Empire Inns should be able to produce rations.

actually I see this as a good thing: it is an advantage of the barbarians that the all enhanced taverns also produce the smaller stuff. It is different for the empire where the innkeepers are to proud to make small stuff (can you see a one star cook making a sandwhich?).

I can also be seen as an advantage: when you update all taverns, you can produce meals much fastern than a barbarian with the same amount of inns.

I vote for closing this as wontfix. It is an interesting difference.

I have a feeling that the Empire is already at a disadvantage when it needs to start in a narrow place.
They need a marble mine soon, because of the high demand on marble and columns, and they need a stonemason and a piggery for ongoing meat supply. But maybe it's just my perception?

But it is at an advantage because training evade soldiers is dirt cheap. Hard to balance this ;).

It's actually what I wrote a thousand times on the forums ;)
It took me some long hours to balance the tribes with WolfPac and the difference of their strength is definitely just the way they are played.

So I vote for "won't fix" as well.

removed doubled milestone entry

We see the opinions vary here. I think Peter has the last word in this since the balancing was very dear to his heart, and I also agree with him. So I set this to won't fix. Please reopen as incomplete and post comments if you are unhappy with this.

Nah --- I can live with that :)
The idea was, to save newcomers another headache; they would probabably expect
this to work similar.
But if you think it's unbalancing the tribes, that is more important.

Perhaps we should push the "tribes ware encyclopedia" a bit in the tutorials - that way newcomers will learn how they can check, waht buildings are producing.

Just wanted to add my thoughts on this topic, because I came across the same issue and just wanted to add a bug report about it as I found this old discussion here:
not only the inn/big inn of the Babarian tribe can produce all "lower" wares, but also inside the Empire tribe it is the same behavior e. g. for the arena/colosseum: upgraded buildings can always produce more, but never less than the not upgraded buildings.

Therefore every player will consider the current behavior as a bug (just as well as I did). It's the same as Astuur wrote already: it only causes headache for (new) players and it just "feels" inconsistent.

I've attached a patch that should fix it. Maybe you could think about that again.

Well, maybe not quite: there is the micro-brewery / brewery update where you also
actually loose an ability (making beer).

Still, after having played both Barbarians and Empire in many additional games,
I want to support Andreas' request for reconsideration.

I really cannot see, how this disadvantage for the Empire is needed for inter-tribal balance.
(I don't want to include balancing against the Atlanteans, because there my experience is limited.)
Yes, evade training is very cheap for them, but many disadvantages stand against this.
If you all feel you need a comprehensive list of those, I am willing to produce one.
Otherwise just think about wine (buildings, space consumation), and marble columns (lots of them, yet another building,
ratio of marble/stone only suitable for the buildings when deep mines are used).
So, I fear no disbalancing from my side - more to the opposite - and I think
this change should be done for the sake of consistency.

I am biased since I play the empire... So I will not contribute to this discussion. For what I am concerned, Nasenbaer is the game balancer, so you should try to get him involved.

I'm reopening this to Incomplete in order for more people to see it and perhaps contribute to the discussion.

I haven't thought this through yet so I'm still undecided. Though I'd like to comment that I always assumed even the barbarian taverns lost their ability to produce lower food wares. This seems to be the case with most upgradable buildings, so it simply did not occur to me this would be the case.

The trouble with balancing is that it's hard to fathom theoretically.
Ideally you need in-game experience with both;
the unaltered and the modified version.
You cannot get the latter if you do not experiment.
This modification is so easily done and reverted, that it seems a good
candidate for experimenting IMO.
It was in that sense, that I said we should try this.
"Final decision postponed until further evidence"

[Expired for widelands because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Actually I hate it, when some issues vanish out of sight just because of some technicallities like this.
And I wonder why not more of the regulars have used the chance to utter their opinion on this.
Still, since it is like it is, let this die here.
We may get a more lively discussion, if we placed such topics onto the forums and perhaps even allow polls there.

I actually like the expire feature a lot. It make sure that discussions end as soon as they are done. It also pokes a final decission after 2 months which is a good timeframe from my point of view.

However, I see that this point is quite wage and that there are varying opinions. I suggest doing the following: For this and other features like this, why not make a 2monthly community poll on the website? I t would consist of a longer blog post describing the pro and contro of balance and which would allow for discussion to occur. This would raise awareness of such conflicting opinions and maybe lead to a better resolve. I add this onto the agenda for the wihack and reopen this one (once more) as incomplete :).

Thanks Sirver - I knew that from a management point of view you would like this :),
but 2 months can be lot of time in periods of high activity, and can be little time when participation is low.
Understandably, but still unfortunate, many participants in the wideland project will not follow discussion so closely in those time
when they are not actively working on WL.
This thread really witnesses Nasenbaers opinion (balance is more important here than gameplay consistency),
Andreas' view (consistency is more important; no statement about balance),
and my own (consistancy is important for newcomers and inter-tribe balance would rather benefit than suffer from this)
plus two abstentions (yourself and hjd).
That is a small base for a decision.
I welcome the idea of a community poll on the homepage - though I would not know how to initiate any form of voting there -
It's a feature that I have wished for sometimes already, just like the absent uploads.

There is a voting module in the homepage.But votes can only be initiated by admins and we do not use them very often. However, I will dust them off :)

Just wanted to add my thoughts on this topic here again, too.
(Sorry, for not commenting so long anymore - just didn't realized that there was an active discussion after my last comment again: I did not get e-mails from launchpad although I (at least I thought I did) subscribed to this topic... :-( )

Anyway, I don't understand one point:
why this small (in my opinion) illogical thing is so important for balancing?

It is not a big disadvantage for the Empire tribe as you can easily keep also the smaller buildings. I think it is just bothersome, unnecessary and most important illogical - and therefore also very hard to understand for new players. Therefore I think this should be changed to be consistent again.

And if this should really influence the balancing then it should still be fixed and the balancing should be done in a more logical way (e. g. extending the producing time of meals/rations for the Empire). But I still don't think that this change would have a real influence on the balancing system anyway.

I would also like to have this behaviour changed as it's not logical and not intuitive (as an inn can produce a ration).

I agree: The current version is not logical.

Obviously there are more people here that don't like the current illogical behavior:
any chance that this (in my opinion) bug gets fixed soon?

There is a poll going on at http://wl.widelands.org/news/2011/11/18/community-poll-backwards-compatibility-buildings/

It is unlikely that there are any changes while the poll is open.
And from the poll, it would seem that currently more people want to leave it the way it is...

Thanks for this info, Jens:
I did not recognized this poll till now - I will vote immediately.

como produzir ration no jogo? no modo barbaros? como descubro isto? Já pesquisei em tudo e não acho.

how to produce ration in the game? mode barbarians? how to find it? 've Looked everywhere and I do not think.

Till now a ration can only be produce in the Tavern, not in the Inn. Obviously this is also very confusing for you.

You can vote for a change in this poll here:
http://wl.widelands.org/poll/12/
(When you're logged in, you can vote on the right side that this should be changed.)

It looks like as most of the people here do want to have this changed as already about 55 % (27 of 49) voted that at least the Empire Inn should be changed in a way that it also can produce rations.

BTW: how long this poll is planned to be active before a decision?

[Expired for widelands because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

The poll is still ongoing.

  status incomplete

That's not completely correct as there is a NEW poll ongoing here:
http://wl.widelands.org/poll/13/

So everybody who voted already needs to vote again now.

[Expired for widelands because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

The poll is done and shows that there is a slight majority pro this feature. I have it on the radar to discuss this on the website with a news post but I decided to delay this till after b17.

However - I think we need to make this change.

It's a pity that this was not implemented in the current build anymore as it is something that also makes it easier for new players.

Anyway, hopefully this gets fixed (after this second poll) soon now.

No, rushing this in b17 would have been wrong. It will likely break savegame compatibility and may have other issues.

okay, this is now triaged. The fix is to basically copy the functionality of the barbarian inns. If someone wants to jump in and provide a patch, i'd be gladly accepted.

I've provided a patch for this issue already on 2011-07-10.

Doesn't it work anymore?

Indeed, it does. Sorry for missing this, Andeas. this is now merged in r6393.

Great, thank you!

Released in build-18 rc1.