Food after year 420

[MasterBigAb]

In other words, they expected us AGAIN to be the betatesters of this catastrophic game design. All the feedback gathered in the forums show at first glance positive remarks, always due to the novelty of the game. But when the mid/late game kicks in, people realize how little was this game tested.

Lack of time? Laziness? Not enough internal team of testers? Interference from the sega suits? You name it. I don't care anymore because the fact is the same what happened with Rome 2.

We. Are. Betatesters.

I partly agree and partly disagree.
The game is good and nice, it is fun. Way better than Rome II - less bugs. However when you play long and into late game it reveals more and more flaws that need correction - as for example fertility, crossbows, overuse of razing provinces (and lack of rehabilitating), massive family trees with hundreds of bastards where you really need a list or zoom out option, the replacement of tier 1 units so every garrison you want to keep to keep your public order up will be expensive as hell and one annoying thing once you get more than 10 settlements the whole world will hate you for ever and not make any treaties with you because you get a -100 big empire penalty. When you then play as the Viking Forefathers and expect your raiders and longboats to be superior you get disappointed by getting beaten at land and sea by Britannic tribes with Vikings and longboats or by emerged Gallic faction with Roman soldiers and ships....

So basically it is fun, way better than Rome 2 and also really good (I played nearly 100h already, so I can really judge it) - once these issues are solved (and I am sure patches and mods will help out here) it will be the best TW game on Warscape engine (for me)

[Earl Dibbles Jr]

CA should make the North become extremely infertile but areas such as Italy, Greece, Spain, North Africa,and the Middle East should retain their fertility, as their fertility was the reason that many hordes sought to make their homes in these areas. The current system is historically inaccurate and makes no sense, even from a gaming perspective.

[Arimahn]

CA should make the North become extremely infertile but areas such as Italy, Greece, Spain, North Africa,and the Middle East should retain their fertility, as their fertility was the reason that many hordes sought to make their homes in these areas. The current system is historically inaccurate and makes no sense, even from a gaming perspective.

Yes. Some provinces should either be immune to climate change, or the change should be more gradual. Right now the frost doesn't really "creep south" so much as cover the whole continent at once. Each event should gradually affect more southerly provinces, so that at the end of the game the north is entirely barren while Africa is slightly worse but still fertile.

[JustCrabbe]

And this is why I stay nomadic. In the Game of Goats, You herd or you die.
I just wish i could get more tributary states.

[Monglor]

Normal Total Wars are about building empires, Attila is about the death of empires. Hence the raze mechanic. Hence the Huns. Hence the winter.

By all means cry more folks, but the idea that this is a bug or a mistake is ridiculous. They game is meant to have a big harsh winter that screws everybody over, forcing people to move south, and that's what it has. The changing climate is one of the things that triggered all the migration in that part of history. It's working as intended.

As has been mentioned, although it really ought to be very obvious, you beat it by going for the farms that don't have fertility demands. It's not that hard.

[Fallen.Soldier]

haha, at first i was pissed off with the mechanic.

but then, reading the replies in this thread made me change my mind.

its a gameplay mechanic people. It "shakes" up your stale game at that point.

smh.

[miTo82]

I am not this far in my campaign (418 AD at the moment), so I have a Question:

When the Lands become less fertile because "Winter is coming", does it only means that the food production buildings give less Food? Or is there really winter all across europe für the whole year, so the troops have a loss of the Units?

[Arimahn]

I am not this far in my campaign (418 AD at the moment), so I have a Question:

When the Lands become less fertile because "Winter is coming", does it only means that the food production buildings give less Food? Or is there really winter all across europe für the whole year, so the troops have a loss of the Units?

Snow begins to appear further south as time goes on, so there are more areas that cause attrition.

[MasterBigAb]

Kind of both.
At the beginning you have snow only in winter season.
After the first event you also have snow in spring in Scotland and Denmark.
After the next event it goes further down etc until with the last event you have snow in autumn, winter and spring up to northern Germany, in winter and spring in central Europe and only in winter in southern Europe.

[Butan]

haha, at first i was pissed off with the mechanic.

but then, reading the replies in this thread made me change my mind.

its a gameplay mechanic people. It "shakes" up your stale game at that point.

smh.

The only "gameplay" positive about this disproportional and slightly ahistorical climate change is that it gives incentive to abandon settlements/move elsewhere/conquer others. It works in the early-mid game.
But where do you go when you are in a 200 turn campaign and everything is a wasteland?

The end game part of the climate change feature is badly balanced, because there is nowhere to go.


Possible changes: in the end game there should be "oasis" of fertility with surrounding fair regions. Then even in a long/very long game there would be places to go.
Debatedly, there could even be a fertile comeback after some times (after historical Attila's death lets say). But it seems that the campaign was built in a way where you cant go further than 200-300 turns without painfully disproportionate campaign macro economics.

[the herald]

They need to make the fertility change more gradual for the more southern areas. Currently if you plan on playing a full campaign there's no incentive to go south, just build goat/cattle pens and plan for 0 fertility. Wheat farms are effectively useless as well because it's beter to plan for low fertility than go wheat and then get screwed over the by the climate. Beter to plan for the future and rake in money from the fertility.

So what you're left with is no need to move south and a building chain with only 1/3 being worth building. Great. How pointless.

Make the fertility change -1 per event, with fertile lands change -0.5 per event. That way the prime spots continue to be appealing and buildings can be varied in different areas, Wheat should grow better in Italy than in the far north, even by the end of the game. Especially if Italy has Aqueducts and stuff while the north is a frozen hell hole. I'm pretty sure meat wasn't the only source of food in the dark ages.


Something like Aqueducts increasing fertility would be a good idea too, if implemented right.

[Keyser]

The only "gameplay" positive about this disproportional and slightly ahistorical climate change is that it gives incentive to abandon settlements/move elsewhere/conquer others. It works in the early-mid game.
But where do you go when you are in a 200 turn campaign and everything is a wasteland?

The end game part of the climate change feature is badly balanced, because there is nowhere to go.


Possible changes: in the end game there should be "oasis" of fertility with surrounding fair regions. Then even in a long/very long game there would be places to go.
Debatedly, there could even be a fertile comeback after some times (after historical Attila's death lets say). But it seems that the campaign was built in a way where you cant go further than 200-300 turns without painfully disproportionate campaign macro economics.

I disagree, it isn't really a problem in the end game either. There are tons of ways to get more food, fishery, goat and camel farms, ressources like fruit, market, stores, governors bonus etc.

You don't lack food, you can still continue to build things that cost food, but you need to plan where and how much you are going to build as well as adapt your food production to the new setting.

I've played a frankish and a roman campaign almost to the end (i got the last events about climatic change in both at least) and i never went into negative. But it's because i planned ahead of the events. Same for units upgrade, i only went bankrupt in my first try with the franks as i didn't anticipate the rising cost of maintenance for armies, in all my later plays i anticipated this and build up my economy in prevision of each upgrade.

Where i would rant about the fertility drop mechanism is, as i already said, that there is no real alternative in food production in the end game, for every faction, only one of the three building is worth it, the one with the best basic food supply. That's bad game design imo, whereas the fertility drop isn't.

IMO, there is one level of fertility loss that is unnecessary and ruin the feeling that some region worth more than others for food. They should drop one of those so as even in the end not all region are barren.

[stevehoos]

So the game is on a time limit and ends with everywhere winter? What kind of bs is that? Things should improve. I look around we aren`t in deep winter are we? There better be mods to reverse it.

But we get 8$ dollar DLC?

[geala]

As often CA seems to have overdone. They watched too much a certain fantasy series perhaps. No problem if it is moddable. I didn't expect to play TW games unmodded since RTW.

[Butan]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I disagree, it isn't really a problem in the end game either. There are tons of ways to get more food, fishery, goat and camel farms, ressources like fruit, market, stores, governors bonus etc.

You don't lack food, you can still continue to build things that cost food, but you need to plan where and how much you are going to build as well as adapt your food production to the new setting.

I've played a frankish and a roman campaign almost to the end (i got the last events about climatic change in both at least) and i never went into negative. But it's because i planned ahead of the events. Same for units upgrade, i only went bankrupt in my first try with the franks as i didn't anticipate the rising cost of maintenance for armies, in all my later plays i anticipated this and build up my economy in prevision of each upgrade.

Where i would rant about the fertility drop mechanism is, as i already said, that there is no real alternative in food production in the end game, for every faction, only one of the three building is worth it, the one with the best basic food supply. That's bad game design imo, whereas the fertility drop isn't.

I never said end game isnt playable, but that climate change stop being a factor since everywhere is the same after a time.

IMO, there is one level of fertility loss that is unnecessary and ruin the feeling that some region worth more than others for food. They should drop one of those so as even in the end not all region are barren.

We agree then.

[the_mango55]

In other words, they expected us AGAIN to be the betatesters of this catastrophic game design. All the feedback gathered in the forums show at first glance positive remarks, always due to the novelty of the game. But when the mid/late game kicks in, people realize how little was this game tested.

Lack of time? Laziness? Not enough internal team of testers? Interference from the sega suits? You name it. I don't care anymore because the fact is the same what happened with Rome 2.

We. Are. Betatesters.

Don't be ridiculous. All of these features were tested and most of them are probably working as designed and intended. A mechanic that people don't like is not the same as a broken mechanic, and if CA never introduced new mechanics for fear of people not liking them we would get the same damn game every time.

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

What has his language to do with his remarks? Anyway you are plain wrong. The climate presumably changed at the middle of the 1st millenium AD which caused a lot of problems. It's sometimes called the Early Medieval Pessimum. You don't need an Ice Age to ruin agriculture, a decrease of 1 to 1,5 degrees Celsius may be enough. And btw Dark Ages is a timed out term referring to the scarce information from the centuries after the 6.th c. AD, had, has and will not have any connection with sunshine.

However this didn't happened at the time of our game. Such a change for half a century was at the first half of the 3th century when probably a vulcan outbreak in the pacific triggert a clima change. The next real clima change was after 1000 AD in the middleages.

[Humble Warrior]

Don't be ridiculous. All of these features were tested and most of them are probably working as designed and intended. A mechanic that people don't like is not the same as a broken mechanic, and if CA never introduced new mechanics for fear of people not liking them we would get the same damn game every time.

I believe CA actually said (almost proudly) that they don`t test their games, this was at the time of R2 release. It`s clear to see just from what people say here that CA don`t test what they do. They might run it to see that it basically works, but they don`t test to see if it really works like it should. It`s like starting a brand new just made car and driving 10 feet with it, then stepping out and saying it works, then selling it, knowing the customer will be back sooner or later to tell you it fell apart after 5 miles driving.

[crowe15]

Interesting.

Back then they had Global Cooling

Today we have Global Warming!

[Osbot]

CA should make the North become extremely infertile but areas such as Italy, Greece, Spain, North Africa,and the Middle East should retain their fertility, as their fertility was the reason that many hordes sought to make their homes in these areas. The current system is historically inaccurate and makes no sense, even from a gaming perspective.

It also breaks the game.

There is a modifier (hidden perhaps) which tells the AI which regions to consider for resettlement. It won't or the chance is absolutely minute that it will resettle 0 or 1 fertility provinces. If you push a game to say 440, nobody will resettle razed regions leading to the map being empty and getting more empty with each razed settlement.