Rare Herb/Mineral Refresh Time

Yes but its a slippery slope.  How bout the next change swaps spears to actually be the best unit for attacking.  All those players who planned city after city of cavalry r hosed.  If you allow game mechanics to change people who plan on them get hosed.  Why carefully plan a city if things can change no notice.

There was no "change to game mechanics". There was a temporary bug which has been since corrected.

I'm not interested in discussing "what if" scenarios. We deal with each situation individually and this is the resolution that we have come to for this situation. 

The_Dude wrote: I think of these sorts of glitches like a Tornado or Godzilla random event in Illy.  The challenge then becomes to adapt to altered landscape.

I agree. Consider this the first Illy "Act of God" worldwide event (The Rift and Audrey are local events :p ). Natural disasters have been discussed (by the players only, afaik) as game features, this one just caught us by surprise, heh heh.
As for the frustration of planning towns around an enterprise then having to adjust, consider the adjustments of the vets who have been in Illy since before water Sovereignty; before Exodus; before (any) Sovereignty; before Terrain!! This is one of the dynamics in a developping-before-our-eyes-while-we're-playing-in-real-time sandbox game. Oh, right, it's also free to play, and don't tell me that focusing a town on herb gathering is meaningfully enhanced by using Prestige! And yes, there is the research time to consider; in the long run, that's really a minor consideration imo, in the short term it could be rather frustrating to be sure.

A last point: I would rather deal with a defunct herb-gathering town than a mineral-gathering town, because a town dedicated to maximize certain mines (like Silversteel or Obsidian) could be setup to have 800 or so miners. I haven't heard of any Herb-dedicated towns even *approaching* that number (insert joke about herb enthusiasts not having as much ambition, the slackers!)

Another last point: I'd love to see either the Devs or a player with coding/developing experience give a little insight into the difficulties and prohibitive aspects of "restoring" illegitimately depleted patches; I have a couple of ideas, such as what Brasco suggested, yet I'm not even a neophyte about such matters and would be totally talking out of my rear.. That being said, not only might it alleviate some general griping, I love learning about this whole thing, problems and challenges included!

(edited for clarification)

Edited by Garth - 03 Nov 2012 at 04:35

Personally I wouldn't mind something like this happening every couple months or so. Call it drought, famine, flooding, or a good ol' fashion act of god. I lost herb patches like many others to this bug, but I think a little random events like this could help keep things spiced up.