Every clan has a number of families, each family consumes food per turn depending on difficulty level. These families grow slow at the start of the game but grow faster later in game, almost exponentially.

So to keep up with that growth you need to exponentially increase your food production. Try to use multipliers for this. For example early game you might have a gatherer, 5 horses an explorer and a wood collector. If you change the explorer in a guide, your gatherer will produce 50% more, if you change your wood collection into a Potter, your gatherer will produce another 50% more. Another potter is welcome too. Be careful with farms, farm seem great but are hard to multiply, therefor in mid game it's often much better to go for livestock or fishing.

A fisherman with 2 trawlers works great for the first 100 turns or so . You may need to reroll l a bit to get a spot with good fishing

The gold standard is to build ranches that are self sustaining with a couple butchers

Farming sucks just don’t do it for the first 200 turns

Typical base game move for those playing on top difficulty levels is to avoid having huge clans--by killing them off deliberately. I've modded the curve to be more balanced in HOM by giving families a production multiplier so that as a clan becomes larger, they are also more productive. (in other words, extra families aren't just extra mouths to feed, but they actually do some work :D )

I just starved out on turn 188 with a fisherman, fishmonger, and trawler . only had 18 clans too. in vanilla i would have been way + food

the balance of the MOD is no good. i also really dislike the nerfing of production early on as it's going to drag games out to 500+ turns, which is not the intent of this game. it was designed arouind 300 turns to complete.

i'm going back to the vanilla unless significant balance changes are made.

You have to start trying different strategies :P. You can't play a mod (any mod, on any game) using the familiar strategy you had in base game and expect it to work; nor does it make sense to call it a balance issue.

Specifically, fishing has been nerfed as it was about 3X more powerful than other food production of the same tier. However, there's been a lot of buff down other tech trees, esp when it comes to food (Merchant gets you 22 food worth of stuff each turn, which after family multiplier can be 50+ food a turn from just one clan, for example). Other big food getters include cheesemaker (70 food before multipler), butcher (52 meat, which is multiplied by meat-production bonus professions like smoker, and by clan traits+family count), not to mention all of them have upgrades that boost production. Caravans now routinely sell 100+ food each visit, at costs as low as $1/food.

A good game (or mod), IMHO, is only balanced when you can NOT say "just always do ABC, then you'll be fine". So no, with the mod enabled I don't think fisherman+fishmonger+trawler will always save you. Nor will, I hope, any other combination. You'd have to find arbitrage, adapt to your faction and clan traits, adapt to the map and so on.

Of course, if you are in for a more relaxed experience, tune down the difficulty :)

One last note: the mod has been updated to specifically speed up game, not slow it down. Winning condition alone, for example, went from a minimum of 7 year process to 3.5 years, and it requires less resources. A well-played game with HOM should last about 60-70% as long as the base game from start to victory.

It’s fine Harry I’m not going to debate you on your own mod. I’ve played it a half dozen times and I don’t like your changes .

I’m just not going to use it unless you change. It’s not a demand it’s just what is is

Clayffo, many of the changes are amazing in his mod, but if you don't like the balance you can just change a few things yourself, it's really easy to change a variable in an XML file.

We all know that fishing is overpowered and I think in his mod it is STILL overpowered, compared to for exampling farming. He did a good job nerfing the butcher, maybe even overnerfed it, so I myself slightly increased the meat production in his mod. Meanwhile I also buffed farming.

Right now I realized how overpowered Guides are, especially if you can also fish so I'm thinking of increasing the research and training time on that or changing it from 50% to 40%. But you can just change his mod yourself for your personal enjoyment, some changes are really great and it's a waste not to use his mod. You can revert changes back easily, you can use Notepad+ to compare the old and the new file too and quickly replace things with CTRL+H or something like that.

Originally posted by Ryan42:

Clayffo, many of the changes are amazing in his mod, but if you don't like the balance you can just change a few things yourself, it's really easy to change a variable in an XML file.

We all know that fishing is overpowered and I think in his mod it is STILL overpowered, compared to for exampling farming. He did a good job nerfing the butcher, maybe even overnerfed it, so I myself slightly increased the meat production in his mod. Meanwhile I also buffed farming.

Right now I realized how overpowered Guides are, especially if you can also fish so I'm thinking of increasing the research and training time on that or changing it from 50% to 40%. But you can just change his mod yourself for your personal enjoyment, some changes are really great and it's a waste not to use his mod. You can revert changes back easily, you can use Notepad+ to compare the old and the new file too and quickly replace things with CTRL+H or something like that.

Thanks for the encouragement. V1.3 had some further rebalance and the nerf/buffs are in line with some of your observations above; so be sure to get the latest version! (I just put version 1.33 up minutes ago). I will try to stick to a weekly release cadence.

nah i'm good. you two can keep your mod. Im playing vanilla right now and i have a whole new appreciation for how much better it is now that i see the alternative

Originally posted by clayffo:

nah i'm good. you two can keep your mod. Im playing vanilla right now and i have a whole new appreciation for how much better it is now that i see the alternative

For my personal benefit, it seems best to just leave your comments be and not feed the troll. But that would be doing the modding community a disservice.

As a modder, and as an avid player of many mods for many games over the past two decades, I have to discourage you (and anyone else) from offering unconstructive and passive aggressive feedback. Modders, unlike developers, have very limited toolkits to create their visions, and they "work" entirely for free for the good of the community so other players can enjoy (or choose not to play) their creation. It is altruistic and rely on the support of community to keep going.

As such, everyone in the modding communities are strong encouraged to provide suggestions, mod-mods, and/or encouragements to constructively feed into the community. Disruptive, toxic or disparaging opinions are best kept to one's self.

Originally posted by Harry:

Originally posted by Ryan42:

Clayffo, many of the changes are amazing in his mod, but if you don't like the balance you can just change a few things yourself, it's really easy to change a variable in an XML file.

We all know that fishing is overpowered and I think in his mod it is STILL overpowered, compared to for exampling farming. He did a good job nerfing the butcher, maybe even overnerfed it, so I myself slightly increased the meat production in his mod. Meanwhile I also buffed farming.

Right now I realized how overpowered Guides are, especially if you can also fish so I'm thinking of increasing the research and training time on that or changing it from 50% to 40%. But you can just change his mod yourself for your personal enjoyment, some changes are really great and it's a waste not to use his mod. You can revert changes back easily, you can use Notepad+ to compare the old and the new file too and quickly replace things with CTRL+H or something like that.

Thanks for the encouragement. V1.3 had some further rebalance and the nerf/buffs are in line with some of your observations above; so be sure to get the latest version! (I just put version 1.33 up minutes ago). I will try to stick to a weekly release cadence.

Yes I was still on V1.12, good to see you're still updating. And you realized the same about guides apparently.

Clayfo isn't just unconstructive towards modders, he seems toxic in general, especially towards Jon haha, so ignore what he says.

I’m an original ks player . I’ve been on this game long before either of you and I’ve contributed far more than your little value change mods ever will.

Ryan You can take your troll comment and shove it up your ass. You’re just some scrub I’ve never seen before just recently . You highjack Harry’s mod and act like you’re part of it

Even contributors can be toxic, but I'm curious, what did you contribute back then? I don't hijack it at all, I just support it a lot because I really like it.

Originally posted by Ryan42:

Even contributors can be toxic, but I'm curious, what did you contribute back then? I don't hijack it at all, I just support it a lot because I really like it.

I said what I had to say for the record in order to foster a healthy and friendly community around AtG to try to give it a second life. Beyond that, I'd recommend everyone cool it and leave this thread alone. I do not believe this is, or will become, a constructive one. I have also reported the previous comment for its use of language. (and I'm officially signing off on this thread myself starting now)

that the best you can do is report for a word that is widely used on network TV? lol good luck with your report.