This item require the Era III.

It cost 10 palladium (a lot).

And it gives you +15 food, which is very weak. It's only +5 food, compared to what gives the seeds storage (+15 food), an era 1 building, which cost a very small amount of industry.

This book is currently completely useless. I don't know what is the design behind it. What is the gameplay function it should fill.

- It can't be something who give more food for volcanic lands, because it would help too much the Kapaku (their food output is already high in volcanic land).

- It may be something which give +15 food and +1 food for each volcanic land exploited by your district ? But in this case, it would mainly be used by the Kapaku.

- Another possible idea : as these big worms live in volcanic era, and are used in cattle (If I understand the picture), this item could just give a bonus ok +15 food and +2 food bonus for food specialist (like does the Public Granary).

Player rarely use food specialist to grow, as food has an exponential price. So doing that may help to use more often this strategy !

Hi! yeah the idea behind that item was mostly to help non-kapaku factions settle in volcanic terrain, since it will give them food in volcanic terrain; but I agree that it needs a bit of tuning.

VadimMelkay wrote:

Hi! yeah the idea behind that item was mostly to help non-kapaku factions settle in volcanic terrain, since it will give them food in volcanic terrain; but I agree that it needs a bit of tuning.

If that is the idea, then perhaps giving the capacity to remove or reduce the Volcanic Taint food reduction on tiles for that specific city. If needed, the strategic resource cost could be then balanced. A couple ideas:

1. Remove Volcanic Taint trait from city tiles and increase tome cost.

• this would benefit non-Kapaku factions only
• this would allow some degree of food recovery from having city tiles volcanoformed by Kapaku opponents

2. Replace Volcanic Taint trait with Volcanic Soil trait.

• -3 food on exploitation
• -2 food on district (includes city center and special districts)
• this would give the tome some use when combined with districts and improvements such as Winter Boroughs, Altars of Auriga, Abbey of Anomalies, Plow Factories, Fertilizer Plants, Hothouses, Subterranean Gardens, Irrigation Networks, Fish Farms, etc. or Hero skills such as a Drakken's Irrigation Expert
• this would also stack with the Necrophage faction trait Agriculturally Challenged which would provide an additional -1 food per tile, making it even harder for Necrophage factions to settle volcanic regions
• this would allow some degree of food recovery from having city tiles volcanoformed by Kapaku opponents

Hope this helps the tome to get tuned to a meaningful degree.

I just wanted to chime in and say that I like Abrasax' suggestion. This would be the best way of making the item more attractive without strengtening the Kapaki. Maybe leave a small flat food bonus of like 10 or 15 on the item, so the kapaki have at least in theory also some use from it.

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

I just wanted to chime in and say that I like Abrasax' suggestion. This would be the best way of making the item more attractive without strengtening the Kapaki. Maybe leave a small flat food bonus of like 10 or 15 on the item, so the kapaki have at least in theory also some use from it.

I don't even like the flat food bonus for one specific reason: It should only benefit a city exploiting volcanic tiles.

Abrasax wrote:

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

I just wanted to chime in and say that I like Abrasax' suggestion. This would be the best way of making the item more attractive without strengtening the Kapaki. Maybe leave a small flat food bonus of like 10 or 15 on the item, so the kapaki have at least in theory also some use from it.

I don't even like the flat food bonus for one specific reason: It should only benefit a city exploiting volcanic tiles.

Then give that foodbonus only when the city is on a volcanic tile. I just want to make sure that the item has at least a marginal use for the kapaki since I dont think its good to have non faction specific items that are objectively useless (not just inferior) for a faction.

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

Abrasax wrote:

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

I just wanted to chime in and say that I like Abrasax' suggestion. This would be the best way of making the item more attractive without strengtening the Kapaki. Maybe leave a small flat food bonus of like 10 or 15 on the item, so the kapaki have at least in theory also some use from it.

I don't even like the flat food bonus for one specific reason: It should only benefit a city exploiting volcanic tiles.

Then give that foodbonus only when the city is on a volcanic tile. I just want to make sure that the item has at least a marginal use for the kapaki since I dont think its good to have non faction specific items that are objectively useless (not just inferior) for a faction.

Well, they are already completely useless for the Broken Lords ...