Afforess
The White Wizard
Is alcohol really useful as a resource either? I never saw the point of it myself.
Is it serious you guys never seemed how incredible the Brewery is? It was one of the first things I saw on AND that truly amazed me (after Fixed Borders, New Forts and mechanic units for selling).
1st - +1. This is always nice and useful because a
citizen doesn't work, while a
city has all its citizens working with a penalty on food (which is easily compensated). Great change.
2nd - Diplomatic Advantage. With 3 (up to 9) new resources you may exchange them with people. Useless surplus resources for you are great ways of strengthening the ties between nations. In my Iroquois game I have some useless trades with the Byzantine just to improve our friendship, while I make my vassals more miserable by the time. The Ottomans (my vassal) had to give me their rice because I wanted it. This made they stop having Alcohol, so now I could give them alcohol for something. If you use spies you may destroy someone's resources that are needed to make Alcohol, so then you may sell your alcohol to then. Alcohol is another great asset of AND.
What I believe is exploitation was not the spy stuff, but the fact that AIs will gladly buy a useless resource. Alcohol is almost completely useless (there are already too many +1 happy sources)
What I believe is exploitation was not the spy stuff, but the fact that AIs will gladly buy a useless resource. Alcohol is almost completely useless (there are already too many +1 happy sources)
There is always a way to makeuseful. It's not useless by far.
This is not exploiting AI behavior. Where did you get this from? I'm giving them, while they give me something useful. To vassals I agree, but that's the whole purpose with them I believe. If it wasn't, you wouldn't let me not only ask for any resources they have but also to demand it with a single click command.
What sometimes happen that is kind of a benefit to me (but should be an option if the AI wasn't so dumb) is getting a resource in a tarde that I know I'll get in the near future. I think the Byzantine give me 1 alcohol for fish, and I did that some time before getting my alcohols. Now I have 1 alcohol I can't trade because it isn't mine, and all my Alcohols to trade because I have one extra from a trade. If I already had alcohol, the AI would never let me buy it from them (which is stupid TBH), only if I had a corp using the resource.
But if you believe removing a player's access to a resource with a spy is exploiting the AI, then you truly haven't enjoyed this game enough, and lack some examples from history. I can't believe this can be considered something unfair. So why a espionage mission to destroy an improvement? To only use against declared enemies? For them I can move my army and pillage (which gives XP).
I think Alcohol, as all other resources that are generated from buildings/wonders are great assets of the game and enhance the gameplay and immersion of the game.