The lack of hunts on most maps is REALLY REALLY decreasing my enjoyment of the game. More than any imbalanced civ laming ever has. I am seeing a lot of Japan players, who can just get unlimited hunts using shrines. And tons of China players, who can get lots of trickle resources and trickle armies. I really feel that my civ options are now severely limited to Inca or Dutch, (I will never play a lame civ like Japan or China), or certain other strategies which remove the need for having actual food. I wish the game could return to the balance of hunts it had before.
I know that people complained about turtling, so the devs removed hunts, so now I’m complaining about being forced into a hyper aggressive playstyle, which I dislike. I like age 3 units, age 2 is boooooring. The game should be balanced to encourage all types of play. It is good they nerfed walls. I am not talking about turtling forever, I am talking about being able to FF and make some food heavy units such as mounted line infantry with Germany. I can’t do that, there aren’t enough hunts.
If you read my post, you will note that I am not talking about Germany, I am talking about all civs other than Japan, China, Sweden, Dutch, Inca, or Otto, who don’t need hunts.
When the Africa civs + maps were released, a lot of them were deserts where “food is scarce!” was part of the design - naturally this greatly favors any civ that has easy raiding or rushing ability and totally screws civs like british if youre unable to push the two starting hunts into your tc effectively. civs that dont need to hunt are completely unaffected by this map design so it is in effect a MASSIVE nerf to hunting civs and thus why you dont see them played as much.
I’d like more water on maps in general, whether it be small ponds of fish or a full sea. It’s very rare I see a water map these days. It should be like a 1 in 3 chance of getting water or something per game.