Hunger Mutator

[Ben]

A mutator for "no food" has been mentioned many times before, but this can already be done (mostly) by having a map that starts with 30,000 food in the storehouse. Ahem, I suggest the opposite: to make food more important!

A few TS players are starting to think that the game is getting "too easy," and that armies are getting too big; especially since the build order changed. If we had a mutator that made everyone, including troops, get hungry twice as fast, than this would certainly crank up the difficulty of a mission difficulty a lot! Players would be forced to play the "old fashioned way" where one would build several farms before any kind of weapon production. We may even have to feed our troops!

I really am wondering what other people think of this idea. I, myself, really love the food and economic aspect of KaM, so I think that this looks like it would be a great way to augment the importance of making a strong economy.

[dicsoupcan]

Actually i was thinking about the possibillities of dynamic scripting and this idea came to mind to make is very hard for players, what a coincidence!
I am pretty sure it can be done by some dynamic scripting wizard like tdl, but as a mutator i would have no problems with it.

[Ben]

Again, I don't think that it can (but again, I could be wrong...again! ) As far as I know, The extent of dynamic scripting mostly applies to conditions and events. Like, I could make everyone hungry in a group by setting their hunger to a certain level, but to apply an increased hunger to everything continuously? I don't think so.

However, if we had a command to set a player's units' hunger rate, than yes it is quite easily possible.

[The Dark Lord]

I am most certainly not a 'dynamic script wizard'; in fact, it's all pretty new for me and I'll have to get used to it. Especially procedures with all these variables are pretty hard for me. I always used booleans...

[Krom]

A few TS players are starting to think that the game is getting "too easy," and that armies are getting too big; especially since the build order changed.

Oh c'mon, just set the PT 10 min shorter and you will have not-so-huge armies

[Ben]

But people will still use rush strategies. In fact, rush will probably stronger since that's 10 less minutes off food that you need. Also, I like this idea of poeple having to feed their troops. Now, people just slaughter their units before feeding them.

[thommerd]

I like the idea to make it harder this way, but won't it be that people would still suicide their hungry troops even faster now?

[Lewin]

I like the idea to make it harder this way, but won't it be that people would still suicide their hungry troops even faster now?

Yeah, I don't think this change will make anybody feed their troops, it's still best to equip them just before you need them and attack before they die of hunger. I imagine people will just rush more and the game will become shorter.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about letting you change the hunger rate from script, we'd prefer it if the hunger rate was constant across the entire game, allowing people to change it would make the game inconsistent and stop players from getting an intuitive feel for it. It'd be like if we allowed the script to change all the statistics of soldiers, people start customising the fine details of the game just because they don't like the way it is or think it's too easy/too hard, which is never what we intended scripts to be used for, that's more a full on mod than a script for your map.

By the way, you could easily make a script to give new units/soldiers less condition, which would have a similar effect: (this gives them 25% condition)

  Code:

procedure OnUnitTrained(aUnitID: Integer); begin Actions.UnitHungerSet(aUnitID, Round(0.25*States.UnitMaxHunger)); end; procedure OnWarriorEquipped(aUnitID: Integer; aGroupID: Integer); begin Actions.UnitHungerSet(aUnitID, Round(0.25*States.UnitMaxHunger)); end;

[The Dark Lord]

I'm not sure how I'd feel about letting you change the hunger rate from script, we'd prefer it if the hunger rate was constant across the entire game, allowing people to change it would make the game inconsistent and stop players from getting an intuitive feel for it.

I guess a map with a script to change hunger rate could apply as 'special map', so people would suspect something is different? The map name and/or description should explain it obviously.

[Krom]

We would not like to make the game that much diversified. Some things need to stay consistent across the whole.

[Ben]

I'm actually agreeing with what Krom and Lewin posted about "keeping it constant." It would be very hard to grasp the game's mechanics if they change too much.

[Galahad]

I do like the idea a lot tho. When I started playing KaM, food was always my highest priority. Now that Iv seen replays, food is everybodys lowest priority. In fact, a lot of players would prefer to sacrifice their troops on a suicide mission rather then give them a bite to eat. That, to me, indicates that there is a problem with how food is used and seen.

My idea is probably way too drastic tho, I was thinking of having troops come out of the barracks with really low food bar so youd have to feed or suicide them immediatley. This would probably eliminate rush strategys so Im not too fond of this idea :-/ It would make food much more important tho.

[krisdw]

Last week I had a group of 40 crossbows that I could not feed. They died of hunger and it cost us the game eventually.

I think food is already quite important, no? If you fail to focus on your economy, and you can't feed your armies as a result of that, it's going to have consequences. In most games I try to build about 3 bakeries, 1 butcher, and after peace time I try to cram about 4-5 vineyards into my base. That looks like a fairly regular and traditional KAM-game.

[Krom]

@Galahad: Thats an interesting concept, if we apply it to all trained units, but that would probably be a big change, much bigger than most of the players would like.

[Bence791]

Now that Iv seen replays, food is everybodys lowest priority. In fact, a lot of players would prefer to sacrifice their troops on a suicide mission rather then give them a bite to eat. That, to me, indicates that there is a problem with how food is used and seen.

Well, I think you might have seen games from older releases in which the starting citizens (which you are given at start) didn't become hungry until ~32 minutes into the game. Now it is decreased to ~18-19 minutes. Food is never the lowest priority, although you might see many good players managing their city like dancing on the edge of the razor, I mean that their inns are always empty. If it was, we would fail to spam in peacetime (and ofc after peacetime) since our citizens become hungry, then they stop working and can't be replaced until he dies or gets food. It means much of wasted time, sometimes costs over 10 soldiers/building. For me, my weapon blacksmith is usually hungry, that often costs me 7-8 swordfighters, because he can't smith swords for them. It is really not the lowest priority, we always expand our food production to 2-3 butcheries, 0-2 mills and some vineyards after peacetime, but there is usually no time and resource (timber for vinefields) to do so in the first hour.
The other thing: Our troops usually get hungry about 1:21 (1 hour 21 minutes), this is the usual time of the all-in rush attacks. At that time, you rather sacrifice all your troops on a crazy rush through the enemies' towers just to "benefit" from your soldiers. This is just because you can't have that amount of food to feed 60-70, or even 100+ soldiers (at once, at that time). Many times these succeed to get past the frontlines, and wins the game, but of course it needs much of teamwork. Well, I went too much offtopic, so back ontopic:
Food is very important these times, the one who has no food is likely to die very soon. The games To shoutcasted (at least the first 5-6) were in (now) very old releases. Just enjoy watching the tactics shown and listen to To's tips on gameplay.