gwgardner wrote:Just noticed another 'problem' with food, for all the tribes, and I guess the Romans too: expiring food reserves. From the manual: It cannot be stored and two thirds of the production is thrown away at the end of each turn.
So the countries start off with 100 food, but on the first turn they lose 60 to wastage. 2nd turn they lose another 20+.
In short, if you want your countries to start off with some soldiers, but no fields, very little food production ... something has to give.
The only solution I can think of is to give all the cities some fields, even if the research hasn't been done to produce more fields. Each country needs at least enough starting fields to pay for their troops and starting populace, I guess.
This is an issue that probably should be clearly stated in your 'how-to' on making new scenarios.
I actually balanced this for Rome a lot since your feedback of previous version.
For example they can reserach fields and settlers at start turn now and they have this flow of stones and wood.
You are right about the wasted food. It makes no sense to set it to 100 (I put the same number for every nation here quickly just for testing).
But there is also a lot for the player to discover how to solve difficult situations. I will absolutely balance, but I'm not planning to make it an easy scenario.
There were real struggles in that time, real problems with food and production on the sandy waterland, lot's of dependancy for the Roman Empire etc etc
Tiles without fields give food as well, you can turn into war quickly and loose axeman, you have to work with the birthrate sliders to not loose all food at once, you have to use trade with surrounding tribes and you have to make choices about tehchs and where you use your settlers for.
Despite the horrible starting conditions now for the player, it looks like the AI most of the time find solutions to survive and since they use the same gameplay mechanism we can learn from them.