Food shortage in Cities downward spiral

[Pinkman]

++++1 i have max building upgrades and this still happens. to make it even worse, the garrison i station there dies from lack of food. like come on i have so much money to buy food and there is nothing i can do about it. there is a stash, wish they would eat out of that instead of starve to death

 

[Jafa]

I have this problem too, it makes later game unplayable as it's impossible to micro manage all your settlements at that level, especially with garrisons disappearing so quickly it makes it pointless to gather and store troops.

 

[manekemaan]

+1 in pretty sure they intended something like this. But right now it doesn't work well. Would be really nice if this was prioritised, as it feels so unrewarding now to put a lot of effort Into your fiefs, slowly growing prosperity just to see it go to waste in a few days because of an unbalanced food mechanic.

 

[Jafa]

+1 in pretty sure they intended something like this. But right now it doesn't work well. Would be really nice if this was prioritised, as it feels so unrewarding now to put a lot of effort Into your fiefs, slowly growing prosperity just to see it go to waste in a few days because of an unbalanced food mechanic.

Definitely wants sorting sooner rather than later, a big part of this game is maintaining a kingdom, and this issue really gets in the way of that.

 

[Deflun]

I can't even progress because I keep loosing all the soldiers I train, have all buildings at tier 3 and still get a massive penalty that drains both my food and my prosperity

 

[Pinkman]

try your best to protect your villages. send out all the companion parties you can to help patrol. it is annoying. i literally had to sit between two villages to prevent swarms of enemy lords from raiding while my food stockpile built up

 

[Jafa]

try your best to protect your villages. send out all the companion parties you can to help patrol. it is annoying. i literally had to sit between two villages to prevent swarms of enemy lords from raiding while my food stockpile built up

I built up loads of food stocks, then had about -50 food for a few days straight and it made it all the work worthless. Settlements seem to starve themselves so easily compared to how long it takes to build up food.

 

[nilloc93]

Going to say what I said in the other thread
If prosperity increased food production it would cause a positive feedback loop of growth.
Prosperity has constant bonuses, the only thing that curtails it is food shortages, if massive towns/castles didn't have food shortage you could easily have a town with 100-200K prosperity. The food supply for towns/castles will also grow over time as the villages have a constant +1 to growth unless they get raided.
Now i'm sure there is a way to balance this so that you still have a food stockpile for your garrison but the idea that a massive city should just generate food simply because they're big is silly. Especially since in reality large cities can't survive for any time without supply lines from outlying communities. But as with all things, come up with a solution don't just complain.
I just modded the game files so that prosperity no longer lowers food stocks, This is 20 minutes of waiting.

Spoiler: before

Spoiler: After

That's a growth of 600 prosperity in less than 60 game days, there is literally nothing to stop the city from growing endlessly, technically my food surplus should be higher but I just put a base +100 to town food because that's the negative of 5,000 prosperity. Also militia growth is endless since its base growth is based on prosperity, so this would lead to towns and castles having hundreds of milita unless they are sieged down on a regular basis. Even a maxed out garrison of 450 would only provide a -23 to food stocks which is entirely offset and then some by the 2 villages and "surrounding lands" (+32) Also because the city is so prosperous, food intake from merchants is through the roof, Grain is 18 per unit in the city even with a stockpile of 350 (I think that rich cities generally have higher good prices since at this point nothing is average price in the city, even locally produced goods)

 

[Jafa]

Going to say what I said in the other thread
If prosperity increased food production it would cause a positive feedback loop of growth.
Prosperity has constant bonuses, the only thing that curtails it is food shortages, if massive towns/castles didn't have food shortage you could easily have a town with 100-200K prosperity. The food supply for towns/castles will also grow over time as the villages have a constant +1 to growth unless they get raided.
Now i'm sure there is a way to balance this so that you still have a food stockpile for your garrison but the idea that a massive city should just generate food simply because they're big is silly. Especially since in reality large cities can't survive for any time without supply lines from outlying communities. But as with all things, come up with a solution don't just complain.
I just modded the game files so that prosperity no longer lowers food stocks, This is 20 minutes of waiting.

Spoiler: before

Spoiler: After

That's a growth of 600 prosperity in less than 60 game days, there is literally nothing to stop the city from growing endlessly, technically my food surplus should be higher but I just put a base +100 to town food because that's the negative of 5,000 prosperity. Also militia growth is endless since its base growth is based on prosperity, so this would lead to towns and castles having hundreds of milita unless they are sieged down on a regular basis. Even a maxed out garrison of 450 would only provide a -23 to food stocks which is entirely offset and then some by the 2 villages and "surrounding lands" (+32) Also because the city is so prosperous, food intake from merchants is through the roof, Grain is 18 per unit in the city even with a stockpile of 350 (I think that rich cities generally have higher good prices since at this point nothing is average price in the city, even locally produced goods)

I think a main point here is just had harshly it affects the garrison. Of course cities needed to be capped in one way or another to prevent endless growth.

In terms of complaining, these posts are to discuss the balancing issues and bring them forward to the community, so I wouldn't call it that. Not everybody wants to mod the game files all the time either.

I think it's a good system, just needs tweeking to not get stuck in a food shortage / prosperity loop resulting in an empty garrison alot of the time.

 

[nilloc93]

yes perhaps that was a bit harsh, but the main suggestion of just scrapping the negative food from prosperity was plainly silly. I don't think anyone should have to mod game files, I simply did it for the sake of that example since people in previous threads has stated that towns wouldn't grow out of control.

 

[Jafa]

yes perhaps that was a bit harsh, but the main suggestion of just scrapping the negative food from prosperity was plainly silly.

Yeah I agree, I think the best idea is just to bring some attention to it perhaps and go from there. Theres always the knock on effect though of altering something like this, so I have no idea of a solution. I suppose I'll leave that to someone else who knows what they're doing

 

[manekemaan]

Indeed, I do agree that you need a cap on prosperity an I love being able to heighten this cap by making sure the villages are safe and trade is booming.

Simply splitting garrison and civilian food stocks, and only touching the garisson stocks during sieges sounds like a good solution. You would still have the negative effects of food shortage on the militia and on the prosperity. But you wouldn't be losing your men.

Also this could make placing a garrison a tactical choice. Yes for extra defense, or a storing place for your troops, but you could also keep it empty to drop food consumption in the town a bit to help prosperity grow, but you would have no place to store your units.

 

[Worldsprayer]

their system makes sense fundamentally: People eat food, so food stocks go down. However, the prosperity is exponentially related to food production so for the two to be at balance at the moment, both have to be super low. A mechanism not well implimented.

 

[nilloc93]

Actually its not exponentially linked its multiplicative.
the ratio is 50:1 for the food penalty, the issue is with the other prosperity buffs that the food shortage cannot overcome the prosperity gains which just makes the food shortage worse as the city gets richer. Idealy, the lack of food should cause prosperity to go down, sharply, until there is no longer a food shortage and then prosperity can rise again.

 

[halgeir]

The problem is that while food deficit scales multiplicatively with prosperity, food production from surrounding villages and lands around settlement do not, as seen in the OP. Prosperity bonus from villages and surrounding lands are seemingly scaled down and rounded to integers (+4 and +10), while the food deficit in the city is something unreasonable like -104.72. A large food deficit due to a big population is reasonable but needs to be bounded by scaling/thresholding in order to not spiral out of control. Maybe prosperity shouldn't increase linearly past a certain level, or maybe prosperity should not be able to increase while the city is in a net food deficit (might be unreasonable because of trading mechanics), but either way the current mechanic makes the late game unplayable. In the case of castles, one can't just market sell grain to combat the food deficit from prosperity, making maintenance of a garrison very hard if not impossible.

 

[andycott]

? Just for now for the late game being simply playable, an early and temporary solution can be that troops from garrison have far less penalties from food shortages then they do now (or don't die from starvation at all if necessary), so you don't have to babysit them all the time.
It may not look very realistic nor too logical.
But all other troops and other stats in the city/castle will continue to suffer as they had before. And still you can garrison as many men as you like. They will continue to eat food, ? so in terms of realistic gameplay it will be like an option of the governor for the garrison to have priority access to food.
If you station too many soldiers it will surely continue to have negative effect, but won't lose too many precious troops.
So you can have a huge garrison (there surely should be some limits), but in result won't have a lot of militia, etc. And still will have all your fiefs under direct control and won't need to do unnecessary micromanagement.
Just for now, until devs can balance it.

Of course it's better to just have direct control of food in a fief - a stock separate from market. Realistic solution.
Maybe devs can implement this or add some other options in the future.

 

[sherdil]

The prosperity food cycle balances itself out eventually. Usually, the problem occurs when food stockpiles run out because attached villages are raided. While you do initially lose garrisons (they can even be completely wiped out), when the villages start running again, you get food again. Usually, in this time, prosperity also decreases so less food consumption. It's actually a delicate balancing act and I find it to be logical.

 

[Jafa]

The prosperity food cycle balances itself out eventually. Usually, the problem occurs when food stockpiles run out because attached villages are raided. While you do initially lose garrisons (they can even be completely wiped out), when the villages start running again, you get food again. Usually, in this time, prosperity also decreases so less food consumption. It's actually a delicate balancing act and I find it to be logical.

My problem was I was in peacetime, villages had not been raided for a very long time, but everytime I came back to my city (Poros) alot of the garrison was missing. After hovering around the city I could see for no reason the food would suddenly go to -100 during to prosperity causing thr garrison to lose 6 a day. The villages were also clear of any hideouts.

 

[andycott]

The prosperity food cycle balances itself out eventually. Usually, the problem occurs when food stockpiles run out because attached villages are raided. While you do initially lose garrisons (they can even be completely wiped out), when the villages start running again, you get food again. Usually, in this time, prosperity also decreases so less food consumption. It's actually a delicate balancing act and I find it to be logical.

The thing is everything is interconnected in this game, which is good, but! There're some things you need to have control over.
Yes, it's logical, no questions, but, f.e., logical would be also if you would have a stock separate from market, patrols, manhunters and many other things.
And while the game is missing a lot of this at the moment, there should be at least some temporary solutions to late game breaking mechanics.

... although I personally don't really think that the game should be too friendly for the player, I prefer realism over simulation. So it would be also logical, if there were some kind of deseases and etc. And everything will be fine, just if AI would have to deal with the same problems, the player does. But it's already too heavy on AI even right now.
That's why the game needs simple solutions, especially while it's in EA.
So for now playability is better than broken realism.

 

[kingslomein]

Bump this please. Please dev's fix this soon. Surely it's not working as intended.