The Malay Fish Trap change

So whatever I am saying here, applies to the beta only (upcoming changes) and not the present one, for obvious mathematical reasons.

  1. Fish trap cost -33%
  2. Fish traps provide 3x the food

Why 2 bonuses achieving the same thing? Both of them are aimed for wood efficiency on fish traps.

Generic civ spends 100w to get 715f (Efficiency: 7.15) Malay spend 67w to get back 2145f (Efficiency: 32.015).

The wood to food conversion ratio can be kept same by applying either of the bonuses:
a. Fish trap provide 3200f (almost the same efficiency)
b. Fish trap cost 23w (almost the same efficiency)

Why just change both aspects and make things complicated?

The 23w approach will be stronger in the long run because you can invest into 2 more fish traps with the same wood as normal, or even perform a “fish trap” sling.

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They last for ages… even with the nerf. You save huge amounts of wood at any rate over a single farm. And they have been made 33 cheaper.

There is literally nothing to complain about. Unless, you fishing ships to work faster or something.

Did you even read what I wrote? I am neither asking for a buff, nor a nerf!

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Yeah. I don’t see the big deal. They get two (and one nerf stop fish trap lasting forever) buffs over a normal civ. What of it?

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Why don’t farms cost 80w and have more food? Why don’t farms cost 20w and have less food?

The answer is trivial: the up front cost matters for balance.

The 23w approach would be a huge advantage on any map with any ponds. For 98w they could effectively build a new villager and farm.

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So simply keep the cost to 100w and bump the food count to 3200 to keep the same ratio

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The wood discount is needed for the initial investment, otherwise it’s not that worth to use FT.

Yeah FT gives back a better wood-food ratio, but it’s a way bigger initial investment in wood, not only a FT cost 100w against a 60w farm, but you also invested wood into the fishing ships and docks.

The x3 food instead is to further incentive people using them. FT requires more management than farms, the ships cannot be garrison and anyway most people will end up with farmers anyway, simply because vills are more versitile and CNA better balance you eco.

From my point of view, you can’t remove the cost discount, or the initial investment will discourage most people from use FT, but you can’t neither make it big enough to get the same ratio of 32:1 food:wood, otherwise the initial investment it would become a joke.

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I think that the point is mostly to make the design of the civ simpler and getting a new eco bonus for other civs

Yes, while posting this I thought about this. If we increase the food amount, we can transfer the discount to a civ, which needs it. Say a civ which lacks Crop Rotation or maybe even Italians to pair up with the cheaper fishing ships (they have no long term eco advantage except Silk Road).

Just to be clear, I said Italians because of synergy and not balance.

They just wanted to get rid of the infinite ressources gimmick without nerfing the civ too much. This makes me think someday feitorias will be changed but they don’t have yet an idea of how to do it since it won’t be as easy as replacing “infinite res” by “a lot of res”

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I could pick a random point on the line food = 32*wood and get the same wood to food ratio. Yet all of these points have different present values when discounted over time.

The 33% discount is meant to make their fish traps more viable on maps with less fish. Without the discount people would (rightly) treat Malay fish traps as more or less the same as anyone else’s. Most games are over before you get to extra food. Formally the upper bound on your integral are a random variable and if you take the expectation of the integral youd find that the discount is what affects the traps much more than the food in them.

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Tbh, this is borderline unimportant. Fish traps were always extremely cost efficient, The 33% discount is nice for the boom, but if they have 715 or 2145 food… meh. Even with 715 food they live like 30 minutes.
I think they nerfed it because it made malay besides portuuguese the only self-containing economy. I think with the new values it’s not possible to keep that eco self-containing after a while. But I also never encountered a game decided by that bonus, so I don’t understand why it needed to be nerfed. It was just a meme in my eyes.

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viper had a game where the bonus literally won him it vs hera. its niche but i have to agree with cactus

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yeah in total, I just don’t mind. I never would plan around abusing that bonus cause it’s so situational.
The cheaper eles are much more of a buff cause they will come into play in like 25% of games or so instead of .1% of the unlimited fish traps.

Are they really removing the infinite fish traps?
I’ll miss the memes (and the elegance).

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Both bonuses save a similar amount of wood, but they save it at different times in the game and thats significant. making fishtraps have 3200f would be a much weaker bonus than making fishtraps cost 23w, because you would get the surplus wood much later.
imagine having 300 wood just 50 seconds earlier could mean having an additional town center 50 seconds earlier and producing vils 50 seconds earlier, so it would be like a 2-vil-lead compared to 300 wood that you get just 50 seconds later

Another strange choice from devs. Malay are not exactly top tier according to win rates, so the civ nerf is again pretty strange.

That being said, I personally like the civ, and think it is one of those civs that has some potential to win in nearly any matchup, but probably one of the more difficult civs to play.

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If you consider this in total a nerf, then it was definetely the right decision from the devs…

It is objectively a nerf, even if it doesn’t affect the majority of games. 3x is obviously worse than unlimited, even if this rarely matters.

But they get karambits buffed and eles cheaper in imp.
In total it’s definetely a buff, besides it doesn’ adress the prob with the weird up eco of the civ, what I would have liked to see adressed.
Most players just get confused by this and even the best players haven’t figured out how to use it til now. Many just claim it’s in theory the best bonus.