Should animal corpses decompose faster when they are not interacted with? I feel that animal corpses should decompose as they did in the other games. I’ve read about people complaining about the corpses blocking locations where they want to build, and I feel like the corpses decaying would contribute to the solution for this problem.
What are your thoughts?
I prefer the way it is now
En mi opinión, no es una buena idea cambiarlo ahora. Imagina a Rus en un juego donde cadáveres de animales se descomponen rápidamente.
It’d be more real, as animals should decompose, as they did in aoe3, they aren’t immortal hahah so russia could steal them but they’d lose food during the travel with scouts. (a low decomposition rate like in aoe3)
Carcass decomposition was also in other aoe games iirc. The problem is balancing mechanics like Rus bounty, Delhi/Abbasid bonus on berries, or English farm bonus.
So Rus would be affected by this which means they will have certain problems, so the question is: how much will it impact the Rus? Because with pro scouts you can hoard carcasses but if they decompose too fast the food is lost so to by this, I think that maybe decomposing shouldn’t be a thing but the ability to build over them is what players are mostly want.
According to one of the Devs that replied in another thread about this, blocking buildings is by design.
I don’t know how to fix it if it is meant to block buildings and decomposition will lead to an unknowledgeable Rus player wasting most of the deer in a team game. Maybe the meat could stop decomposing when picked up by a Scout, but any lost food is a nerf to the Rus we have at present.
Hm, I mean it would be more realistic to have to get the carcass up but then other things are not so realistic. Like the only thing that bothers players is how u can’t place things over it, and if you do, where does it go? If it disappears then that means someone can exploit that and if it doesn’t that means walls and buildings cannot be built on top of them sometimes when necessary.
Making it disappear after any given time or interaction is still not a good resolve, because I believe we’re looking at it from a perspective that has no end without compromise.
Optimally would probably be if at least we make the carcasses stay where they are put ghosting through buildings and having a relatively long lifespan but not unlimited. I am thinking this because with this we could put walls over it, the carcass would remain there so no exploits, the Rus can still carry and harvest and so we please everyone.
Maybe if we could think what’s the harvest rate from dark to feudal we can get an estimated timer that the carcasses could have for a balanced outcome. How about this?
I think it’s better to just keep it simple in this case. I don’t then decomposition really improves the game or makes it more interesting.
I agree that it would be nice having them decompose as it’s more realistic but it would make professional scouts upgrade almost useless or not worth it, especially when you pile up the carcases outside your tc early game and y the time all of it is collected, half of it is gone
If they were to add decomposition to carcases, Maybe devs can introduce an additional upgrade in the mill, which allows your carcases to be preserved and not decompose or slow it significantly, which would still make the pro scouts upgrade not relevant?
Thoughts?
So if I understood correctly you want them to decompose for the aesthetic purpose of realism but at the same time if they decompose pro scouts are done for and the upgrade would be useless.
Let me take it one by one so we understand the whole situation:
DARK → FEUDAL 6 villagers is 180 food/min
Pro scouts → 75 W & 275 G
Scouts → 70 F
1 sheep = 250 F
1 deer = 350 F
Now we apply decomposition (let’s make a hypothetical scenario) so if in 1 minute 180 food is collected from the sheep, the time by which the sheep is consumed is 1:11.
Noting: 1 sheep done in 1minutes and 11 seconds
Meaning in those 1 minute, the carcass has to decompose and so we need the hypothetical upgrade for carcass preservation otherwise we might end up not collecting the full food amount. If that’s happening it cuts the food income as chances for each player to gather sheep is really relative and unknown, it slows down ageing up or progression afterwards as it would cost as I assume wood or gold. Sometimes I end up with 16 sheep other times with 5 at best. But that’s a generation of resource issue.
How much would be too much or too less in this situation? Sheep and berries are primary food resources. Some would switch to berries and abandon Pro scouts as you said.
But we’ll talk the price of it later as I’m not sure myself, we’re analyzing situations now.
FEUDAL: we got some 4 scouts, get the upgrade, that’s 280 F 75 W and 275 G consumed, we go hunt deer that come in packs of 7. We hunt 4 or all of them and after they die, they are considered carcasses even while being carried to base. Let’s add some 10 seconds between base and deer camp.
1 deer → 350 F → gathered by 6 villagers = 1 minutes and 40 seconds
1 deer gathered by 12 villagers is cutting that time by half considering they don’t split to other carcasses
The problem now is that with decomposition we have to wait for one to disappear or get consumed and then go for another so we don’t end up with collecting only 1 or 2 of the carcasses entirely and let the others 5 or 2 disappear. Meaning pro scouts would be useful but not as useful as before. Why? Because now with 2 scouts you can do the work while slowly cutting down seconds of food income. So scouts are ok, the food income is not ok.
If 1 minutes and almost 2 minutes (1.40) is timer for 1 carcass we have to take into consideration how much time would it be for decomposition before and after the upgrade, as well as the time between camp and base or mill. Should sheep carcasses disappear faster to block players from gathering from multiple ones as they are closer to base and can be gathered? But they switch teams also if captured or something happens to them, would that mean that their decomposition timer is buffed by all player’s upgrades? We might end up with complains like ‘‘sheep carcasses don’t decompose as fast as intended, please fix’’.
But now what about deer? They never get captured and carcasses are also neutral, the player cannot change the status of a neutral unit or resource, just its gathering efficiency of it. So that means that despite all this trouble, we would still get a global timer for decomposition and no upgrade would be useful other than faster gathering, which improves how fast the game unfolds.
What do you think about this?
Your understanding is correct and thanks for going into on this and I can see the flaw and complexity in my suggestion if you have an upgrade that can “preserve” the carcass. And also trying to work out when it would be most optimal to have the upgrade v how much you’re hunting.
Maybe if a neutral carcass is killed regardless what player, it would decompose at global rate but when it is “touched” by a villager it would trigger the upgrade of the player until touched by a different player’s villager? This would require more micro though if you want to use the upgrade to a full potential.
Hmm, yeah if it’s possible would be nice but we’re still having a problem with how pro scouts get affected by this. To properly counter Rus with their many scouts, you’d need to capitalize on the decomposition timer, the early age economy is kinda bad to get another upgrade to counter the Rus in time or to go pro scouts.
As Abbasid and Delhi you can just go for berries and then farms so pro scouts are not as necessary when not fighting Rus. There’s usually at least 2 sites for berries even if in opposite direction, one 100% spawns next to your TC.
As England, China, Mongols, French, HRE and Rus, you need pro scouts for faster gathering as they don’t have the benefit of 30% berry gathering by default.
So whichever one gets the upgrade, has to get at least 4 carcasses or less, it being based on a global timer. When (if possible) the villagers of a specific player gather from the carcass, their timer is applied otherwise the global timer stays on them. Now, with this possibility, does the timer change each time?
Let’s do another thought test: 10 seconds decomposing time for carcass, both you and I switch collection from it and have the upgrade.
I hunt the deer or sheep, unit disappears, carcass spawns as neutral but it is not counted as a unit but as a resource point as I’ve seen. If you’ve observed, the mill can influence the berry bushes max resource cap, so I’m sure there is a way to have the carcass be affected by player upgrades if it can by buildings.
Now I gather the resource spot that has a global timer to it of 10 seconds and while I work on it it’s up to 20.
I leave it for you to gather and the timer goes from 8 to 18 as the upgrade is adding only 10 seconds regardless of the global timer so we don’t reset it. Otherwise it leaves room for exploit that as long as a villager works on it and goes away from it, it resets to the paused global timer that’s not affected by the upgrade.
So you see there’s not much micro, gathering happens the same way automatically, it’s just that the upgrade has to be great long term and not affect too much in early when it’s most necessary. It is very possible to be implemented but it’s hard to come with the price and we also need the carcasses to not be ‘‘solid’’ (as in they have to go through buildings still). Other than that it’s a great suggestion to have the carcass be influenced by player upgrades because if one has the upgrade it’s a cost for efficient food supply, while the other if they don’t, then it gives them an edge in battle and age.
100% agree this would definitely make the early game more dynamic and interesting especially may change how players use scouts. You might see players, similar to how you would play against a Rus player, go around and kill the deer, which will make it decompose faster to deny your opponent from using it for full food resource. And this is potentially where pro scouts upgrade may become more important to secure those hunts before this happens.
Dude imagine, with this pro scouts would literally be professional 