[Poll] Which advantage(s) of Pasture you want to nerf?

[SMUM15236]

@TommoChocolate

In terms of gameplay, the core concept seems to be that pastures can be used by two villagers simultaneously rather than just one. Anything else seems secondary to that.

Yep. I don’t see why it comes with 5-6 more advantages.

@TommoChocolate

So I think advantages 2 and 3 should stay

Why should it have better food to wood ratio?

[AbuzzJam4677680]

@SMUM15236

@TommoChocolate

So I think advantages 2 and 3 should stay

Why should it have better food to wood ratio?

Pastures may need some advantages to differ from farms. But there should be disadvantages to offset pastures.

[TommoChocolate]

@UpmostRook9474

That would still be predominantly agricultural towns there, with a large area occupied by farmland.
There is thematically fine for the Tatars, and even for the Khitans, to have some degree of agriculture. But for some of the more nomadic civs, like the Huns, Mongols, or potentially Gokturks, having large amounts of farms would be visually inconsistent with their identity. Although Pasture is stationary, essentially a Farm equivalent, it allows civs to visually get rid of agriculture.

What I mean is that pastures and the Tatars’ bonuses both represent a greater emphasis on nomadic pastoralism. The Tatars’ bonuses do this within the existing game logic, i.e. more herdables and more time spent gathering food from herdables. Pastures do it in a way that departs from the existing game logic, i.e. a farm replacement at which villagers gather food from wild animals, but mechanically the collection works as if they were crops. There are no herdables involved, either visually or mechanically.

I would agree more with what you say about visuals if the animals were domesticated rather than wild. The FE devs/graphics artists seem a bit confused about the difference at the moment (for another example, see the “wild chickens” [sic] that look like domestic chickens).

@SMUM15236

Why should it have better food to wood ratio?

Good question. Imagine a building that costs twice as much as a farm, has the same food as two farms, and allows two villagers to work on it at the same rate as regular farmers. This building would be worse than two regular farms, because you can only build it when you have enough wood for two farms. It would basically be like a restriction that you have to build farms in pairs.

If this hypothetical building cost less than two farms but had the same wood-to-food ratio, then it would initially have an advantage over farms (easier to get started farming with it) but over time it would average out to be no better. So I think it would need a better wood-to-food ratio (which could, but doesn’t have to, include a cheaper cost than two farms). Compare this with the Teutons’ farm bonus, where the cost reduction both makes it easier to transition into farms and gives a better ratio over time.

Of course, as it is, the devs have overloaded pastures (and Khitans generally) with advantages – they’re not much like my hypothetical two-farm building.

[PeakHornet46539]

Ibexes and Argali are not domesticated. In any case, this is AOE2DE. Domestication should be a tech for AOE1DE/ROR. And it is.

Domestication (Age of Empires)

[SMUM15236]

@UpmostRook9474

The player can build the First Pasture near by the chickens or next to the berries/shore fish as if it were a Mill, and later research the tech at a price of just 100 wood to unlock the animals and turn the Pasture a Farm-equivalent buildings like now.

So they need to spend the resource twice?

@UpmostRook9474

I suddenly come up with another idea…

When the food of a Pasture run out, the Pasture would become a “Pasture Yurt Wagon”.

The Pasture Yurt Wagon would work like a wagon unit in AoE3, that is, just click the button and put the foundation at a place and the wagon would go to there and disappear as if it turned into the foundation, then the foundation would be automatically under construction at a extremely slow rate.

Very tiresome for current fast meta.

@UpmostRook9474

But since they are Argali and Ibexes, I would expect them to reasonably carry 140 food like wild Argali and Ibexes

I think the same. Pasture should have 2 animal as default instead of 3. So you will have slightly lower food to wood ratio.

Either that or Pasture workers becomes slower than Farmer.

@UpmostRook9474

and naturally decay like all animals

That will be too difficult to draw parallel to farm.

[UpmostRook9474]

@SMUM15236

So they need to spend the resource twice?

Seems so. Just make it unable to skip the cost of 100 wood that other civs have to spend on the Mill. That is, the khitan player spends 100 wood to build a Pasture that can work as a Mill and spends another 100 wood to unlock animals, which is equal to currently spend on a Pasture and a Mill.

But sure, the cost of unlocking animals can be tweaked. If being lower is acceptable, it does not have to be 100 wood.

@SMUM15236

Very tiresome for current fast meta.

I didn’t say I want that change. 11 Just a random idea.

@SMUM15236

Pasture should have 2 animal as default instead of 3. So you will have slightly lower food to wood ratio.

I didn’t think about adjusting the amount, but it worth trying.

@SMUM15236

That will be too difficult to draw parallel to farm.

Unless animals were killed by the Jurchens, they should all decay. This would be more natural and reasonable.

A 140-food animal being gathered by two Herders and having decay. Assumed that the efficiency of Herder is as slow as the efficiency of Shepherd (0.33 food/s), and the rate of decay is know as 0.25 food/s, then you can find that the body would last around 153 second, and the food gathered by the two Herders would be 140/(0.33×2 + 0.25)×0.33×2 ≈ 101.

I said the efficiency of Shepherd should be the lowest in the accpetable range that the efficiency of Herder can be nerf to, and I guess it would be fine to nerf to 0.38 food/s, so that would be 140/(0.38×2 + 0.25)×0.38×2 ≈ 105.

This should be a slight and reasonable nerf compared to the fact that they can currently get a full 110 food from an animal.

Once the Herders evacuate the Pasture, for example to escape a raid, the animals that have been slaughtered would continue to decay, so the amount of food the Pasture can provide would continue to decrease until it reaches the amount that the living animals carry. Therefore this could be also a slight nerf, requiring the Khitan players to pay more attention to defense.

[casusincorrabil]

Is it ironical that the devs actually BUFFED the Pasture work rate? Kappa

For me it’s still irritating that pastures are better in basically every aspect than farms.

Ofc you want them to be bascially the eco bonus for Khitans. And this would have been achieved with the old 10 % more dropoff if the pastures themselves were balanced with farms

But I don’t get why pastures have to be better in every aspect than farms. This can also be achieved by specialising the Pastures and giving them up and downs in comparison to farms.

One idea I heared that could make sense was to just reduce the base amount of sheep on pastures. This would make it way more encouraging to get the pasture upgrades in comparison to the farm eco. And separate the two eco forms from each other better.
But it doesn’t need to be this.

I just don’t share the devs willingness to make Pastures just superior to Farms. It’s fine if they are special, they don’t need to be superior.

And tbh I still hope that other civs will get pastures too. In order to do this there is no way around balacing them with Farms anyways.

[SMUM15236]

@AbuzzJam4677680

Pastures may need some advantages to differ from farms.

There are 6.

@AbuzzJam4677680

But there should be disadvantages to offset pastures.

Exactly. And I don’t see any. Having both faster collection rate and better wood efficiency is making Pasture unbalanced.

@TommoChocolate

Good question. Imagine a building that costs twice as much as a farm, has the same food as two farms, and allows two villagers to work on it at the same rate as regular farmers. This building would be worse than two regular farms, because you can only build it when you have enough wood for two farms. It would basically be like a restriction that you have to build farms in pairs.

I understand. But Pasture is still (even after Khitanguts nerf) faster than farmer and have 6 more advantages. Not needing to build a mill is also huge wood savings.

Since meat gather rate is slightly faster in game (Shepherd is faster than no wheelbarrow farmer and Hunter is as fast as Hand Cart farmer) I don’t mind herder being 7% faster than farmer. But wood efficiency along with no need to build mill is really a bad balance imho.

[AbuzzJam4677680]

@SMUM15236

Having both faster collection rate and better wood efficiency is making Pasture unbalanced.

Pastures is actually more “space-efficient” for 2 workers in 4x4 Pastures while 2 Farmers work on 2 3x3 farms.

Pastures may keep faster collection rate but make it to cost some food to build. Or make it occupy larger or even double space and pressure Khitans players to expand faster to weaken its defense. (Pastures should be bigger than farms in reality?)