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[Vanigo]

One turn only, of course.

Oh, and Knight Otu, wouldn't reducing the food gained from slaughtering horses to 1 be a better quick fix? No reason to overcomplicate things.

[abculatter_2]

One turn only, of course.

Then how the hell does IronyOwl have 20 labor?

[Knight Otu]

Hang on... Base 16, +2 for the industrious trait, +1 for filling the excess labor pool... yeah, I must have mistyped somewhere. IronyOwl should only have 19 base labor.

And yeah, purchasing additional labor with resources is one turn only. Otherwise the Lactosians would have a far more ridiculous amount of labor, rather than being off by one.

Oh, and Knight Otu, wouldn't reducing the food gained from slaughtering horses to 1 be a better quick fix? No reason to overcomplicate things.

<_< >_> .... *flees*

[abculatter_2]

What are the prices for purchasing additional labor?

[IronyOwl]

Curses, will fix in a minute.

Oh, and Knight Otu, wouldn't reducing the food gained from slaughtering horses to 1 be a better quick fix? No reason to overcomplicate things.

<_< >_> .... *flees*

That should probably be added also, but horsemeat on demand would still be better than farms for flexibility's sake, so not being able to eat them unless you have to is still a good idea. You might want to consider limiting Cheddarius' current labor scheme as well, since next turn he'll be able to effectively produce 2.5 population per turn, and he won't even have to feed them.

What are the prices for purchasing additional labor?

10 Money for 1 Labor. You can only do this once a turn, so no 20 Money for 2 Labor or anything like that.

[abculatter_2]

That should probably be added also, but horsemeat on demand would still be better than farms for flexibility's sake, so not being able to eat them unless you have to is still a good idea. You might want to consider limiting Cheddarius' current labor scheme as well, since next turn he'll be able to effectively produce 2.5 population per turn, and he won't even have to feed them.

I think that should be easy enough, just make them demand food and/or a certain amount of population to keep them working. Maybe a 1-1 or 1-2 horse to population ratio? Or maybe change the way they work and instead be able to use two horses to double (or less) the labor output of a single laborer when working a tile, for example using two horses to work in an already worked quarry on a mountain would yield 4 stone (these numbers might have to be nerfed, maybe just add half a labor?)

[Vanigo]

I don't like it. Makes it too easy to get tons of resources from the same tile, especially special resources that you can only get from that tile.

[IronyOwl]

There's a ton of ways to do it, though using animals to work a tile twice might actually be more powerful in some cases. In addition to the labor ratio/need food(or money) ideas, it occurred to me that maybe horse farms/pastures could only support X animals at a time, or even changing how herds worked so it was more of a consumed resource.

Ultimately, a lot of it depends on how Otu wants the game to work in that regard. I would assume he wants relying on animal labor to be viable but not mandatory, but that doesn't narrow it down much. It also doesn't help that Cheddarius has already started working on it, so it's a little late to say that animals no longer do anything until you research further techs for them, for instance.

EDIT: As an example, irrigation gives +1 Food, horse farms give +1 horse, though they're more expensive to build. So if expending two horses gets you a tile worked for free, horse farms are on par with farms provided you have a spare unimproved plains tile lying around, albeit more costly and more flexible. Once you start getting improved tiles, it gets closer to mandatory or at least a good idea, since it costs one tech and a few turns mucking around with getting animals in the first place, followed by greater output than farms would provide (again, assuming you have spare improved tiles).

[Vanigo]

I think they are consumed when used for labor, actually.

[IronyOwl]

Hm. It does say they are "turned into" a labor point, so you might be right.

Makes this whole discussion a bit redundant, then.

[Cheddarius]

Holy smokes, what? That would be totally ridiculous. Horses would be the most useless thing ever.

[IronyOwl]

If you used them up to get the labor, you mean? It'd be totally ridiculous if you didn't. Two turns from now, you'd effectively have an extra 5,000 population that didn't eat or contribute to overcrowding; four turns later you'd have ten thousand more people than you should. Granted, they wouldn't pay taxes and you'd lose out on the tiles giving extra food, but the fact that they don't eat means they pay for themselves within 2-3 turns, and none of this impacts your natural population negatively. They also couldn't construct items or buildings, but by the time you've run out of city tiles you want worked or improved, I think it's pretty clear that uselessness is not the problem.

If they're used up, on the other hand, they provide a slight bonus to efficiency without becoming mandatory for anyone who wants more labor (meaning everyone). Consider:

Irrigation gives +1 Food, so each horse (from a horse farm, pastures are less efficient) essentially costs 1 Food.
Hence, the "free" labor they give costs 2 Food apiece.
If you work a tile that gives 2 Food, you break even (minus the extra costs of building horse farms rather than farms).
If you work a tile that gives 3 Food, you gain 1 Food every 2 turns you work a horse farm; in other words, horse farms effectively give +0.5 food above normal farms. Of course, you're free to use this labor getting wood or the like instead, so it also gives a bit of flexibility.

Given how low-tech and relatively cheap they are, this is a good investment overall; it's like getting half an extra farm for 1 labor and 1 material. The only catch is that you have to actually have something else worth working on: Either you can use it to periodically work tiles you otherwise wouldn't, or you can replace population workers on essential tiles to let them do something in the city. In other words, if you have nothing you want done in the city, you need "extra" improved tiles elsewhere.

[abculatter_2]

nvm, delete plox

[Cheddarius]

Huh. I assumed using up the horses would destroy efficiency.
Well, we'll see.

[Knight Otu]

Yeah, beasts of burden are used up when used for labor. Not quite realistic, but again, keeping that purchased labor bonus would break the game immensely. Just assume they're brought back to the pasture when they're done on the field. I am rather certain that horses still will be worth it.