Food Shortage

[Rabies]

Similarly, when I see that my storage will deplete to zero in 2 days if my food supplies are cut off (including someone buying out the market), I also know that is wrong. The storage supply should be something greater than a week and possibly approaching an entire season.

This.
Also, I still think that the garrison should have is own food stockpile that's separate from the general economy of the town and can be directly managed by the fief owner. After all, that's what any sensible military commander would do anyway if they needed to maintain a sizeable force somewhere that food was in short supply.

 

[kweassa]

This.
Also, I still think that the garrison should have is own food stockpile that's separate from the general economy of the town and can be directly managed by the fief owner. After all, that's what any sensible military commander would do anyway if they needed to maintain a sizeable force somewhere that food was in short supply.

IMO a "buffer time" for the garrison should be more than enough. Like mentioned earlier, most food shortages are merely fluctuations. The problem is such short fluctuations directly and immediately impact garrisons, which, it should not.

Just have the garrison become impacted after a very clear, unmistakable long streak of food shortages, but protect it from normal fluctuations... and problem solved.

 

[Rush09]

IMO a "buffer time" for the garrison should be more than enough. Like mentioned earlier, most food shortages are merely fluctuations. The problem is such short fluctuations directly and immediately impact garrisons, which, it should not.

Just have the garrison become impacted after a very clear, unmistakable long streak of food shortages, but protect it from normal fluctuations... and problem solved.

Depends on the town, some towns with access to decent quantities of food do have those fluctuations but some towns without that luck really go down fast. I leave Chalas with 160 Food Supply and positive growth to go for a quick trip to search the near markets to see what I can find of new gear and when I return I find the food supply at 30 with a negative growth, that's no fluctuation, that's a tsunami of food running past the town gates at the back of Nobles, Caravans or random Armies (no idea why the AI is so into creating 1000 men armies in times of peace to "patrol")

 

[Badcritter]

(no idea why the AI is so into creating 1000 men armies in times of peace to "patrol")

They must be grinding their Leadership skill

 

[GitiUsir]

How can it be prosperity the cause of starvation? How can a population of several thousands live while a garrison with a few hundreds starves to death? Wouldn't be more likely if angry soldiers got the last food for themselves and their masters, leaving the population to starve?

How can a lord run around with hundreds of soldiers entering other kingdoms and buying vital food supplies with ease? How can a city sell its own vital supply to any passing by visitor?

Is this supposed to be a self balancing economy? Good luck then because the real world economy they teach in universities is broken too. If anything at least this is a good simulation of that broken economy.

 

[XT-ended_2L]

Current prosperity/food system is nonsense. Just read the history, there were always sort of royal catacombs, stock, etc for food and other critical supplies. it’s hard to imagine a cart that picks up food in the morning from the market to feed an entire garrison of soldiers. And one day just returns with a guilty look.

 

[Bannerman Man]

This would probably necessitate a means to measure the level of contribution the castle-villagers contribute to the towns, to really measure the adequacy of a town's food sources. It also explains a lot in regards to how towns may dwindle in food source, because the bound villages may be fine, but villages bound to castles nearby may have been hit.

You can calculate this pretty well, as there are already several ways to see how many goods are being brought to a town by villagers. For simplicity's sake, I'll say the grain villagers bring 180 grain per visit and non grain villagers bring 15 per visit. Villagers deliver their goods on a 3 day cycle. In the case of 3 grain villages and 4 non grain villages (Sanala) this means in a 3 day period ~600 grain will be delivered to a town's market. If that town consumes 450 grain in those three days (150 per day) then there is a surplus of 150 grain that will either accumulate or be bought up by passing trade caravans.

Maybe some sort of weekly economic report could illustrate this easier without having to hand count.

I notice in your screenshots from your 1.4 game some towns have food stores as high as 700. Is that from a mod or a change made in 1.4? Larger food stores relative to food production and trade volume should help to smooth the egregious behaviour of the current food system, though the problem can't be solved by that change alone.

Yep, this is from 1.4.0 (no mods). Max food stock capacity has been increased to 700. This does help smooth out the periods of low food when lords come by, but there are still major issues with the system. When a town reaches the maximum prosperity it's food sources can support, the towns will always be left with an empty food stock, leaving them susceptible to an errant lord in search of food, or a hostile army. Here's the same campaign as before with some of the towns that have reached this point:

I think a 'Food Scarcity' debuff to prosperity would go a long way to fixing the foods stocks from equaling out at 0. Make it a negative modifier that ranges from say, -1 to -10 that is based on what percentage of your food stocks have been consumed (so 10% gone would be -1 and 100% gone would be -10), then the food shortage modifier to prosperity can take it's place or stack on top of it when the stocks are empty and food supply is still negative.

This wouldn't solve the issue of maximum supportable prosperity being mostly predetermined based on how many grain villages (and other foods) supply any given town. But that's a tougher issue to solve than just adding a couple modifers. It probably requires some modification to the trade caravans' behavior, or basing the largest consumed item per day on whats produced regionally (like fish, grain, or meat + dairy, for instance).

It might also help to balance out the passive food modifiers (bound villages, orchards, etc.) with the trade menu item modifiers (grain, fish, etc.) so it's closer to a 50/50 split, because lords buying food can't affect the passive modifiers.

The food/prosperity system is the way it is right now because the devs want it to be dynamic and responsive to things like raiding, sieging, and trade, which is only possible if the trade commodities are tied into the same food modifiers that affect garrisons and militia starvation. The less you tie these systems together the more static the sieging process will feel unfortunately.

 

[kweassa]

Depends on the town, some towns with access to decent quantities of food do have those fluctuations but some towns without that luck really go down fast. I leave Chalas with 160 Food Supply and positive growth to go for a quick trip to search the near markets to see what I can find of new gear and when I return I find the food supply at 30 with a negative growth, that's no fluctuation, that's a tsunami of food running past the town gates at the back of Nobles, Caravans or random Armies (no idea why the AI is so into creating 1000 men armies in times of peace to "patrol")

I don't see a particular problem with a town that's inherently problematic in its food supplies, not being able to support a strong garrison in the first place. Some towns in better overall strategic situation will always have higher populartion(prosperity) and strong defenses. Other towns will be lower in population and defense.

I don't see what's supposed to be wrong with that.

 

[paladinx333]

This may be one of the best discussion threads on the whole forum. There is a lot of good information here.

One thing that I did not see mentioned was the disrupting influence of a long siege. A long siege will drain all the food from the whole town (market and granary). Additionally there seems to be a negative food debuff that sticks around for several days. I had a town that was besieged for weeks that had -36 food with zero garrison present after the siege ended. The town was Marunath and none of it's villages had been raided. The -36 food thing lasted for at least two days before the villages and caravans started restocking the foodstuffs again. I sold some grain to the town immediately after the siege but it simply took some time for the debuff to go away.

Just thought I would add that.

 

[drallim33]

This may be one of the best discussion threads on the whole forum. There is a lot of good information here.

One thing that I did not see mentioned was the disrupting influence of a long siege. A long siege will drain all the food from the whole town (market and granary). Additionally there seems to be a negative food debuff that sticks around for several days. I had a town that was besieged for weeks that had -36 food with zero garrison present after the siege ended. The town was Marunath and none of it's villages had been raided. The -36 food thing lasted for at least two days before the villages and caravans started restocking the foodstuffs again. I sold some grain to the town immediately after the siege but it simply took some time for the debuff to go away.

Just thought I would add that.

It's just because a town gets most of it's food from the market, and after a siege there is usually none there. So it takes a while before it is all restocked.

The towns will not eat just any food. They want a certain amount of a variety of foods, if a town has 10000 fish and nothing else they will be starving. Grain is the thing the want most of, but they aren't satisfied by grain alone.

 

[Rush09]

I don't see a particular problem with a town that's inherently problematic in its food supplies, not being able to support a strong garrison in the first place. Some towns in better overall strategic situation will always have higher populartion(prosperity) and strong defenses. Other towns will be lower in population and defense.

I don't see what's supposed to be wrong with that.

In my view, it's not wrong but in a game the moment one of several features present takes control of a good chunk of the experience of the person playing the game, something isn't right.
Of course some towns should have it worse when it comes to certain situations but the player should be able to minimize the impact in order to enjoy the rest of the game.
The amount of times I had to dump food in that town and see it vanish shortly after, not because of town consumption but due a weird mechanic where a town sells the food it needs to survive it's something that doesn't feel right. I honestly do not care if the town is sieged and conquered, good riddance.

But now that 1.4 has reached the main branch, let's see if the changes made this better.

 

[neolae]

Just adding my similar 2 cents. I don't mind doing a massive food delivery to one of my fiefs once or twice as a task to help it grow and prosper. That's interesting and cool. ...but when it disappears nearly instantly such that I turn into a food deliveryman instead of doing the things I enjoy more in the game (war with large armies) then it becomes tedious. It seems all that really needs to be done is one or more measures that make the situation STAY HANDLED for a season or two of game time after you've done a massive delivery like that. Then it's like maintaining your fief(s) is your problem, but not your full time job.

 

[Maggot Toes]

I don't care if my towns starve, as long as the T5 and T6 garrision troops I left can make it. Let them eat out of my hoard and if that runs out and they starve it is my fault.

 

[neolae]

I don't care if my towns starve, as long as the T5 and T6 garrision troops I left can make it. Let them eat out of my hoard and if that runs out and they starve it is my fault.

In all fairness a T6 unit would be enough of a bad ass that presumably they'd be the last one standing should the garrison turn to cannibalism.

 

[Apocal]

The food/prosperity system is the way it is right now because the devs want it to be dynamic and responsive to things like raiding, sieging, and trade, which is only possible if the trade commodities are tied into the same food modifiers that affect garrisons and militia starvation. The less you tie these systems together the more static the sieging process will feel unfortunately.

I'm not sure sieging feeling like a static process is necessarily bad. Outside of the scope of this thread, of course, but there are a lot of issues with factions being able to "sneak-siege" cities that otherwise would only seldom fall if there was just a bit more time for armies to get organized and come to their relief.

 

[Solomani]

In my present game, after endless continuous wars.. pretty much every town is depleted of food. I'm lucky if I find 4 wine. I travelled far across the map, checking every town for food and everything is depleted. I'm so busy just maintaining 50 of a few core foods for my army that there's no chance of supplying a town.

Yes this is interesting, and you'd think it would pause the wars for awhile, but it doesn't seem to.

 

[GitiUsir]

The food/prosperity system is the way it is right now because the devs want it to be dynamic and responsive to things like raiding, sieging, and trade, which is only possible if the trade commodities are tied into the same food modifiers that affect garrisons and militia starvation. The less you tie these systems together the more static the sieging process will feel unfortunately.

How about this. City food storage is filled with village food until it's full, then the surplus is sold in the market.. The city consumes food from storage and replenishes it with food from villages. If there is a siege the storage doesn't replenish and eventually gets empty. If villages are being raided continuously same thing happens. That's dynamic.

Caravans, lords or player buying essential food is the problem. That shouldn't happen.

Another problem is increasing food consumption with prosperity. That should happen only if there is plenty of food in storage.

 

[Bannerman Man]

How about this. City food storage is filled with village food until it's full, then the surplus is sold in the market.. The city consumes food from storage and replenishes it with food from villages. If there is a siege the storage doesn't replenish and eventually gets empty. If villages are being raided continuously same thing happens. That's dynamic.

That's kind of already how the system works honestly.

1. Villagers supply the town with food by selling it to the market. Other sources of food income are trade caravans and passive bonuses.
2. A portion of that food is consumed/removed from the market and added to the food stocks on each daily tick.
3. When the food stocks are full the surplus food consumption is added to prosperity at a 20:1 ratio. A well fed town therefore grows faster.
4. If food is suddenly removed from the market (e.g. by an army), the negative balance is withdrawn from the settlement's food stocks on each daily tick.
5. Once food stocks hit 0 the negative food balance begins having an effect on everything else (garrisons starve, etc.).
6. Villagers and caravans eventually return to resupply the town with food and reverse the food supply crisis.

If a siege happens or a village is raided the food supply gets cut off and the stocks begin to be consumed and don't replenish until the cause of the disruption is removed.

The passive modifiers to food from bound villages and the orchards project are directly applied to the "Expected Change" number that flows into food stocks. This is effectively similar to villages selling a portion of their total goods directly into a town's food stock rather than the market. Armies buying food cannot and do not affect these passives, and they can only be removed by sieging and raiding.These passives make up anywhere from roughly 25% to 40% of the total food income of a town. Maybe more if you rush-build the orchards project while your prosperity is still low.

By not making the passives dominate the food supply you allow caravan trade, banditry, and other things to play a role in the health of a town. For instance, I can break into a siege with food in my inventory and feed a garrison that's in the midst of starving.

With food stock capacity moderately increased in 1.4.0 the issue of armies buying all the food out is really only a problem if a town was already stuggling to feed itself to begin with. If an otherwise healthy town has a full food stock and all food is purchased from its market, the town will be able to recover in a couple days before even half of the stock is wiped out, meaning minimal harm is done.

*NOTE*: It looks like something to do with orchards broke between 1.4.0 and 1.4.1. All orchards were removed from towns that had them before updating the patch, causing most towns to now be in a food crisis and in economic freefall. If you start a new game however they are still available.

 

[kweassa]

This may be one of the best discussion threads on the whole forum. There is a lot of good information here.

One thing that I did not see mentioned was the disrupting influence of a long siege. A long siege will drain all the food from the whole town (market and granary). Additionally there seems to be a negative food debuff that sticks around for several days. I had a town that was besieged for weeks that had -36 food with zero garrison present after the siege ended. The town was Marunath and none of it's villages had been raided. The -36 food thing lasted for at least two days before the villages and caravans started restocking the foodstuffs again. I sold some grain to the town immediately after the siege but it simply took some time for the debuff to go away.

Just thought I would add that.

...it's one of those things that happens when the doomsayers and trolls aren't present, spewing bullcrap like the system is somehow plain wrong, or just out to get the players, or the devs are inept and incompetent. A courteous, sincere discussion is possible, but not with those negative trolls around.

 

[drallim33]

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.