Rats

[cloud]

actually you're wrong. well partly. The way pressgang worked is that it was only based on troop number, and you could do it as long as you had the leader/huts ratio. The huts/ land ratio only effects how effective certain spells are, not if you're able to do them or not. So if an indy race was given a leader spell that wasn't based on leaders, but only required a ratio then have 175 leaders and one hut would work fine.  The only problem would be loyalty, but if it's for an indy race it should require far less loyalty, and any adaptable player can switch to leaders for a run or two and build up some loyalty.

[Ruddertail]

Then running it through leaders is really just a time and effort saving measure? Not that that's a bad thing...

How would you determine yeilds, then? NW doesn't work, otherwise, you get something like pressgang - insane net jumps. Perhaps a ratio of barracks/land?

[cloud]

yea, they could have the ratio based on something besides leaders. Like a food one based on foragers, a money one based on markets, a troop one based on barracks. Or something that just increased the amount of production you got from those, for a certain number of turns. There are a bunch of possibilities.

[Ruddertail]

True. Those would work.

That would open up whole new strats, cash massing, and - if we raised food sell prices - agrarian (selling food to buy troops). Make food sell $4 or $5, and then give them a mission to generate tons of food on top of it... cool.

However, I still think boosting general barracks production is a good thing. It's an easy and immediate way to allow indys to compete. It also allows an indy strat to be run with any race, as opposed to specific abilities, which only allow indying with a race that has an indy specific ability.

[Peace Alliance]

You're right ruddertail, but what i was talking about is the Racial spell. i don't htink the gambling one for rat depends on leaders/land at all. so its all about leaders/huts. so what cloud says is right.

[Ruddertail]

About being able to activate through leaders? Yes, he is correct.

But I think I already conceded that point. I'm talking about ways to determine yeild for things like a revamped pressgang spell, or a food generating spell, or something.