I would like to see a game mode called feast and famine.
In feast and famine game mode, there are famines every 10 minutes, lasting 1 minute long, and increasing in intensity.
RULES:
- During a famine, if your food reaches 0, you lose. All your units die, its GG.
- During a famine, the supplies of food are drained at a set rate, once every second, for every player.
- Famines grow worse for every player killed.
So, how much food is drained?
Well, X * A * Z/Y where X is the number of times the famine has occurred (starting at 0) Z is the total number of players at the start, and Y is the total number of remaining players. A is a difficulty modifier.
This means that if famine is set to difficulty modifier 5, there are 3/4 players alive, and there have been 5 famines, the next famine will drain 25 *4/3 or 33.33 food per second. For 60 seconds. Or around 2,000 food. Poof.
But, let’s say it was an 8 player game. And difficulty was 3. And its been 2 hours, so 12 famines have occurred. Only you and an opponent are left standing. 12 * 3 * 8/2. 144 food per second. 8640 food. Gone.
In feast and famine mode, the goal is survival. Strong empires have a vested interest to only kill the strongest opponent, since every opponent killed makes the famine worse for them. Taking land, sending out lumberjacks, food efficiency, ALL of these are important strategies to beat the famines. In addition, famine causes resources to rapidly deplete on the map, leading to the endgame where everything is gone resource wise, and the empires are sustaining on nothing but gold. And then they run out of food.