Chickens are such an iconic farm animal and were widely used by many cultures around the world during the Middle Ages, especially European ones, so it’s really odd that they weren’t added in DE alongside pigs and geese.
This is one thing that I think could be added if there were an Oceania expansion, as they were brought to the Pacific islands from the mainland by Polynesians, and similar to how North and Central American maps have turkeys, South American maps have llamas, African maps have goats, and Southeast Asian maps have water buffalos, chickens could be the regional herdable for Pacific maps, as well as being added to other regional biomes.
A potential objection to the idea is that chickens are smaller and provide less food than the other livestock in real life, so them having the same amount is a bit strange. If it really bothers you, chickens can provide 50 or 75 food as opposed to the normal 100, and then there are a lot more of them available. However, I don’t think suspension of disbelief will be affected greatly, since sheep provide as much food as other comparable livestock in-game, despite being in the upper percentage when it comes to pure poundage of meat. Yes, I checked. So in-game meat quantities not matching up with real life is not that strange.
This was going to be my response. Nothing to do with the amount of food, though. Chickens are smaller than turkeys or geese, so either they’d have tiny sprites that are fiddly to select and target, or they’d look like giant chickens.
Also, my understanding is that the enormous popularity of chicken in the western world is a 20th century phenomenon, and eating pigeons (which are even smaller) was more common before that.
One simple solution would be to represent a group of chicken as one unit the same way multiple fish are one object.
Maybe they could be chicken dens that kinda function like berry bushes.
Chicken where one of the most wide spread farm animals so it makes sense to represent them ingame.
I honestly had no idea that chickens were that small in real life. However, the in-game turkey doesn’t look that big either, and this image here seems to be based on modern turkeys and chickens, both of which are considerably more plump than in medieval times. Basically, the in-game turkeys look really small, almost chicken-sized, so I’m not sure it would be that tricky to add actual chickens. In addition, there are real-life species of chickens that can grow to be 3 ft tall, so large chickens aren’t that strange.
They’re present in Age of Mythology, so there is a precedent to adding them.
That’s part of the reason why they make sense as a Pacific island regional animal, at least to me. There’s that Polynesian connection, and they’re a major part of Hawaiian cuisine and have been for centuries.
If they were to add chicken these have to be static, ie with no animations.
Otherwise it will distract the players from their micro, cause 1000 potential bugs that I cannot name (but they exist trust me), and add unnecessary burdens to your graphics card.
I remembered today that chicken sounds are literally present in the selection jingle for farms, yet they are nowhere to be found in-game. Even cows, which have been part of the jingle since 1999, were added in The Forgotten, so not including chickens is baffling.
