Topic: new tribe: amazons

WorldSavior wrote:

Then it should be just the observation tower in my opinion. It will be a novelty in the game to have a tower which gains conquer radius if you enhance it.

made it so.

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Nordfriese wrote: call the Cocoa Farm a Cocoa Plantation.

Maybe, but "Plantation" sounds like you also have to build some cutters which harvest the cacao. Maybe the name could stay like it is? Or do you suggest to let cacao be harvested by cutters?

And perhaps we could increase the cocoa farm's/plantation's radius to ~5, which would make it possible to build them close to jungle preservers and have cocoa trees standing in the forest?

It's already possible, so increasing is not necessary, it would just slow down the farm...

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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I haven't been following this thread closely. (I'm relatively new to the forums, and so I've only skipped through the thread.) So sorry for butting in here... I'm just curious about the idea of not needing iron. From my experience, although I can't think of maps where the iron is nowhere near the start, there are plenty of times when I've completely run out of iron and my primary objective was to expand to, or conquer some iron fields. With the existing tribes, there is often an economic boom time when you get a new iron field. The coal mines all kick into action to process the coal, all the food production spins into action, and soldiers start getting trained. ... Then the iron runs out and everything slows down again. This effect only really happens on large maps; but I think it's a pretty interesting bit of economic dynamics.

So I'm wondering, if amazons don't use iron then I suppose that effect doesn't exist. The amazon economy would be a bit more steady - and I guess they wouldn't have that drive to push into little mountainous corners in the hope of finding more iron. Does that sound about right?

Also, I know that people with more knowledge and experience than me have put a fair bit of thought and effort into the design of this tribe, but I'm still a little bit concerned that the balance of the tribes might be such that in iron poor maps, amazons are by far the strongest, and in iron rich maps, amazons are by far the strongest. (I assume there will be some middle-ground where it's closer to being even.) Would anyone like to comment on that? For example, what bottle-necks do the amazons face? Is it mostly about land area?

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blind3rdeye wrote:

I haven't been following this thread closely. (I'm relatively new to the forums, and so I've only skipped through the thread.) So sorry for butting in here... I'm just curious about the idea of not needing iron. From my experience, although I can't think of maps where the iron is nowhere near the start, there are plenty of times when I've completely run out of iron and my primary objective was to expand to, or conquer some iron fields.

this is not my experience. except for very ffew maps that are made specifically with this concept (some of the challenge maps, mostly) metals are virtually unlimited. especially in a multiplayer game - and those are the ones that need to be balanced, because nobody complains if playing with the AI is not perfectly balanced, but when two competitive humans are dishing it out, they need balance. basically, against humans the game won't last long enough to run out of resources. and against the AI, most players can defeat it easily, so if they decide to not do it and keep building up, it's their choice.

so, the fact that amazons do not depend on iron does not make a real problem because iron supply never runs out in practical games.

and, as hessenfarmer said, aside from that they still need stone. and they need gold for the higher promotions levels, and their gold economy is awfully inefficient (*). but yes, amazons are less dependent on occupying mountains but they are more dependent on getting fertile ground for planting forests. this can give them a slight advantage in some maps and a slight disadvantage in some others, but it's not going to make a huge difference. they have some advantages and some disadvantages

(*) they need coal to make rations for the gold miners, and they must burn trees to get coal. and they can't even get more than 50% of the gold available. and their mines have a pitiful radius, so it's likely you'll miss some spots anyway. EDIT: and i was forgetting the 5 buckets of water required to operate the gold mines too

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I appreciate the comments. Thanks.

As for iron never running out in practical games... I suppose that means I'm playing wrong, because for me iron often runs out on large maps. (I don't mean that there is no more iron anywhere; I just mean there is no more iron in the land that I currently control.) In any case, I agree that the concept of tribe balance is most relevant to competitive multiplayer, in which players are likely to be more aggressive and the games are a bit shorter and more focused - so iron probably won't run out soon enough to be a balance problem.

By the way, for me, gold never runs out... It can be a challenge to get the first bit of gold to get started; but not much of it is needed compared to iron. But I can imagine that it might run out of my supply was halved!

I also agree that it's valuable for the tribes to be different enough that they have strengths and weakness compared to one another. And so it is natural that some tribes would have an advantage on some maps. When I said I as concerned in the previous post, I was just imagining that the advantage / disadvantage might to too big, such that the number of viable options is reduced rather than increased. I know the tribe has been in development for some time, and people obviously test and think about these things; but I was just interested in getting some thoughts on it. So thanks again for your thoughts on it!

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