Put Fishing into Aquaculture and make deep ocean fish invisible without Sailing

[frosty thistle]

I think the naval branch a little front-heavy due to the removal of aquafarms and moving harvesting fish into T-1 along with ports.

With this change, the ability to fish would effectively be spread between Aquaculture (ability to harvest), and Sailing (to actually see fish in deep ocean). Fish spawns should probably be increased too if this were to happen.

But mostly I just think the idea sounds cool...

[cinder bramble]

I feel like this sorta misses the point in more ways than one

1. This puts fish at tier 2 again, which goes against the reason it was moved back to tier 1. If the concern is the tier 1 tech being too front heavy, perhaps ports should get moved instead
2. Of the two branches (Aquaculture/Aquatism or Sailing/Navigation), the Sailing half of the branch almost seems like it would be the safer half to move one of these two mechanics to. And if we're suggesting moving the ability to harvest fish, then you're just suggesting to undo the move

[frosty thistle]

perhaps ports should get moved instead
lmao just move everything back to how it was before the update XD.

Seriously tho, ports should definitely stay T-1. Personally, I'd be happy for the naval branch to have a slow start economically since it's already good military-wise. This suggestion would effectively make every tech in the naval branch a (weak) eco tech, and I liked the idea of having to choose whether to place a port early or waiting to harvest a resource later.

I picked Aquaculture for actually harvesting because that branch seems generally less important than the other half. Nonaccess to deep ocean fish is a nerf which the Sailing change would basically undo.

[hallow sierra]

aquafarms should belong in aquarion rework

[sour iron]

I agree with this, personally.

And the Midjiwan team all love ports in T1, so that's not going anywhere

[cinder bramble]

And the question will be "how many versions will we go before tier 1 water access is acknowledged to be a problem"

[torpid crown]

It’s not really a massive problem, you can get land access for a tier 0 tech, all they really need to do is nerf water a bit

[cinder bramble]

I don't really think water is going to get nerfed to a point where it isn't a problem. And immediate access to land isn't really comparable

[olive swift]

what was the original reasoning behind wanting everyone to be getting in the water more quickly in general? I recall that was the goal, but idk. why is that desirable in the first place

[cinder bramble]

There's a concern that perhaps without it more spawns are considered worse, meaning more expectations of the spawn algorithm (which already has problems) to fix

Even though speed on water was never the biggest problem. It was always primarily an issue with port access. The same spawn issues people complained about are the ones the currently will complain about

[olive swift]

like, coastal spawns are too weak compared to inland spawns without tier 1 port?

that doesn't seem true

maybe I'm not understanding

[cinder bramble]

No, like island spawns with nearby land masses were too slow and they wanted to make that less of a factor for the spawn algorithm to balance. It's more or less the same argument for why we also have bridges

[olive swift]

small island spawns are not as good as large island spawns for sure

[sour iron]

Well, for a few reasons:

1. Ensuring that ports are in the first tech means we can add naval stuff to both sides of the naval branch without giving people "units they can't make", if that makes sense. Also, just overall, it makes adding naval stuff easier.

2. We want people to actually get on the water/make it a viable alternative to play. Land has a purpose, naval has another, etc, and we don't want to "gatekeep" people from it if possible. We want naval stuff to feel more integrated to the game as a whole, so we wanted to keep the water access open from the start

[olive swift]

units they can't make...?

I guess it would push scouts into a different tech

making it overall harder

make rafts unlock with fishing. no ports needed 😄

the warrior can just float on top of his club

then you can move ports on to tier 2

[cinder bramble]

To point 1, I think the more I think about it, the more I feel Aquatism had proven this to not be as much of an issue than y'all think it is, though I could be wrong. Without any level of A/B testing, though, I'm not particularly convinced y'all have enough data. This is doubly so given the amount of popularity towards more "blue land" suggestions from admittedly the vocal minority

To point 2... I feel like naval would be perfectly viable even with tier 2 ports. This seems like an incredibly weak argument, particularly when look at what has actually been seen in practice. If anything, moving ports tier 1 has had the opposite effect: before both land and water combat was viable on continents maps. Nowadays, players treat it as basically a given that continents is a water map. The gatekeeping was 100% necessary, and if this is the design you want to push, there needs to be actual nerfs to the units of the tree, not the pop

[sour iron]

As in, unlocking Rammers and no port to actually get them

[olive swift]

ahh right

that would be awkward

I like the live beta version because under the current release, I keep finding it better to build over my fish with ports

feels bad

it's like when I have to kill a fish with Polaris to get my outpost connections in time

poor little fishies, never to be harvested

[cinder bramble]

Tbh, I typically went for scouts over rammers primarily to avoid this

[olive swift]

the strat is to get initial city upgrades with port, before sailing tech

at least we worked that out to be optimal in a couple of my archi games

I mean, it's not a real balance problem. Just a feeling I got while playing lol

fishing+ports at tier 1, if it's too strong overall, how about making ports 5* and not give any pop?

[sour iron]

We'll see how it goes

But I can say that we want you to be able to put down a port and explore the waters early, even as a Raft

[olive swift]

you pay for the ability to get on the water, and city connections, not for anything else.

[cinder bramble]

I feel like that addresses the wrong thing and goes towards nerfing water pop even farther which I'm kinda against

Water world is a meme, but it should be a playable meme

[olive swift]

ah yeah the general balance of population per tile is an issue

[cinder bramble]

And nerfing water pop hurts archi probably even more

[olive swift]

would have to add back aqua farms or something similar

deep ocean fish collectable with some tier 2 or 3 tech and yielding 2 or 3 pop

starfish within borders giving pop

can think of a few ideas

[hard field]

lol i also agree

before it was good ngl

[hard field]

lol actually thats genius

like dont invent a wheel

just literally use aqua farms as placeholder for real farms in aquarion rework

[fickle gull]

the reason I moved ports to fishing was to open up the whole branch to naval techs, to make for more more strategic choices.

[olive swift]

Makes sense