, and other improvements. It was a real balancing act until I founded a city near a fertile tile. After that, food was abundant for the rest of the game.

 

I also don't think the number of houses was really a problem- at least not in the later stages of a city. With villas and housing upgrades, you really only needed a relative few as is. I think, maybe, if there is a problem its in the early stages of a city- it did seem like I had to plop down a lot of huts. But I like the idea of a large mature city with many houses and other structures...

I do agree that houses should make up a fair portion of your city.  It is just a hassle to put lots of them down, especially since to do so is to juggle food with all of your cities.

Except that if you wait for the inevitable, natural spread of reclaimed land, you can then plop down cities without expending essence.  So while essence effectively limits city spam at game's start it fairly quickly becomes moot (tho increasing map size increases how long its effective).

Smart Sovs will strategically spread out a few starting cities with an eye to natural reclaimed land spread, minimizing essence expenditure while maximizing said spread, to maximize essence-free city creation as soon as possible. 

Not that that's a bad thing, as it rewards intelligent play, but it also allows later game city spamming.

It's been proposed that the natural spread of reclaimed land have a cost, or be limited (rate of spread slows over time, or the like), to account for this, but apparently they like it as it is.

Agreed.

The 'problem' of garden spam is fairly easily avoided by careful city selection.  Just plopping down cities without regard to food resources is the real problem.  Better to improve one's play than change the game to forgive non-careful play.  It is, after all, a strategy game.

I can see changing things tho from a game design point of view -- the pic of the 'new town' layout seems more elegant and less clunky, which is important in game design.

I'm of an open mind regarding the changes, and will wait and see.

 

What if it takes you 30 turns to find fertile land while your opponent starts next to some?  What if it's not even found on your continent?  You might as well just quit the game at that point, it has nothing to do with "improving one's play".

 

That game isn't fun to me.

 

I don't see how removing gardens will "forgive non-careful play."  If anything, it will make it less forgiving.  Now if someone plops down cities without regard to food resources they will have no recourse.

 

What you're saying is true, but it also applies to any map that doesn't give players fair access to starting resources.  If one can be successful without access to resources then it diminishes the importance of ever having resources.

eh? really? hmm i will have to look more closely.  like it gives you 2x more food than what? your total output?  thats a lot!

Just so it's clear that I'm not simply being a contrarian, I do agree with you that not being able to build gardens does reduce player choice.

I'm very interested to see what the game will be like in 2A.

The solution to this is generating better balanced maps, not forgiving non-careful play in a strategy game.

There should be a 'reward' to balance the 'risk' of not plopping down a city anywhere and instead taking some time to find a good spot.

The 'problem' of the gardens is self-inflicted by not taking the time to find good spots.  Changing the game to fix self-inflicted 'problems', when it can be fixed by more careful play, is of questionable value.

It's a strategy game and this can be avoid by 'strategizing' 

Not sure who this is in response to.  I get the feeling it's me but as I haven't advocated "...a game without gardens...", that suggests it isn't.

This is indeed my point.  Now the reward for carefully placing a city in a good spot will be infinitely higher than it was in the past.   Specifically my point is, currently, gardens provide the exact function that you claim you are looking to avoid, they forgive non-careful play by giving people access to food without having to carefully place their cities.   As it stands now, if you don't carefully place your city you can build gardens, thus your non-careful play has been forgiven.  Without gardens if you don't carefully place your cities, they won't grow at all.

I don't know if the revisions will be better or worse.  I'm willing to wait and see.  All I'm saying is that if you're a fan of the game rewarding you for finding a good spot to place your city, it would seem you would be in favor of the proposed changes.

Perhaps we're miscommunicating.  People have been complaining about having to spam gardens, taking up city tiles, requiring too much micromanaging, etc., and asking for things to be changed.  I think the problem is self-inflicted and best avoided by careful city selection instead of changing the game.

How exactly are we differing?

Thanks! 

Edited:

If you're saying what I think you are, it's balanced because by placing a bunch of gardens that means other structures can't be placed.  That's not much of a penalty now, but when the other 3 tech trees are enabled there'll be a whole lot more structures to place, and so putting in a few gardens will really hurt -- making careful city selection important and not easily avoidable by garden spamming.

Am I understanding you correctly here?

Gardens are their own punishment though- they just leave you with more options. I'll try to explain...

Say your strategy involves rushing to ramp up production of a certain resource. You find your desired resource on the map and start a town, even though there is no food production tiles nearby. The benefit is that your town will have access to the resource you want, but the drawback will be that you're forced to use gardens to feed the city, which take up many of your available tiles. I felt that added some nice strategic depth to the game.

Without a garden or the like, it sounds like the only viable option for early cities will be placing them near food sources. Every game will start out with the same mad scramble to find a food source- I think we should have more options.... Should I go for food and build up my population as quickly as possible? Or should I horde metals or magic, ect?

Ditto on "wait and see". I expect our devs know what they're doing and the new changes will be for the better. I just thought I'd air my concerns regardless.

No problem with that but it should be a spell or at least cost mana.

Oh the only statement I didn't understand was:

I was intrigued as I didn't quite understand how the reported changes in 2A (specifically, curtailing the usage of farms) will change the game to forgive non-careful play.  Maybe I misunderstood, and you weren't referring to changes being made?

Keep in mind that early cities are not a strong requirement for this game.  The other day I started a game with a inventor hero and a 4-pack of adventurers by me.  I recruited them all but didn't have enough $ left for a city (I'm not sure the game is getting the $ right on recruiting groups, I'm going to check next time I see one).  We wandered around getting loot and fighting monsters until we were all level 4, at which point I found an AI city and walked right in.  I did actually get enough money from goodie huts and quests to start a city, but it wasn't all that important.  The inventor kept me reasonably up to date in tech.  On small maps this particular rush strategy might be quite viable.

Perhaps, but I'm not convinced having access to some food is more punishment than having access to no food, as it pertains to your example anyway.  In the case of your hypothetical, you would still be afforded more tiles total by the city leveling up and growing from the gardens, even discounting tiles you "waste" on gardens, than you would if your hypothetical city was forced to languish as a level 1 or 2.

I think what you're trying to say, in fact you explicit say, is that gardens allowed for more strategy as they gave you additional options.  I've already agreed that removing the option to build gardens does reduce your possible choices, and possibly total number of strategies.  I'm not certain what the effect will actually be....or even the specifics of the changes!

So I don't really think there is any disagreement between us, just our choice of words.

I don't think one or two moves per turn is too slow(for basic units traveling on foot), currently the problem is that it's too cheap and easy to increase a unit's speed.  Slow units aren't bad, it's just that you can get a faster unit without giving up much.  Leveling up a hero's strength or dexterity only has a small effect on his combat ability, but upping the movement stat is a major advantage for exploring, doing quests, and outmaneuvering enemies.  Plus you get stat boosters for movement from doing quests, so you don't even have a decision there, your movement will increase. Soldiers aren't quite as fast, but they still can get boots, capes, and that messenger's pack, and all you have to give up is some extra gildars and a few points of defense from armored greaves.  More movement is very useful, so it needs to be expensive or have some drawbacks attached.

I wasn't referring to whatever the changes in 2A are, I was referring to the "People have been complaining about having to spam gardens, taking up city tiles, requiring too much micromanaging, etc., and asking for things to be changed." we've been seeing regarding beta 2.

Basically my point is that often when folks have a 'problem', instead of trying to fix it by improving their game play they lobby to get the game changed.  As I see this 'problem' to be fairly easily avoided by more careful city site location, it's not an intrinsic problem requiring a game change, but is instead self-inflicted thus no game change is necessary.

It's interesting how often 'arguments' (in the best sense of the word -- ie discussions) are based upon misconceptions and the arguers are basically in agreement

 

That should not be allowed to happen!