The recent addition of unchaseable Chickens has been a really good change overall, but it also gives people way more options for their scout - and that means way more laming.
Now, I’m not the sort to think that laming is all bad. If it weren’t an option, there would be precious little to do in the dark age. That said, when you successfully steal another player’s Boar, it’s a really MASSIVE swing, to the point where that single move can easily win the game, especially at middling elos like where I’m at.
Essentially you lose about 300 food and your enemy gains about 300 food, at very little cost. There’s precious little time to stop it, and if you fail, well, that can be GG.
Again, I don’t think this needs to be stopped entirely. Rather, I’d like to see something added, an alternative food source, so players who DO get lamed can at least make up SOME of the difference.
My thought would be, what if each player had a guaranteed small pond, with 2x shore fish, somewhere nearish to them but far enough away to not be worth gathering in normal circumstances?
The nice thing here would be, the collection rate would be slower than the boar(since that’s directly under your TC), but because the lamer took some damage laming the boar, they are at an offensive disadvantage, meaning they wouldn’t be able to take those fish as effectively as their opponent. They would still be a net ~200 food ahead(since they cost their opponent 300 food AND gained 300 food), but they wouldn’t be able to take their own fish as easily.
In general, milling shore fish is slightly better than dark age farms, but is also much more vulnerable to to attack, so this addition would only mainly be used in the event of laming, and would serve to equalize things a bit.
Thoughts?