Feitoria Change - Like Malay Fish Traps

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Feitorias are an inherently imbalanced concept.

Not in terms of gameplay balance; more like balancing on the head of a pin. If you make them a fraction too cheap, they allow infinite resources and all they need to do is wait long enough, and victory becomes inevitable. A fraction too expensive, and they’re never worth building at all, since they take too long to repay their value and you’d be better off just having a normal economy.

No matter the cost or payouts of a Feitoria, the optimal number will either be 0 or 5.

I have an alternative way, and it’s roughly based on the Malay Fish Traps, which used to have infinite food. They were really fun with infinite food, but it too was inherently imbalanced, so eventually they were changed to have 3x the food instead. So, here’s the idea. It’s really pretty simple.

Feitorias draw from one shared pool of bonus resources.

Let me explain.

Now, in a typical game, the Portuguese player might build 5 feitorias and the game might last for 40 minutes, with 20 minutes of production. That translates to 2000 Food, 1200 Gold, 900 Wood, and 500 Stone, each, or a total of 10000 food, 6000 gold, 4500 wood, and 2500 stone.

Now, imagine the Portuguese player knows this is all they get. If they build one feitoria, they get it in 120 minutes; if they build 5, they get it in 20 minutes. If they build 10, they get it in 10 minutes. Build too few, and you don’t get it all before the game ends; build too many, and you use it all up immediately, and don’t have any military besides.

Suddenly, there’s an actual reasonable argument to be made on how many you should build! Should you go all-in on feitorias and extract all the resources immediately? Or should you just build one or two earlier on to get some extra resources, especially if you’re being pressured and are unable to fully focus your economy on what’s available? Maybe 3? 4? 0? It would depend entirely on the game.

This change would allow feitorias to be buffed in terms of extraction rate, up until they are nearly as strong as normal villagers, because the long-term effects aren’t such a concern. Right now, a feitoria produces about as much as 8 villagers, which certainly is not a very reasonable alternative to a normal economy in most cases. If they instead produced at around the rate of, say, 15 villagers, that would be completely overpowered and unstoppable in the lategame as it currently stands, but not if they would run out twice as fast.

Basically, to make them viable in the main body of the game, you just need to weaken their overpoweredness on long games, and this would solve exactly that.

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2

How about they create a new building available to all civs starting in the castle age. Make the marketplace a prerequisite, use the trade workshop model (I can’t remember the exact name off hand) and have it function like the Feitoria on a watered down level. Then have an imperial upgrade for it at the marketplace and give the Portuguese the upgrade for free or give them the upgrade access in castle age. It would even out the long term playing field of the Feitoria, keep it’s feature in tact and still give the Portuguese the economic bonus. It can also allow for future bonuses to be made to other civs as options (i.e. X civ gets a 10% trade market trickle rate etc.) . I like the idea of the Feitoria, choosing to sacrifice pop space and upfront resources for long term gain, but not when it is strictly available to 1 civ.

3

The Feitoria need to work in an understandable way. That is the advantage of how they work now.

The devs sould just remove the berry bonus again, and don’t touch the Feitoria. Portuguese are not supposed to be an early game civ.

If the Feitoria is changed however it would be cool imo if it worked like a market without changing prizes, but maybe higher fee than the normal market. In this way it would scale with the normal economy of the player but would be nonetheless extremly strong in the late game, when other palyers only get 17 gold for 100 food, but the portuguese player maybe 50 for example.

4

It wouldn’t be that difficult to convey. Just have it work exactly like a fish trap; it shows the amount of resources that are still available, with each additional one having the same total as the others, but increasing the rate of extraction.

Much like fish traps, it should be pretty self-evident what’s happening.

5

The best thing about the current feitoria design is that the opponent at some point just knows it’s over.

Your proposal would take away that, cause it can always happen that the trickle stops and there’s a comeback chance later. Leading to unnecessary drawn out games.

6

It wouldn’t be that difficult to convey. Just have it work exactly like a fish trap; it shows the amount of resources that are still available, with each additional one having the same total as the others, but increasing the rate of extraction.

Much like fish traps, it should be pretty self-evident what’s happening.

If I understand it correctly, the Feitorias would at some point stop to work. But they don’t get destroyed, and you could build more which would not work. That is not intuitive and difficult to understand.

Also the comparison with a Malay fish trap is difficult to understand, because Malay fish traps need fishing ships to work on. Feitorias however do not need Villagers garrisoned inside to work. What would be another possible change.

However first we have to answer the question what the Problem of Feitorias is and if there is a problem. Feitorias are in my experience only strong in two scenarios: If you rush them. You can build Feitorias quicker than 10 villagers, so you can get to a strong economy faster even if the maximum potential of such an economy is lower than with 200 regular villagers.

The other strong point of Feitorias is in the late game, when gold and stone on the map runs out.

It seems like you see the Feitoria in the late game as a problem. But Feitorias that stop working are just lame. Rushing Feitorias for fast ressources is not the primary idea of Feitorias imo. The fact that they work slower than 20 villagers implies that they are intended to be weaker in the mid game when gold and stone is still on the map. They are intended to be strong in the late game.

I don’t really see a balance problem with Feitorias, but maybe Portuguese can not be allowed to be a strong early game civ.

Also it seems like that some other people see it as a problem that Feitorias can fix the economy in the mid game before the pop cap is an issue. And also the supposed change by the devs to make Feitorias more expensive make Feitoirias rather weak as a rush building than in the late game.

If that is a problem it could be a better solution that you have to garrison villagers inside a Feitoria to work, so you have to produce these villagers first. This would nerf some fast imp “clown strats” with 30 villagers but superior economy because of Feitorias.

But the coolest way to make the Feitoria scale with your normal economy more would imo be to make it work as a second market with different prices. You would need villagers to gather wood and food to buy stone and gold, but the prices could be better in the late game than with the normal market. It would also fit the identity of the Feitoria as an oversea trade buidling.

7

I don’t 100% agree, but I think this is in essence true. maybe on a certain map/situation the stone or gold is valuable enough regardless of the exact balance to place a feitoria, but yeah, 95% of the time the optimal number is 0 or 5.

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8

Ofc it’s a balance issue when portuguese are basically impossible to beat once your gold run out.

That’s why I always was for limiting the feitoria to only 1, this way it can be balanced, as it could be outperformed by relics at least in the gold department.

Some time ago I made a Feitorai theorycraft where I got deeper in explanation why I chose the feitorias not to produce all the res (only food and gold) and the calculated optiminized amount of ressources to achiev a desired balanced effect.
Also I concluded that the single feitoria could be a unique economic strategy only available for portuguese from castle age. And the res rates would be easy to comprehend for your eco macro.

For me the biggest issue is that you can make 5+ of them which then give ressource of 4 stone miners and 10 (!!!) relics. It’s just too much of these ressources that are otherwise limited for all other civs. And for good reason, as the buildings and units that use them offer way more utilty than the trash units.
Especiially if we talk about units #### ### which only need some halb protection to tear donw entire bases from safe distance if the opponent doesn’t has units with similar range to snipe them. But also just adding in some ichamps against opponents who don’t have gold access anymore is super hard to deal with.

10

Feitorias could be interesting options for a variety of strategies if they were actually good enough to allow that. For example, a Portuguese player could go full 1tc aggression in Castle age, but if that fails, they could go up to Imperial age and build four Feitorias to almost instantly make up the economic difference.

The problem is, at the current balance and price point, this just can’t be a valid strategy. The production rate has to be so low in the short term to prevent it from becoming insanely overpowered in the long term, that it ends up not being particularly useful for either one. As it currently stands, you get something like six villagers worth of production for 20 villagers worth of population space.

On the whole, I don’t think this suggestion would be terribly confusing. Yes, players could build useless Feitorias, but people can build useless Lumber camps and Mining camps too; people are just smart enough not to.

11

Ofc it’s a balance issue when portuguese are basically impossible to beat once your gold run out.

That’s why I always was for limiting the feitoria to only 1, this way it can be balanced, as it could be outperformed by relics at least in the gold department.

Some time ago I made a Feitorai theorycraft where I got deeper in explanation why I chose the feitorias not to produce all the res (only food and gold) and the calculated optiminized amount of ressources to achiev a desired balanced effect.

If a player has 5 Feitorias than his military numbers will be low, that is the trade off. An advantage at the same time is that the eco is almost not raidable. So the portuguese Feitoria player is rather strong defensivly but not offensively. Giving them only food and gold would make them rather strong offensively. I would rather give them more stone and wood, so they can make more devensive buidlings. The counter to a portuguese fortress are trebs, bombard cannons and rams to destroy the buildings. With low economic numbers it can be hard for the portuguese to kill the enemy siege. The portuguese needs bombard cannons to kill the enemy siege, but with low military numbers its dificult to protect the siege. More food and gold would mean they could kill the enemy siege more easily with Cavalier.

I think it would be better to force Portuguese players more into bombard towers and Castles, that can be countered by siege well protected by superior army numbers. Rather more stone than gold. Gold is better for the offensive, where it can get imbalanced. More stone makes them rather onesidedly strong for defensive, what can be countered better.

The portuguese defensive approach with both economy and military as buildings (Feitorias and Bombard towers) is an interessting game, and I think it is balanceable. However giving them more generic strength with food and gold, could be just too strong and boring at the same time.