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[Cheddarius]

I think Haika should have a much bigger hit than food reduction on other hexes in order to get food production in forests. I mean, usually only the very highest production hex counts. If I make it so that I can only use river plains, but I get 3 food + 1 food/1 wool + 1 stone + 1 food/1 wood on them, I end up with a crazy 8 production hex. Obviously this is very extreme, but it illustrates the fact that improving your best hex is worth a lot more than un-improving your normal hexes.

[Neruz]

Our cities don't start with any resources do they? Just 10,000 people.

[IronyOwl]

Yeah, the issue isn't so much forest vs plains as the fact that forests are giving you something you don't want and not giving you something you do. There are two solutions, as I see it.

The first is just to let you make forest hexes do what you want slightly better- irrigating them is an obvious example of this. They give you more food, but less of that and more wood than a plains would. So maybe you can (or can research a way to) extend irrigation through forests, for instance, so you can irrigate as much of it as you need to.

The second is to let you outright change the hex in some way- in other words, if you want more food and don't care about the wood, you're basically asking for plains. Since you don't have many of those, this might not be an unreasonable request, so maybe you start with or can research a way to build an improvement that gives forests +1 food and -1 wood (and probably stacks with irrigation).


Of course, at the moment you've got 2 tiles that produce 3 food and 2 tiles that produce 2, so you're not exactly starving.

[Neruz]

Waitaminute; can't Haika convert Wood into Stone? I would have thought he'd want lots of wood, stone is his useless resource.


Also, something just occured to me; how do we prospect?

[IronyOwl]

Well, sometimes you want food instead of building materials.

Speaking of prospecting, I assume some special resources will be found through exploration rather than discovering them in your city radius? If so, will there be any way to gather them other than building a colony nearby?

I'm especially curious about this with regards to magic resources, since this will determine what kinds of magic we have access to.

[Neruz]

Well, sometimes you want food instead of building materials.

True, but with 1 hill tile with a river in it, 2 plains tiles with rivers in them and 1 plains tile, he's not exactly short on food.

Those two plains tiles for example can be upgraded to producing 5 food each with only a little effort.

[Haika]

and yeah, the point I was going for was trying to get wood, while still making enough to actually feed my people. I could theoretically research something that would let me chop down the forest and build a farm or somesuch removing the wood, but that kinda defeats the purpose of being forest bound.

I dunno, maybe a building in the city that gives me food each turn based on hunting in how many forest hexes I control?

[Cheddarius]

How about a building (in the city, or in the forest hexes) that lets you use forests in a more versatile manner?
To "work" a forest tile = 1 food, 1 wood
To "chop wood" in a forest tile = 2 wood
To "hunt" in a forest tile = 2 food

Or, you could just have a terrain improvement that is +1 food for forests, but is mutually exclusive with the +1 wood upgrade.

[IronyOwl]

If all you're looking for is getting food with your wood (and hunting fits your theme okay), researching archery lets you build a hunting camp for +1 food (or leather) in a forest tile. Since you've got the plains (and river) for more focused food production, that and/or getting those plains irrigated should be enough to let you harvest as much wood as you need to without worrying about food too much, especially since you never need to worry about stone.

Ironically, I wouldn't expect you to start having issues with getting enough food until you stop needing wood.

[Neruz]

and yeah, the point I was going for was trying to get wood, while still making enough to actually feed my people. I could theoretically research something that would let me chop down the forest and build a farm or somesuch removing the wood, but that kinda defeats the purpose of being forest bound.

I dunno, maybe a building in the city that gives me food each turn based on hunting in how many forest hexes I control?

Put up Windmills and Hunting Camps in the forest, set them to make food. Those, combined with irrigation+watermills on the river tiles will produce more than enough food to keep you going for quite awhile.

[Haika]

I think at this point it's mostly a roleplaying issue. I could just make farms on the plains, and let that feed my people. But in RP, my people would be more likely to farm or hunt or gather or whatever in a forest. So that's why I'm pondering my options on how to make things work between mechanics, balance, and RP.

[Knight Otu]

What can I use gold for?

Currently, money (gold is a bit of a misnomer, seeing that you might get gold as a resource as well. I'll change that in the rules over time.) is used as upkeep for military and caster units (without trade, you can only keep three military units). Also pretty close is the use of money for colonies (10 money startup, 2 upkeep). A few magic schools might use 3 money as a magic resource, possibly as an abstraction (such as it happened with the Zrlv in AoR I). Higher-level technologies will open up other uses for money as well.

Regarding your turn, do note that you have a Governor leader, not a General.

Our cities don't start with any resources do they? Just 10,000 people.

Correct. You'll get what you gather immediately, though.

Speaking of prospecting, I assume some special resources will be found through exploration rather than discovering them in your city radius? If so, will there be any way to gather them other than building a colony nearby?

You might find resources outside the city radius, yes. Colonies will likely be the mayor way to get those resources to your cities - other ways would probably be too inefficient to be viable.

(hoping for +1 animal)

No need to hope. With any terrain improvement, you can choose what the tile provides whenever you work it. Thus, you can choose to gain an animal and a wool rather than a food and a wool in one turn, and in the next, choose to gain 2 food and one wool.

---

Now then, the issue with Haika's forests. He is in a good position to get more from forests than the other players, but I admit, he isn't quite there yet. I'm considering allowing him to drop the clothier's workshop for the option to build the canopy farms he wanted to research, as part of the Blessing of Gaia tech. These canopy farms would work the same as the swamp farms I have/had in AoR 2 (3 labor, +1 food), except built on forests. Maybe 2 labor, +1 food, -1 wood. Remember that all improvement already are mutually exclusive unless noted otherwise (mills can share hexes with non-mills, and deep mines require mines). Thought?

[Neruz]

I'd be intensely wary of providing him with ways to get more out of Forest tiles; consider that there's already a way to get up to 3 food and 1 wood out of a forest tile (Hunter Camp + Windmill) and that he has 2 River Plains tiles, 1 normal Plains tile and a Hills tile, i really do not think food is going to be remotely an issue for him. Fully upgraded those 4 tiles will provide 18 food (i think, my calcs might be slightly off) all on their own, completely discounting the food he'll get from working forest tiles for wood.

If he loses wood production on the forest hex, that would probably balance it, but i honostly don't think any of us need any more hexes at the moment; hexes can already be upgraded substantially and i expect those of us with magic (and probably those of us without it too) will find additional ways to upgrade hexes as we go on.

--EDIT--

Waitaminute; he can build Hunter's Camps on forest tiles to get +1 food; why would he build farms that give +1 food and -1 wood? Those are just flat out inferior to Hunter's camps?!

[IronyOwl]

I think at this point it's mostly a roleplaying issue. I could just make farms on the plains, and let that feed my people. But in RP, my people would be more likely to farm or hunt or gather or whatever in a forest. So that's why I'm pondering my options on how to make things work between mechanics, balance, and RP.

To some extent, you could justify using plains as empty spaces you can do anything with, rather than the crowded ecology of your forests. A tree spirit probably wouldn't be too keen on hacking down pine trees because he wanted apples there, for instance, or ripping up all the shrubs so only berries could grow. To a creature so accustomed to the forest, though, plains must look more like an absence of something than just another biome- there's nothing there but grasses, and even those might die off during the hotter months.

So since there's nothing else there, they could basically go nuts with "making forests", planting entire groves of fruit trees, patches of berries, and other things that probably just wouldn't fit in a proper forest region, but that your plant-happy treefolk have no difficulty growing out in the open. In essence, the plains could just be a convenient workspace that happens to be terrible for raw materials but extremely nice for small-scale "food forests."


Later on, of course, your Gaia tech could probably lead to some interesting forest enhancements, but for the moment this could be a convenient way to make plains farming not seem odd.

EDIT: At the moment, the clothing workshop doesn't seem to be helping him, and depending on how interested he is in morale it might be useless for quite some time. You might want to let him swap that out for something regardless of whatever we do concerning forests and food.

[Cheddarius]

Can I trade gold for resources? It seems rather useless at this point, considering two of my starting bonuses were geared toward it.