As you can see, my population growth has flatlined, again. The majority of the deaths in my community can be attributed to animal attacks, and almost exclusively to boar attacks. Is this really what it was like in Europe or North America in the medieval period?
Not having been there and then, can’t say for sure about Medieval Europe, but once upon a time saw a genuine Prussian wild boar in an animal park in Berlin, and that critter could look me in the eye from all fours and weighed at least half a ton. His tusks had been sawed off (otherwise I doubt they could have kept him behind any kind of a fence!) and they were a good 5 inches (130mm) in diameter where they ended. They used to hunt these from horseback with spears. At the time I realized that I wouldn’t want to hunt then with anything less than a .50 caliber machine gun and a helicopter.
So, to sum up, if villagers interact with Boars, it’s not going to be pretty. On the other hand, in the game three - four hunters can shoot any boar to death easily if they are directed to all attack it at once, and repeated attacks can eliminate an entire boar spawn in a few minutes with few or no casualties to the hunters, so really the game is weighted towards the people once you have some hunters and are willing to take them away from regular hunting for a few minutes.
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It’s mostly my laborers suffering the attacks. Pigs kill 2-5 of them at a time, thus the constant shortage of laborers. Wolves aren’t that successful, and with wolves, I know where their dens are and can steer clear until I have enough Soldiers to clear them out. Pigs just randomly spawn and attack and my citizens don’t know well enough to travel in pairs and take weapons sufficient for self-defens.
It just occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve ever bought a ‘crude weapon’ from a Trader or tried to arm my general population. I wonder how much difference it would make in warding off animal attacks, and how you could ensure that the threatened part of the population - mostly Work camp laborers or general Workers in my experience - were the ones carrying the crude weapons?
I think crude weapons only go to Soldiers and Guard Tower garrisons.
Five killed by one hog alone!
Was afraid of that - Another example of the fact that FF is Medievalish instead of historically Medieval is that all the ‘troops’ in the game are professionals, with weapons provided and kept in garrisons, while most feudal medieval infantry were conscripted and provided their own weapons to guidelines, like the English Fyrd being required to show up with a cattle-hide or wooden shield and a stout spear.
In reality no village/town the size of most of ours could afford to pay full-time soldiers. Most of them, in fact, wouldn’t even have a money economy unless they were the site of a Mint and a nearby silver mine.
Oh well. At least, as I found out some time ago, 3 - 4 hunters in the game, if specifically targeted at a Boar can kill it with arrows pretty quickly and with no hurt to themselves, so they can usually clean out an entire Boar spawn point in a couple of minutes.
I’ve never been able to eliminate a boar spawn point, they keep coming back and chase my citizens like wolves.
I don’t have enough experience at Trailblazer and Vanquisher to be certain, but I suspect the persistence of Predators and their spawn sites may vary with the level chosen, because at Pioneer if I manage to kill the last Boar from a given site, the site disappears. Mind you, the last Boar may be quite a way from the site and have to be hunted down, but once he’s Potential Porkchops the site disappears every time.
But, as said, I can’t say about the other two difficulty levels. To have a stable base from which to compare versions and make comments, I made the conscious decision to always play on Trailblazer Resources, Pioneer Raiders and Predators, on Large Maps almost entirely. Of course, those are also the settings I prefer, because if I wanted to play a Medieval Combat game there are plenty of others already out there and I prefer the city-building experience anyway.