Revert guaranteed fish back to fruit

[surreal oak]

The fish change only works on Archi / WW. Is a nice boost on these maps since you can stay in the naval techs with Aquaculture next.

But on Lakes/Conti, many of your cities are inland, which makes the fish more of a nerf. Your other cities will need Organization / Hunting, and Aquaculture will need to wait.

This makes Aqua more powerful on water-dominant maps and less powerful elsewhere, which makes for a stale meta where you either always see Aq on a map or you never see them.

Moving Atolls to Aquaculture is enough of an eco boost, and already contributes to their map dependency. The fish change puts it way over the top for me.

[peak arrow]

I think fruits would make sense on all maps because you might want Construction for aquafarms

[surreal oak]

That's another reason to revert. Those 2 forced water spots on Conti/Lakes are lost now for late-game fertilization

[silk lintel]

Construction comes online very late though. Their farm rate is not stellar. So getting the org tech right away or a bit later on doesn't make a big difference.

Deep water movement, aquafarms and atolls on the other hand are something that you want to get quite early on (on the maps where they matter) so getting the tech that leads to then sooner makes a markable difference

Even on drylands, you will probably want to build atolls at some point. Which means fishing and aquaculture are never completely useless

[true scroll]

Now that crabs are nerfed would it be too much to guarantee 2 fruit AND 2 fish?

[surreal oak]

Perfect example on Conti. I need 4 techs to get all three cities to lvl 2. If those fish were fruit, I'd get 2 out of 3 and get Riding next. But here I can only get 1 of 3.

[livid storm]

I don't know how many tries you got that but I got this double ruin near spawn with fruits and fish so... I think is already good how it is NOW!

Yep first try Continents Normal

[surreal oak]

This suggestion is not related to ruins, so I don't see why you mentioned that here.

My ss was from one of the 3 beta games I played, and the only 1 on Conti. Do you want me to post the 2 Archi spawns for complete data transparency?

Your example shows a situation where you can get lvl 2s with just 2 techs. If those cap fish were fruit, you'd be in the exact same situation of needing fishing and org. So it doesn't serve as a counterpoint, only a case that reverting does not benefit.

Tell us how many tries it takes you to find a conti worsened by reverting.

Here one of the Archi spawns where I can get every city to lvl 3 with just 2 techs.

[autumn nymph]

Congrats texki11. Your recent activity just advanced you to level 13!

[surreal oak]

And here is the other Archi game I was in, where Aq gets 3 of 4 cities to lvl 3 from 2 techs.

Reverting hurts the avg archi spawn, and helps the avg conti spawn, both of which are needed given this huge disparity.

[livid storm]

Well obviously Aquarion is gonna struggle on land based maps buts that's the intention of the tribe... (A WATER BASED TRIBE) To be strong in water and wack on land... So... I think your idea is GOOD! nevertheless... It sways the real goal of the tribe... (No offense)

[fluid forum]

I agree. I was thinking the same thing. Aqua doesn't have fish in every city, but fishing opens up deep water and aqua farms. So it requires more strategy to get an economy going, but it is possible. Which I like. The old Aquarion was just awful.

[surreal oak]

Ah so Conti is a land map then? Look, we have tribes of varying degrees of utility depending on the map. That's fine. But 108 Aq is too extreme. So is Polaris for that matter. You almost never see them in Conti/Lakes at 1400+ elo.

108 will see Aq dominating Archi completely with nothing else coming close to matching it. That's my main concern here. Pol will have just one map left to them: Water World.

Lakes/Conti, sure 108 Aq is still viable but it's tougher now without their fruit ("requires more strategy"). These fish nerfed their early game on those maps and it was already awful as you said. I'm sure there are Conti/Lake spawns where it works out and you find some fishy villages, but the avg island has plenty of inland villages that have no fish.

[silk lintel]

I'm still surprised by your stance that fruits would be better on continents. On continents more than any other map I find myself wanting deep water movement early on to start taking advantage of what my tribe offers me. In the public version I will always grab fishing before org if my first cities allow me to do so

And while I agree that curren Aq archi econ is too strong, I think the culprint is in the aquaculture tech

[surreal oak]

What size conti do you play? I favor Normal which has many inland cities, where hunting-org are needed. Skipping those for fishing wouldn't work well there imo.

[silk lintel]

Anything from normal to huge.
I often find enough coastal cities to get at least some upgrades with fishing, but more importantly the tier 2 techs behind fishing are more important than those behind the other techs. I generally pick those up rather early and can feel a bit constrained in picking them up in time if zi don't already have fishing. Org and hunting on the other hand don't increase too much in tech price and don't hide any important techs so buying them slightly later matters less for my overall gameplan

I also tend to use shorelines a lot in my aquarion exploration, as I've found them to be surprisingly good as village indicators. That adds to the initial usefulness of fish as well

[surreal oak]

See I think early Marine Life is often a mistake on Conti 106. You can often find a better ROI in other techs, sticking to shallow water.