Too many buildings are "unlocked" by fish, creating a rather large imbalance early in the game.
Compare two small coastal empires with a few coastal cities each. One has a couple of coastal fish resources at his capitol, the other empire does not have fish. The empire with Fish gets the extra 6 food (2x3) for building work boats to harvest the local fish resource tiles. This city will also be able to support two free specialists by building a Boatyard. Finally, by having Fish, all of the first empires coastal cities can unlock Fish Traps for an extra +2 Food per city, and unlock the Fisherman's Hut to give all water tiles an extra +1 Food.
While the first empire does have more development associated with getting this up and running, the benefits soon has a massive advantage -- probably somewhere on the order of +12 or more food if the capitol is a smallish size 5-6 city, not to mention 2 free specialists (which is worth a value of an additional +6 Food). The other coastal cities are probably getting about +4 or +5 food for the fish unlocked buildings if they are also smallish cities.
Eventually other resources might give the other empire some different advantages, but an empire that starts out with Fish has so much extra food at the beginning of the game they will expand faster and be able to rapidly grow their city to max size and then support specialists. In my experience, early fish access can easily make a civ a 600lb gorilla to his neighbors by the next era.
I think one way to balance this out would be to remove the Fish bonus requirements on the Fisherman's Hut and the Fish Traps buildings. It doesn't make any sense that one would have to import Fish to unlock the ability to build these buildings in all the coastal cities.
Since Fisherman's Hut is taking the place of the old Lighthouse in RoM, I don't see the harm in removing the the Seafood based requirements so anyone with a lot of coastal tiles can build it.
Currently Fish Traps are unlocked by Fish and give bonuses if the empire has Fish, Crab, or Pearls somewhere in their empire, even if it is imported. This doesn't really make much sense, since Fish Traps are a local building and how would having an empire wide commodity benefit them? I found the simplest solution was just to remove the requirements on Fish Traps and give them a simple +1 food boost if the city was on a river or coast. This is a building that doesn't make sense to have a bonus based on empire wide resources, and if you make it so it is unlocked by fish locally, it is just a benefit for the one guy who doesn't need the food bonus anyhow, the guy who is already reaping the reward of the fish tiles. If it is just a simple building that is unlocked by water / rivers, it becomes a very useful early building to help those small cities get going that don't have limited access to food resources. (Isn't this the purpose of these super early buildings, to bootstrap your Marathon / Snail early civilization?)
I think removing the prerequisites on these buildings would make them more useful and not just of benefit to the empire that already has a great Food resource in Fish.
Thoughts?
Compare two small coastal empires with a few coastal cities each. One has a couple of coastal fish resources at his capitol, the other empire does not have fish. The empire with Fish gets the extra 6 food (2x3) for building work boats to harvest the local fish resource tiles. This city will also be able to support two free specialists by building a Boatyard. Finally, by having Fish, all of the first empires coastal cities can unlock Fish Traps for an extra +2 Food per city, and unlock the Fisherman's Hut to give all water tiles an extra +1 Food.
While the first empire does have more development associated with getting this up and running, the benefits soon has a massive advantage -- probably somewhere on the order of +12 or more food if the capitol is a smallish size 5-6 city, not to mention 2 free specialists (which is worth a value of an additional +6 Food). The other coastal cities are probably getting about +4 or +5 food for the fish unlocked buildings if they are also smallish cities.
Eventually other resources might give the other empire some different advantages, but an empire that starts out with Fish has so much extra food at the beginning of the game they will expand faster and be able to rapidly grow their city to max size and then support specialists. In my experience, early fish access can easily make a civ a 600lb gorilla to his neighbors by the next era.
I think one way to balance this out would be to remove the Fish bonus requirements on the Fisherman's Hut and the Fish Traps buildings. It doesn't make any sense that one would have to import Fish to unlock the ability to build these buildings in all the coastal cities.
Since Fisherman's Hut is taking the place of the old Lighthouse in RoM, I don't see the harm in removing the the Seafood based requirements so anyone with a lot of coastal tiles can build it.
Currently Fish Traps are unlocked by Fish and give bonuses if the empire has Fish, Crab, or Pearls somewhere in their empire, even if it is imported. This doesn't really make much sense, since Fish Traps are a local building and how would having an empire wide commodity benefit them? I found the simplest solution was just to remove the requirements on Fish Traps and give them a simple +1 food boost if the city was on a river or coast. This is a building that doesn't make sense to have a bonus based on empire wide resources, and if you make it so it is unlocked by fish locally, it is just a benefit for the one guy who doesn't need the food bonus anyhow, the guy who is already reaping the reward of the fish tiles. If it is just a simple building that is unlocked by water / rivers, it becomes a very useful early building to help those small cities get going that don't have limited access to food resources. (Isn't this the purpose of these super early buildings, to bootstrap your Marathon / Snail early civilization?)
I think removing the prerequisites on these buildings would make them more useful and not just of benefit to the empire that already has a great Food resource in Fish.
Thoughts?
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