Food Shortage

[drallim33]

My intuitive expectation is that total prosperity movement for the day should cap at zero if a demanded item isn't available, rather than at a negative number. Lack of any one thing can stifle growth, but shouldn't cause loss unless the actual net prosperity modifier is negative after taking into account all influences.

In fact the average player would be annoyed even with stagnation because their town isn't getting linen but is getting everything else it wants. "Buy something made of wool today instead you fussy bastards!". I'm not able to concentrate enough right now to run the thought experiment on whether the integrity of the system could be maintained if very limited growth was still possible in that scenario, but I expect that simply capping the growth at 0 (rather than at a negative value) should be sufficient for sustainable integrity.

Problem is there are other modifiers like the ones from housing and aquaducts, that can cause the town to keep growing (or be capped at 0) even when there is a shortage of goods. It has to be able to go negative even in the face of other modifiers from kingdom policies and whatnot, so the town can shrink its demand down to match the supply.

If there is some shortage is would either be because of disruption due to war, in which case a bit of shrinkage is appropriate, or because the town has already grown up to the limit of supply, in which case it should stagnate. Without the rampant growth and consumption we have now there should be decent stock levels so small fluctuations like late caravans shouldn't be much of a problem, shortages should be more rare, and just cause a temporary price increase instead of complete absence.

 

[Patwick]

Wow that's a lot of readings, sorry if i didn't went through every post of everyone and if i'm being redundant but a few informations :

Some possible factors of the economy breaking in 1.4.1:

• War is up. Factions are averaging around 3 or so wars at a time with the new voting system or whatever they did. This stifles trade, as caravans have fewer options for destinations now. More war also means more raiding, which negatively impacts hearth numbers in villages, which in turn lowers production rates of goods. Lower production rates means there's less food to go around in general.

Yes, in 1.4.1 the forced truce of 25 days was removed thus the increase in wars noticed by everyone, and a few people reported increased aggresive behavior from AI and this has been confirmed aswell . Quote from Mexxicco :

Thanks for all. This is personal experiment so its better this thread stay this part. By the way we can lose some of pros mentioned above in next versions like 25 days of truce period (I wanted to save it but probably it will be removed). Please be patient if this happens, development has always ups and downs. Mid points are less important than final point

And

Also wars are 2x-3x compared to 1.3 in 1.4 (for example average war count at a moment is 5-6 in 1.3 and 12-13 in 1.4) this is also a bug related to new developments at these systems

So i believe 1.4.1 is fatally flawed with those issue related to war/ raiding frequency to judge how food shortage could be improved.
The new system for truce will include tribute that will IMO impact lord finances again and i don't know if it will impact food shortage via the economy in general or prosperity.

After this implementation we need to check balance of economy again.

Hope those informations can be usefull to you (i suck at theorycrafting :p)

 

[Badcritter]

Problem is there are other modifiers like the ones from housing and aquaducts, that can cause the town to keep growing (or be capped at 0) even when there is a shortage of goods. It has to be able to go negative even in the face of other modifiers from kingdom policies and whatnot, so the town can shrink its demand down to match the supply.

Potentially the prosperity modifiers outside tradeable goods should be reworked rather than kept in their current form only to be negated in a significant proportion of scenarios.

Summarising at the conceptual level, currently prosperity effectively only falls because of starvation, thus starvation is inevitable because prosperity keeps rising until people starve. We need for prosperity to be able to fall without starvation (as well as fall at a faster rate when there IS starvation).

Achieving that allows garrisons to be uneffected by normal economic fluctuations, but subject to starvation in extreme scenarios.

 

[paladinx333]

Trying to create a "realistic" economy in a game where AI agents don't behave realistically is impossible. The result will always be random and unbalanced. The economy, if you can call it that, needs to have some serious limits imposed on it to prevent chaos.

 

[GitiUsir]

Trying to create a "realistic" economy in a game where AI agents don't behave realistically is impossible. The result will always be random and unbalanced. The economy, if you can call it that, needs to have some serious limits imposed on it to prevent chaos.

Same intuition here.
My opinion is it would be better to keep the simulation as static as possible. No need to increase population with prosperity, increasing demand and consumption. Instead, keep population abstract, like a city means several tens of thousands, a village a few thousands. Sieges, raids and lost caravans disrupt overall prosperity and production, and it takes a while until the population returns to normal activity, but it doesn't mean it grows and shrinks, it's just it is dispersed, uneffective. If a center is not disrupted prosperity increases up to a limit.

The same way, caravans and workshops should be more oriented to local business, local routes. I.e. a city produces X good because raw material is produced in linked villages, then the city creates a caravan aiming to export local production surplus to a profitable city and bring back luxury goods paid with the profit. This increases prosperity in both cities, one exporting by caravan and the other exporting whith caravan visit. The availability of imported goods in those cities is an indication of prosperity but those luxuries would be scarce, quickly consumed and in high demand. Locally produced goods on the other hand should be cheap and available usually.

Anyway I'm curious too to find if current model could work. Keep it up guys.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Ok so there is a double effect based on stock levels. One is immediate, the other a short term average. So, the product of a workshop will pretty much always be cheaper in that town, because the average stock level will be higher. So while there is no arbitrary modifier, the effect in the end is the same.

FOUR separate supply/demand based modifiers, one completely arbitrary and the rest simulationist. I think you only need one, not four. But whatever, this is what we've got.

I'm guessing the reason they've added the hysteresis to the price model (meaning the price is slower to change in one direction) is because of the way caravans work vs. how the player and/or other NPCs interact with the market.

I'll probably botch the explanation of this, but here it goes:

When a caravan is deciding what to buy and where to go next (I think) it checks the price of a good in the town it's currently in against the prices of all the viable towns in the world and weighs it vs. other factors such as distance, buying/selling prices of other goods, and how long it's been since they've returned home to calculate a "Trade Score" for each town. So it uses the current price of a good in a town all the way across the world, even though the price of that good may change by the time it travels there.

Well, towns with local production of a good through workshops and villages will usually have a higher quantity of a particular item in stock at any given time compared to other towns. For instance, Argoron has a few fishing villages that supply it with fish, so it usually has a high quantity of fish in stock. So even if the player or another NPC comes and buys all the fish Argoron has in stock it will usually return to having a high quantity of fish within a few days or a week due to the constant local production.

If the price of fish were to skyrocket immediately when the stock was cleaned out, then any caravans who entered a town across the world within those few days would say, "Oh look, the good people of Argoron need fish and are offering a great price. I'd better go sell them some," and you'd have caravans racing off to sell Argoron fish. However, by the time they reach Argoron the fish will have returned to the market from the local village production and the price will have fallen again, meaning the profits will vanish. So this "stickiness" in the price is needed for when temporary dips in the quantity of goods happen from player/NPC intervention, otherwise the Trade Scores of caravans would be thrown off by this happening all over.

That's all just a guess as to the reason it works that way though. It makes sense to me. I really think the economy would be worse off without it.

By the way, what are the four modifiers you're counting? I'm only getting three.

One problem here is that prosperity seems to apply an offset or multiplier to prices. Currently it (probably) looks something like this:

I does indeed apply a flat multiplier of some value, and I agree that the prosperity multiplier has too great an effect on prices at either end of the extremes; it definitely could stand to be toned down a little bit. It's a little more favorable than the first graph you show though, because even at very high prosperity, the price of a high quantity item will usually still be lower than the price of the item in a low prosperity town with a low quantity of it. It only really breaks down at ultra low prosperity values in the range of like 0-500 or so.

You're second graph looks good to me though. The game already sorts out low, mid, and high prosperity values I believe (but not for pricing).

Since having very low prosperity breaks so many of the mechanics tied to prosperity, I think it might be wise to add a conditional statement to the game logic that defaults to using 1000 prosperity to calculate everything even if a town dips below that. So like:

If (Prosperity >= 1000)

Use normal prosperity number as variable​

else

Use 1000 as prosperity variable​

​

That would allow item prices, construction rates, money on hand, food consumption rates, etc. to be semi-normal even at very low prosperity values, allowing them to pull themselves out of the hole if they went past the point of no return. You would need to override the negative prosperity modifier to food to use the actual prosperity value though.

For towns to grow, the granary must be full. If growth > 0 and granary < full, growth = 0

I'm lukewarm about this idea. I'd like to see it in practice through a mod or something, but I don't think it would end up working the way you'd want it to. It would definitely slow down prosperity growth rates, but when a town reached it's maximum prosperity I think the food stock would still slowly chip away a little bit at a time as caravans and NPCs bought food and caused a minor food deficits for short periods. Then, because it's still at its limit where all of the food modifiers tend to cancel each other out, I have a feeling it would still just sit around 0 food in the granary give or take a little most of the time.

Maybe not though; it would be interesting to test.

Towns should consume as much food and other goods as they need, if the food is available. They should not over-consume like they do now, and only buy as much as they need.

They already do base their consumption of goods on the quantity available to some extent. At high quantity they consume marginally more (to a point), and at low quantity they consume marginally less (to a point). There are caps in either direction on how much they consume of any one type of good at a given prosperity level. Whether there is 3000 or 30000 grain in the market they will still consume as though there is only 3000 or less. I know what you're getting at though.

Good post overall.

Hope those informations can be usefull to you (i suck at theorycrafting :p)

Thanks for adding that context! 1.4.1 definitely has its fatal flaws!

 

[drallim33]

I'm guessing the reason they've added the hysteresis in the price...

Makes sense, X2: The Threat had this exact problem, slow cargo ships would all see some cheap good and head for the same place, one would arrive first and buy it all. So like 50% of all the AI ships were arriving late and the price had changed massively.

Not sure it's necessary though or really solves that particular problem, it's not the worst thing though, it doesn't break anything too badly.

What you really need is some way to place orders over the internet to reserve stock, or promise a delivery, which would cause more controversy than deflecting arrows with a sword. Or have caravans just go from one town to the next and buy/sell opportunistically instead of doing the premeditated trading "missions" that they do now.

By the way, what are the four modifiers you're counting? I'm only getting three.

I guess I was counting the increased consumption. Debatable I know but the thought being that high prosperity increases prices, and it also increases consumption which increases prices.

Since having very low prosperity breaks so many of the mechanics tied to prosperity, I think it might be wise to add a conditional statement to the game logic that defaults to using 1000 prosperity to calculate everything even if a town dips below that. So like:

If (Prosperity >= 1000)

Use normal prosperity number as variable​

else

Use 1000 as prosperity variable​

​

That would allow item prices, construction rates, money on hand, food consumption rates, etc. to be semi-normal even at very low prosperity values, allowing them to pull themselves out of the hole if they went past the point of no return.

Probably does need a lower limit. Going all the way to 0 is a bit much, it should mean the town is completely ruined like they tore down every brick and salted the earth. Even just a bunch of hobos squatting in the keep should be 1 prosperity.

when a town reached it's maximum prosperity I think the food stock would still slowly chip away a little bit at a time as caravans and NPCs bought food and caused a minor food deficits for short periods. Then, because it's still at the point where food modifiers tend to cancel each other out it would still just sit around 0 food in the granary give or take a little. Maybe not though; it would be interesting to test.

That's what rule 3 is for , any shortage of any kind would cause a loss of prosperity, overriding other prosperity bonuses. Even luxuries like jewellery. So food might not even be the limiting factor in a lot of cases. Food town might have food surplus but needs other imports to grow.

But assuming food was the limitation, a lord comes along and buys too much food, causing -50 food for 2 days. Well you end up with 100 less prosperity than you had at equilibrium, and can't grow that 100 prosperity back until the granary is refilled.

So it would fluctuate a bit and the granary wouldn't always be full but the equilibrium point about which the fluctuations occur would be with a full granary instead of an empty one. I hope I said that right.

 

[Bannerman Man]

What you really need is some way to place orders over the internet to reserve stock, or promise a delivery, which would cause more controversy than deflecting arrows with a sword.

Haha, I don't think Calradia is wired for 5G yet. But actually, it seems caravans do earmark prices already to some extent. Sometimes, if you talk to two caravans following closely to each other (ask them about their journeys) you will see they bought the same item and are going to sell it in the same town. The sell prices will be slightly different, meaning the second caravan already accounted for the drop in price from the first caravan getting there ahead and selling first. If I can get a screenshot of it I'll throw it in.

Or have caravans just go from one town to the next and buy/sell opportunistically instead of doing the premeditated trading "missions" that they do now.

Might be tough for certain food items to make it out to the regions that don't produce them locally if they just hop from town to town. Sibir and Varnovapol, for instance, don't have a lot of towns swimming in grain nearby, and would probably almost never get dates, grapes, or olives. Caravans just need some tweaking in general right now though.

That's what rule 3 is for , any shortage of any kind would cause a loss of prosperity, overriding other prosperity bonuses. Even luxuries like jewellery. So food might not even be the limiting factor in a lot of cases. Food town might have food surplus but needs other imports to grow.

But assuming food was the limitation, a lord comes along and buys too much food, causing -50 food for 2 days. Well you end up with 100 less prosperity than you had at equilibrium, and can't grow that 100 prosperity back until the granary is refilled.

So it would fluctuate a bit and the granary wouldn't always be full but the equilibrium point about which the fluctuations occur would be with a full granary instead of an empty one. I hope I said that right.

Oh, I got ya. So are they still consuming luxury items, even if they don't have the full set to get the prosperity bonus? I can't say I've ever seen a town with every single luxury item at the same time before. Overall quantities would have to be bumped up quite a bit I would think.

Also, the "Goods From Market" bonus already does that in a way. It only counts horses, sumpter horses, and furs at the moment though. I'm guessing at some point they will extend that bonus to the rest of the luxury goods. It doesn't get capped like you're talking about, however.

 

[drallim33]

Oh, I got ya. So are they still consuming luxury items, even if they don't have the full set to get the prosperity bonus? I can't say I've ever seen a town with every single luxury item at the same time before. Overall quantities would have to be bumped up quite a bit I would think.

Also, the "Goods From Market" bonus already does that in a way. It only counts horses, sumpter horses, and furs at the moment though. I'm guessing at some point they will extend that bonus to the rest of the luxury goods. It doesn't get capped like you're talking about, however.

Well I have no idea how it decides which goods to consume and how many and when, but it does consume them. Which is probably why you've never seen one of everything, because they just keep growing and consuming everything.

I'm suggesting that they settle down a bit, and hold off on growing until a decent stock is accumulated, then grow. Just like how they should wait until the granary is full before growing.

Have you noticed there is a severe shortage of war horses everywhere? On day one most towns have a decent stock but before long you're lucky to find one Aserai horse at triple its regular price. It's more noticeable with war horses since they are so low volume but the same thing is happening with the other goods, they are getting eaten up.

Do they "need" these things the same way they need food? Again I don't know how this part works, but I have never seen a prosperity malus for lack of any of these things like what happens with food. I'm saying I think it should stop growing or shrink if there is a shortage of these things that it decides it needs, the same way it should with food.

Then if it has budget left over, and already has everything it needs, then buy some more for a prosperity bonus.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Well I have no idea how it decides which goods to consume and how many and when, but it does consume them. Which is probably why you've never seen one of everything, because they just keep growing and consuming everything.

Yeah, what controls that menu has mostly been a mystery to me so far. All I can say is that increasing the quantity of goods in the market of a town will generally increase consumption as well (up to a point), but it doesn't rise uniformly for all goods across the board. It also seems to randomly consume more of a particular item at certain periods of time than others. No idea what role workshops and prosperity play in these numbers. I tried to figure out exactly how these numbers are calculated by looking at the code, but I wasn't able to decipher it. Maybe I'll check again.

But, I think the reason for it to work that way is simply to remove items from the economy so that a demand is created. Villages create goods and towns destroy them (for the most part). If towns didn't remove goods from the game they would just keep accumulating and eventually all the prices would bottom out.

The total amount of goods in the world might affect consumption rates as well. Maybe if there's a surge in the overall amount of a certain good created during a period of time the total consumption around the world might collectively rise to counteract this, and vice versa. I'm just speculating though.

I do know that for every horse, sumpter horse, and fur consumed each day, the prosperity modifier "Goods from Market" will increment +0.1 per item. Fur doesn't really have a role to play in the item economy other than that bonus, AFAIK, which might be why it's one of three items that affect prosperity directly. Also, each tool consumed will also add a miniscule +0.25 points to construction per day in the form of the "Construction from Market" modifer. But other than that, I don't think the items consumed factor into prosperity whatsoever (prosperity may affect consumption, however).

I'm suggesting that they settle down a bit, and hold off on growing until a decent stock is accumulated, then grow.

Have you noticed there is a severe shortage of war horses everywhere? On day one most towns have a decent stock but before long you're lucky to find one Aserai horse at triple its regular price. It's more noticeable with war horses since they are so low volume but the same thing is happening with the other goods, they are getting eaten up.

Do they "need" these things the same way they need food? Again I don't know how this part works, but I have never seen a prosperity malus for lack of any of these things like what happens with food. I'm saying I think it should stop growing or shrink if there is a shortage of these things that it decides it needs, the same way it should with food.

Then if it has budget left over, and already has everything it needs, then buy some more for a prosperity bonus.

Gotcha. The devs can always raise the rate of production, or lower the rate of consumption if they want more goods to accumulate overall, so it shouldn't be hard to accomplish that. They definitely have the tools to track the total quantities of goods in the worldwide economy over time.

I'm also wondering what the total effect of raiding is having on the overall production rate right now. Fewer goods may be in the economy than intended because villages are repeatedly out of commision for long periods of time, then they return at a lower hearth number so production is slow to ramp back up. That's probably felt the greatest in low quantity items like war horses as you say, because the production and consumption is so binary.

I think the rate of war will come back down when they implement the new truce system and iron out all of the other bugs, which might ease prices a bit again.

 

[drallim33]

Gotcha. The devs can always raise the rate of production, or lower the rate of consumption if they want more goods to accumulate overall, so it shouldn't be hard to accomplish that. They definitely have the tools to track the total quantities of goods in the worldwide economy over time.

I think you're missing my point a little. Increasing production rates will not increase stock levels, because the towns will just grow bigger and end up consuming more. That's the problem. Arbitrarily tweaking production/consumption rates will not help.

You need to wait until a stock accumulates, before you start growing and consuming more. That way it doesn't matter what the production rates are, the town will adjust to compensate. It's the wait that matters not the rate, for maintaining stock levels.

The consumption wait would determine the size of the stockpile, and the supply rate would determine the size (prosperity & consumption) of the town.

 

[kweassa]

I think you're missing my point a little. Increasing production rates will not increase stock levels, because the towns will just grow bigger and end up consuming more. That's the problem. Arbitrarily tweaking production/consumption rates will not help.

You need to wait until a stock accumulates, before you start growing and consuming more. That way it doesn't matter what the production rates are, the town will adjust to compensate. It's the wait that matters not the rate, for maintaining stock levels.

The consumption wait would determine the size of the stockpile, and the supply rate would determine the size (prosperity & consumption) of the town.

How about a concept like this:

* A difference between the entire stock of products in the market, and how much are actually available for trade
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Out of the entire food stock, only 70% will be made available on the market, the 30% will be held in "reserve" for the town.

(2) Unlike granaries, the "reserve" stock, can be made available by FORCED REQUISITION, having negative effects on relations and the town

I mean, certainly, during those times even the ruler couldn't neglect civilian use and just monopolize all the resources because he needed it. For example, before modern industrialization, you couldn't just get leather any time you wanted. The intake of leather/hide stock usually coincided with the annual culling of the livestock before winter, so the meat is stored for winter rations, and then a significant portion of leather/hides were used in the civilian sector, for the everyday leather goods that the people needed: shoes.. bags.. .ropes... clothing... crafting material.. etc etc.. and the remainder of the stock would be processed for military purposes.

The civilians of the towns need a certain amount of stability in product stocks, and clearly, the passive +8/+12/+20 type of food stock buffs are not enough to ensure that amount of stability... and it seems the only way to guarantee stability, is to actually guarantee a certain amount of real items in the physical (as presented in the market.)

Then, perhaps a certain portion of those "real items in the market" remaining off-limits for military use, could provide enough of a buffer to the more wild fluctuations in food situation and economy.


(ps) Another method.. a more drastic solution IMO... would be getting rid of food as items in the game as a whole... and replacing it with a concept of "logistics" for the army, a la .. (let's say) Hearts of Iron, or CK2. Food in the inventory are only trade and market items for civilian use, and whatever food the party/army requires will come from logistics.

This, idea, has some interesting implications.

 

[mexxico]

The food economy is broken at a fundamental level, it does not just need minor tweaking. Everything is starving everywhere all the time. Armies are walking around constantly starving because they don't buy enough food. They probably couldn't buy enough food even if they wanted because there isn't enough food to buy. If there is food to buy they probably can't afford it.

Just a ridiculous situation, absolute clown show. Started a new unmodded 1.4.1 game with no player interference, AI army starvation is in full force.

Unqid's army was besieging Lavenia castle but broke off when he started starving. You can see he has already lost 200 troops to starvation and is going to raid tevea for some reason. Real galaxy brain move.

One lord abandons the army before reaching Tevea. By this time half the army is wounded.

Maybe he will at least get some food from raiding Tevea? No. He gets to Tevea, raids for about 5 seconds, then turns around and heads for Razih, for mysterious reasons. There are much closer towns than Razih. Maybe all the closer ones are out of food.

But then he only makes it as far as the mountain range before turning back AGAIN to raid Tevea. The original 800-strong army has now starved down to 200.

The army disintegrates before they get there. Try to guess what happens next.

lol they all turn back to go and raid Tevea individually. Keep in mind they are all still starving to death. But once again they only raid for a few seconds then turn around.

They all get picked off by looters and random lords on the way back without a fight. 800 man army lost to looters because of food.

This game is super easy because all you have to do to win is buy food. Literally just buy tons of food so you can feed all the starving lords that join your army, and go siege somewhere. Dump a large garrison and it will be basically impregnable. The AI will be simply unable to take it with any army smaller than 2000, because with large garrisons they always play catapults for a week or two, run out of food and abandon the siege.

It's not just the AI armies that are starving to death. The town death spiral is real. It's because of the broken economy model that bases food prices off prosperity, and prosperity off of food prices in a feedback loop with no caps. Here's how it works:

Here is Jalmarys. It changed hands a couple of times, had villages raided, and ended up with no food and low prosperity. But things never got better, they only got worse. It has a grain village still operational so has enough grain but no other food, except beer from it's own brewery. But because of artificial discounts imposed because of the brewery, and artificial inflation of grain for the same reason, the beer is ridiculously cheap and probably selling at a loss. Everything is so cheap caravans rarely come here to sell any more, so Jalmarys never gets the food it needs to stop starving. Even when caravans do come the town has no money to buy their goods, and the caravan buys all the town's food because it's so cheap. It has only 1 cotton but is selling it at half price. Large garrison is fine and healthy.

Next door to Jalmarys is Zeonica, the most prosperous town in the world at this time. This is where all the caravans go to sell their goods. It is rolling in cash, and has a decent amount of food, but the food is so expensive that it can't afford to buy enough of it to not starve. Lords are constantly trying to top up the garrison which is just bleeding troops day by day. Caravans will buy what little grain and beer there is in Jalmarys and sell it here.

Based on these numbers it would continue to grow even with -40 food. Perfectly balanced. It's the bannerlord life spiral, it works like this:

So poor town with no money or food? You starve.

Richest town in the world, with tons of money and food? You starve too.

King of Aserai trying to siege a castle? You starve and get captured by looters.

No matter what happens, in the end you starve to death, it's stupid.


Unqid's new army starts starving again (of course) and goes looking for food. They don't bother going to Jalmarys though, because it now has zero prosperity, and no money or trade goods. No trade goods. At all.

Danustica is in a similar boat. Ravaged by war it is spiraling downwards, despite being now relatively safe.

This weird and unnatural feedback loop has to stop, it doesn't work and is super unintuitive. Just look at all the people trying to sell food to their town to stop it from starving. Little do they know they are only making things worse.

You have created a system where giving people food makes them starve even faster. Where garrisons in wealthy towns starve to death instead of getting fat, and garrisons in ghost towns are fine and healthy. Nothing about this system makes any sense.

Actually default daily projects of 1.4.1 is broken (which increases prosperity, militia, hearths of connected villages). Their effects are all huge and they damage all balances in game in long term. We fixed it but it will send beta later. Also lots of wars at 1.4.1 also damage economy. I can examine all issues you reported but I need a save game. Can you provide me a save game and then lets examine what is happening and why is that behaviors are selected. Especially raiding Tavea situations.

 

[kweassa]

Actually default daily projects of 1.4.1 is broken (which increases prosperity, militia, hearths of connected villages). Their effects are all huge and they damage all balances in game in long term. We fixed it but it will send beta later. Also lots of wars at 1.4.1 also damage economy. I can examine all issues you reported but I need a save game. Can you provide me a save game and then lets examine what is happening and why is that behaviors are selected.

OH MY GOD mexx.... if you have chimed in just a lil' bit earlier, it would have probably saved us of like 3 pages from this thread!!!! LOL


Anyways, thanks for confirmation. Now we've finally got some answers, and relevant insight. LOL The current system is indeed, broken with endless prosperity...!!

 

[mexxico]

OH MY GOD mexx.... if you have chimed in just a lil' bit earlier, it would have probably saved us of like 3 pages from this thread!!!! LOL


Anyways, thanks for confirmation. Now we've finally got some answers, and relevant insight. LOL The current system is indeed, broken with endless prosperity...!!

It seems problem will not be fixed completely just after we balance daily default projects. Problem is in more deep mechanics. drallim33 gave good examples from his game as screenshots if I can get save game I can examine deeply and we can discuss here.

 

[TimIZ]

Now that you mention daily defaults I can`t hold myself back and have to ask - is it intended that they don`t have an effect while you have building projects going on?

 

[GitiUsir]

How about a concept like this:

* A difference between the entire stock of products in the market, and how much are actually available for trade
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Out of the entire food stock, only 70% will be made available on the market, the 30% will be held in "reserve" for the town.

(2) Unlike granaries, the "reserve" stock, can be made available by FORCED REQUISITION, having negative effects on relations and the town

I mean, certainly, during those times even the ruler couldn't neglect civilian use and just monopolize all the resources because he needed it. For example, before modern industrialization, you couldn't just get leather any time you wanted. The intake of leather/hide stock usually coincided with the annual culling of the livestock before winter, so the meat is stored for winter rations, and then a significant portion of leather/hides were used in the civilian sector, for the everyday leather goods that the people needed: shoes.. bags.. .ropes... clothing... crafting material.. etc etc.. and the remainder of the stock would be processed for military purposes.

The civilians of the towns need a certain amount of stability in product stocks, and clearly, the passive +8/+12/+20 type of food stock buffs are not enough to ensure that amount of stability... and it seems the only way to guarantee stability, is to actually guarantee a certain amount of real items in the physical (as presented in the market.)

Then, perhaps a certain portion of those "real items in the market" remaining off-limits for military use, could provide enough of a buffer to the more wild fluctuations in food situation and economy.


(ps) Another method.. a more drastic solution IMO... would be getting rid of food as items in the game as a whole... and replacing it with a concept of "logistics" for the army, a la .. (let's say) Hearts of Iron, or CK2. Food in the inventory are only trade and market items for civilian use, and whatever food the party/army requires will come from logistics.

This, idea, has some interesting implications.

I like a lot what kweassa was proposing, specially the part about separating food for armies from goods in the market. Those are two separate systems that will be a pain to make them work togetheer.

 

[kweassa]

It seems problem will not be fixed completely just after we balance daily default projects. Problem is in more deep mechanics. drallim33 gave good examples from his game as screenshots if I can get save game I can examine deeply and we can discuss here.

Thank you. Appreciate the heads up, sir.

 

[drallim33]

I can examine all issues you reported but I need a save game. Can you provide me a save game and then lets examine what is happening and why is that behaviors are selected. Especially raiding Tavea situations.

Sorry I don't have earlier save that the screenshots were taken from. This save is from much later, many years, but they are still raiding Tevea.

Whole world has an alliance against Khuzaits, and it's been a stalemate for a couple of years, fighting over the middle of the map.

If you watch Mesui's army, she is starving and heading to Myzea, but the army will break up on the way, and some of the lords will head to Tevea. Sometimes only one or two, sometimes five or more of them.

https://mega.nz/file/6P4zUAob#SrE9UyJ3vFcbzfV6WmTxP2iWLM2CIcNOkNXzHBhiuQo

 

[mexxico]

Sorry I don't have earlier save that the screenshots were taken from. This save is from much later, many years, but they are still raiding Tevea.

Whole world has an alliance against Khuzaits, and it's been a stalemate for a couple of years, fighting over the middle of the map.

If you watch Mesui's army, she is starving and heading to Myzea, but the army will break up on the way, and some of the lords will head to Tevea. Sometimes only one or two, sometimes five or more of them.

https://mega.nz/file/6P4zUAob#SrE9UyJ3vFcbzfV6WmTxP2iWLM2CIcNOkNXzHBhiuQo

Good thanks. I will examine and return you with numbers why they do this behavior.

Also I will examine all posts and pictures here. We will fix this issue today and tomorrow. This is an important problem and reported before too but there were tons of issues these days.

I will go step by step. Examine formulas and will try to find out problems and explain you what is happening.

For example Argoron case :

Buying Item Formula (1)
foreach item category
(prosperity x item demand constant) gold is spent for buying that item.

I examined formula and every town spend (prosperity x 0.04) + if prospeirty > 3000 then ((prosperity - 3000) x 0.04) for buying fish every day.
Argoron's prosperity is 369 so Argoron will spend 369 x 0.04 = 14.76 for buying fish (fish cost is 5 so town buy 2 fish)

Similarly for buying grain they spend (prosperity x 0.12) + if prospeirty > 3000 then ((prosperity - 3000) x 0.03)
Argoron's prosperity is 369 so Argoron will spend 369 x 0.12 = 44.28 for buying grain (grain cost is 9 so town buy 4 grain)

Previously there were additional 10 food bonus for towns and 5 food bonus for castles named "lands around town" this is removed and a project is added for this, I see Argoron has not gotr this project so Argoron's expected change is not much even it has cheap foods. If we look formulas because demand is directly effected from prosperity if prosperity is low then town buys less food. This make surplus food less and town cannot grow if it lose its prosperity once. At least it cannot get surplus food bonus even food is cheap.

Currently surplus food bonus is :
surplus food amount / 20

In Argoron example daily prosperity change from surplus food is only 4 / 20 = 0.2

We cannot make it x / 5 or x / 10 otherwise some towns get huge prosperity increase like 5-10 daily from only surplus food
5 x 82 = 410 in one year
10 x 82 = 820 in one year

But you are right this town has cheap food and less prosperity so it should grow fast at least it should grow fast until some point. Actually every town with less prosperity (like < 1500) should grow fast for the health & balance of game.

Problem is every town has 100-200-300-400 garrison inside. So they consume food too. It is fixed consumption and there is fixed food addition from villages. In terms lets assume these two balance themselves. We can take these two out of formula. However if prosperity is less surplus food become less and if prosperity drop 0 then there is no consumption at all no surplus food. Thats why current design has problems. If prosperity drops once it is so hard to get it back without projects.

What I see in first look is :
-Removing lands around castle / town make things worse because when town has low prosperity somehow surplus food should increase to balance things. Of course this is not only problem. Even food is cheap it is bought less because buying item formula(1) is directly effected by prosperity.