Less Large Game, I find at least the same amount of elk

good point, you're not going to rummage through your firewood basket looking for arrow shafts, and you're not going to pick every branch you can reach on the tree if you're out looking for the perfect straight stick to fletch.

by the way, if at some point the renewable forest is implemented and trees grow/fall down etc. would it be possible to limit the amount of branches/spruce boughs you can get from a single tree? it's kind of a dirty exploit right now that you can build your cottage, leave one tree/sapling standing near the house and just gather branches from it ad infinitum instead of going out to the woods and felling trees and chopping firewood, or that you can keep your fireplace heated for two days with the embers of a few burning branches.

sorry for falling off-topic

Modern animal densities are affected by a number of factors. In the eastern United States, for example, whitetail deer are extremely common and are significantly more common than historically, due to human interference. Whitetails do best at the forest's edge, and due to large-scale deforestation, most forests ARE the forest edge now, so there's far more habitat available to them. They also don't need to compete with moose, elk, bison, or other large herbivores in most of their range, as these animals were mostly wiped out.

The loss of predators has also had a major impact on deer populations, but it's not as important as the other factors - human hunting, and the introduced new predator (the automobile) do have a role in keeping populations from starving. If a lack of predators was the main problem, you'd see the population have wild fluctuations; they'd reach huge numbers, overbrowse to the point that the carrying capacity was greatly reduced, and then the populations would violently crash, and then take a while to recover, only to crash again. Most areas also still have coyotes (often in greater than historic numbers due to the absence of wolves and increased food due to urbanization), which while not predators of adult deer, still greatly increase infant mortality rates.

That said, the addition of more predators would drive the populations back closer to historic values. In Northern Wisconsin over the past decade or so, grey wolves have made a huge comeback and black bears have been managed to the point where they're in higher numbers, and the deer population has dropped significantly. However, northern Wisconsin has a lot of human pressure on it (hunting is a major part of the economy there) in addition to the restoration of natural predators, while not benefiting as much from the total alteration of habitat in the southern and central parts of the state, where deer populations can exceed 50/square mile.

So basically, there are a lot of factors impacting deer densities rather than just the absence of natural predators. I'd argue that in most areas, hunters and especially cars fill the role almost as well as natural predators would, but the population is still inflated due to other man-made impacts. It all depends on the area, though. In areas where the forests are getting overgrazed, it's probably largely because human predation isn't making up for the loss of natural predators.

As far as what vandigeth noted regarding the smaller animals, that's probably pretty close to what you might expect in an unaltered habitat. Geese are extremely abundant because they're migratory, and turkeys naturally form large flocks like that, and his farm was about the right size to support a group like that. The natural predators (foxes and coyotes) are probably present in higher numbers than normal, if the habitat is decent.

Basically, healthy forest can support a lot of biomass, especially regarding smaller animals, and healthy grasslands can support far more.

Even if the elk in in a relatively open area? I think you would spot them then.

Making it impossible to spot them if they are amongst regular trees, fair enough (though I'll miss the option!).

So a vote for only partial deletion (not maximum deletion! - heh, Dr Who reference there...) - if the elk is in an open area like swamp, it can still be seen from a tree (from a tree which is on the edge of the open area).

Seems to go against the balancing that Sami mentions here:
http://z3.invisionfree.com/UrW_forum/index...?showtopic=2292

Though maybe elk are smarter? And maybe the deer in more urban areas are accustomed to humans.

When I first started the game, I thought I could live by trapping small game. Nothing ever worked. Tried to hunt and could never find tracks. Only then did I learn about climbing trees. Even then, I never had much luck. I usually live on fishing until I die. Not much fun.

I'm not that much into trading either. I'd prefer behind able to craft my own weapons and tools. Kind of hard to be honest. I've tried various strategies for hunting but it never worked out. (Haven't played for a while though). Reading about how you all find it too easy makes me sad.

It depends of the character starting skills and stats and the area for me. Finding the animals is not that hard, but sometimes my character is too slow and bad with the bow that pretty much the only thing I can do for a long while is hunt squirrels (as the fools climb on the trees and end up trapped).

Still I've had some issues with elks and reindeers coming back when at least one direction is blocked for them with the new patch. Another exploit I've accidentally found was that hunting in very elongated islands is extremely profitable. I tried settling on an island in the far South of the SW archipielago and due to its shape animals not only kept spawning, but they kept passing close to my house all the time all sorts from squirrels and black grouses, (saw one opening the door of my half complete house, smart bird) to solitary elks and flocks of reindeers.

A lastpiece of advice, when you find some big game, try forcing it to run toward big obstacles like a peninsula or a cliff.

Maybe game spotting from being high up in the tree's shouldn't be removed outright (unless the area is like conifer tree's or something) but game and people should be subject to spotting chances depending on things like:

-your characters eyesight, tracking ability, and what kind of tree they've climbed onto
-size of the animal or person, and weather they are spooked or trying to hide
-how many tree's or hills are obstructing your view in that tile (so right now that would be tile type)
-possibly how long a person has been up in a tree waiting.

So for instance, somebody with okay eyesight and tracking ability, who picked tall pine tree at the edge of a pine forest, looking into an open mire 400 meters away should be able to spot things like elk, horse's, boars, people and such fairly easily. That same person might have trouble spotting the same person, elk, or whatever in an area with hills, or an area with more tree's like a rowan grove for instance.

I think it would be a good idea to partially replace the animal spotting mechanic with one where if you fail to spot something, that you still have a chance to see "movement" or "signs of life" in a tile still if you could wait long enough. Perhaps be able to wait a minute or ten while you up in your tree looking for game, with a chance if you character isn't careful, is weighed down by a heavy inventory, or a terrible wind comes, to fall from the highest point in the tree to the ground (potentially taking serious crush damage, or several crush wounds from the fall).

I'd say keep the in-map tree climbing, it would be great for hiding for long periods of time and would allow you to gather eggs, if such is added

Rather than keeping it, maybe rework it I'd say. I think hidding and gathering eggs are great ideas. Possibly give really high hide bonus on certain trees so you can surprise a prey, or hide from that njerpezit warrior that almost killed you.

As for the world map tree climbing, just reworking would be good enought for me. Like reducing your normal area of vision and increase it when you climb a tree. That would make climbing on the world map main reason to explore and locate villages (possibly still make possible to locate wandering people that way as it could be they are giving away their rpecense like making a fire)

As for spotting animals on the main map, maybe helping you spotting birds from afar, as it would help spotting flying birds when trees would block your view.

Interestingly, both amount of game encountered and the ability to catch it seems to be a feast or famine kind of thing for me. My last character had fairly high trapping ability but low-mediocre hunting ability. Her traps caught her 2 reindeer and a stag, all in short succession, then nothing for 2 months. As far as hunting, never managed to kill anything but a random fox in a field. She did get a few successful shots to the leg/thorax/, but not enough for an instant kill and always ended up losing the trail, which seemed pretty realistic to me. Based on that character I would have said the difficulty was about right.

And then came to my current character, who I think actually has less tracking and bow ability than the last one. Stumbled onto a herd of forest reindeer in a bog, managed to corner and kill two within minutes of each other. Then caught three in a trap over a period of two weeks. Then returned to camp (built a shelter near the first kill to tan the skins) to find one practically sitting in the shelter, killed it in the same spot as the first. So that's six reindeer in less than a month. Because the character was Seal Tribe and in the far northwest of the territory, there weren't any shops to trade in. Trading all that meat I pretty much exhausted all the goods the hunters in all the local villages had, ending up with like 4 knives, 50 arrows, and a bunch of cords and ropes. Worst of all was I had no way to preserve any of it! I ended up really wishing I could have domesticated them instead, lol. I'd have had a herd to rival the local villages...

In some ways I think the feast or famine dynamic actually is quite realistic in that prehistoric hunter-gatherers might occasionally drive an entire herd of animals off a cliff and live off that for months until the next kill. What doesn't seem realistic is that the reindeer wouldn't decide to migrate away once half their herd had been chased down, corned, and slaughtered. I'm also curious as to why they seem to spend so much time hanging around in bogs in the first place--wouldn't the biting insects be worse there than in the forests (I'm admittedly no expert on reindeer, though, just assuming)?

The biggest factor in my ability to hunt them in bogs seems to be the ability to corner them between you and the water. Would it be possible to tweak the animal AI somewhat so that they won't always just stand there, but might try to lunge past you or even trample you?

I agree with some of the posts above that I would like to see a lot more smaller game (rabbits, weasels, birds, squirrels, etc.) and increase the ease of hunting it especially with traps, with larger kills being somewhat rarer. I have yet to catch a hare in any of my numerous loop snares, and I've heard of people killing them with slings or even thrown stones in real life. I once got within feet of a snowshoe hare that was hiding under a log because it seemed to think I couldn't see it. It would be nice to get a rabbit every couple days and have something to bait the traps with...

I have had 0 issues with hunting or fishing, its far too easy and there isnt a day where i dont see something to kill. i have recently built a trap fence around my house and in the 3 weeks of it being there i have had 2 elks and a stag wander in through my garden past my animal pens and house and straight into the trap pits leading out lol. As for active hunting small game i find as soon as you land 1 hit with a bow you tend to either kill them via blood loss or slow them down, if that fails sneaking after them generally works if i can be bothered to chase.

I have started hunting villages and settlements instead as it proves to be a little more difficult, even then you can command your own army and wipe tribes off the map easy enough. i did find it funny when i recruited 2 hunters and then we slaughtered their own settlement :-)


Tree climbing does make it far too easy, you should not be able to see anything in other forest tiles let alone the absurd 2k or whatever it is at max light. i wouldnt remove it, i would just change what you can see in those tiles and increase the seriousness of injuries from tree falls, i think the worst i have had is a serious bruise and the skill is far too easy to get to 100%

Perhaps the largest factor in my more limited hunting success is the fact that I never use the tree climbing technique, instead limiting myself to tracking, surveying from hills and searching in open areas. I will experiment with that with one of my characters and see if it makes a large difference in their success.