by ryudoowaru
I initially had a fireplace, which I then replaced with the cooking hearth. My question is if you can simply replace at ANY NUMBER of resources at ANY TIME using improvements like these (except of course grain for bread, which needs a Bake Bread action). For example, can you exchange an animal (or animals) and vegetables into food ALL from 1 hearth in 1 go?
Yes, you can convert any number of animals and vegetables into food (using the listed conversion rates) at any time using a fireplace or cooking hearth, without taking an action. This includes during the feeding phase of the harvest; players at our table who follow a ranching strategy will often simply hand the animals over when it's time to feed: "I feed 8, so here's a sheep, a pig and a cow, and I get 1 food in change. I'll just keep the animal tokens here, because I'll just get them back during breeding."
I noticed that both ovens had the limitation on the number of grain it can convert to food through the BAKE BREAD action, which was not the case when converting the other resources. Doesn't this make baking bread less efficient since you need an action to do this, while with the other stuff you can simply swap for food right away?
Once you get to the point of baking grain into bread, yes, ranching is more efficient because it does not require an action. However, because grain multiplies on itself more efficiently than animals do (you can theoretically sow each grain and get a 3x return, but no matter how many sheep you have you'll only get 1), and the fact that setting up a grain engine is faster than setting up pastures and animals, I believe they balance out in the end.
It was an interesting experience anyway. The solo game still felt tight and tense especially since you start with 0 food, and you need more food to maintain each family member (3 instead of 2), so this pressures you produce food from the get go. I can only imagine the tenseness in true multiplayer games!!!
The tension in multi-player games comes from the facts that (a) you can't count on the action you want being available, and (b) you can't sit and let the accumulation spaces build up before taking a boatload of resources for 1 action, so you'll usually end up getting less of a return on your action investment on those spaces. It's a completely different feel.