Linking prosperity with food production creates an inescapable downward spiral for fiefs

[durbal]

A big issue is that high prosperity should be advantageous in order to afford better troops in the garrison and such. But because the economy is so out of whack with item prices and troops being dirt cheap, the bonus income from high prosperity is meaningless so there's no reason to go for it.

I think prosperity and food production are fine. Perhaps change the granary to scale with prosperity is all. But the big issue is that prosperity offers little to no real benefit because when you slaughter ever-respawning enemy lords for thousands upon thousands in gold and loot then the extra hundred or so income from prosperity is pointless and actually a detriment.

I also think people do not understand how hearths, food, and everything else work and they think they should just be able to conquer a city, dump 300 men in it, then move on to ther next offensive. It shouldn't work that way and from what I've seen so far, Bannerlord handles prosperity and devstatation from war far better than even Total War/Paradox Games where it's trivialized because all you do in them is build a garrison and say 'ok, all good, where next'.

 

[Deathwish16]

A big issue is that high prosperity should be advantageous in order to afford better troops in the garrison and such. But because the economy is so out of whack with item prices and troops being dirt cheap, the bonus income from high prosperity is meaningless so there's no reason to go for it.

I think prosperity and food production are fine. Perhaps change the granary to scale with prosperity is all. But the big issue is that prosperity offers little to no real benefit because when you slaughter ever-respawning enemy lords for thousands upon thousands in gold and loot then the extra hundred or so income from prosperity is pointless and actually a detriment.

I also think people do not understand how hearths, food, and everything else work and they think they should just be able to conquer a city, dump 300 men in it, then move on to ther next offensive. It shouldn't work that way and from what I've seen so far, Bannerlord handles prosperity and devstatation from war far better than even Total War/Paradox Games where it's trivialized because all you do in them is build a garrison and say 'ok, all good, where next'.

This is something that I agree with. I do like how war brings economic devastation and should be thought as something that cannot be sustained. The issue with this is that the game is underdeveloped so there isn't much else to do besides war. For this to feel reasonable peacetime must be just as engaging as wartime. This may improve as the kingdom management system gets fleshed out.

Exactly my point - 160 storage is nothing compared to prosperity impact, going up to sometimes 150+. It's either expandind the sotrage limit (vastly, mind You), or decreasing prosperity impact on food demand.
BTW. - Who came up with that brilliant idea, that an entire city should have a storage of 160 units of food, if that amount would be enough for a party of 100 (one hundred! compared to cities 1000+ citizens) to last for... IDK... 10 days? I'll have to verify that one.

I don't know why storage was ever included in in the game. Technically you have unlimited "storage" as most food is bought from the market on a cyclic basis by the town. If food prices are high, usually caused by a shortage, the town cannot afford to consume as much as it needs and prosperity decreases. They should simply remove storage all together and have a value that ranges from positive or negative depending on whether the town can meet its consumption quota with the prices it has to work with.

They should either commit to what they have now and implement the above or drastically increase stockpile size and food purchased per cycle. This would make storage matter and make it clearer to the player the food situation of the town because the focus would be shifted from the market and to the stockpile.

 

[dicolyen]

This is something that I agree with. I do like how war brings economic devastation and should be thought as something that cannot be sustained. The issue with this is that the game is underdeveloped so there isn't much else to do besides war. For this to feel reasonable peacetime must be just as engaging as wartime. This may improve as the kingdom management system gets fleshed out.

I don't know why storage was ever included in in the game. Technically you have unlimited "storage" as most food is bought from the market on a cyclic basis by the town. If food prices are high, usually caused by a shortage, the town cannot afford to consume as much as it needs and prosperity decreases. They should simply remove storage all together and have a value that ranges from positive or negative depending on whether the town can meet its consumption quota with the prices it has to work with.

They should either commit to what they have now and implement the above or drastically increase stockpile size and food purchased per cycle. This would make storage matter and make it clearer to the player the food situation of the town because the focus would be shifted from the market and to the stockpile.

War is exactly the reason towns and castles had food storages - to be prepared for long sieges . So food storageing is a good idea, but this thing we have in game is a bad realisation of it .

 

[dicolyen]

A big issue is that high prosperity should be advantageous in order to afford better troops in the garrison and such. But because the economy is so out of whack with item prices and troops being dirt cheap, the bonus income from high prosperity is meaningless so there's no reason to go for it.

I think prosperity and food production are fine. Perhaps change the granary to scale with prosperity is all. But the big issue is that prosperity offers little to no real benefit because when you slaughter ever-respawning enemy lords for thousands upon thousands in gold and loot then the extra hundred or so income from prosperity is pointless and actually a detriment.

I also think people do not understand how hearths, food, and everything else work and they think they should just be able to conquer a city, dump 300 men in it, then move on to ther next offensive. It shouldn't work that way and from what I've seen so far, Bannerlord handles prosperity and devstatation from war far better than even Total War/Paradox Games where it's trivialized because all you do in them is build a garrison and say 'ok, all good, where next'.

Man, it's not "accurate, ralistic economical madieval sim", it's a 11th century based sandbox. Most of the time it was "conquer and move on" back then. Thats the way MnB was, thats the way Warband was. I dont suppose there is a different plan for Bannerlord. Want an economical sim? This is not it. And even if someone wants to be a trader in Bannerlord - the prosperity/food issue wont be too much of a deal for him. For aspiring kings its gonna be.
Much different than in Warband, where You could load tons of soldiers into castles, never minding anything. We do not ask for this, we simply ask for some balancing, so we can leave some garrison in castles safely. Right now, there is no option to leave a city to itself for longer than a few days without it losing its garrison or being overrun by a 350+ army, because we couldnt leave any garrison in it. That's not roleplaying a ruler, thats roleplaying a city ovner.

 

[FBohler]

• Farmers don't get rich

This is just not true.

 

[durbal]

Man, it's not "accurate, ralistic economical madieval sim", it's a 11th century based sandbox. Most of the time it was "conquer and move on" back then. Thats the way MnB was, thats the way Warband was. I dont suppose there is a different plan for Bannerlord. Want an economical sim? This is not it. And even if someone wants to be a trader in Bannerlord - the prosperity/food issue wont be too much of a deal for him. For aspiring kings its gonna be.
Much different than in Warband, where You could load tons of soldiers into castles, never minding anything. We do not ask for this, we simply ask for some balancing, so we can leave some garrison in castles safely. Right now, there is no option to leave a city to itself for longer than a few days without it losing its garrison or being overrun by a 350+ army, because we couldnt leave any garrison in it. That's not roleplaying a ruler, thats roleplaying a city ovner.

The idea that the game should be dumbed down and interesting mechanics that were touted as making Bannerlord more than Mount and Blade with new graphics should be scrapped because some people don't understand that when towns are raided they can't produce food is...an interesting take. And no, I don't want an economics sim. I want a game where wars have greater depth than marching an army up to a castle and waiting while some tents are built.

 

[Paxsa]

My problem with all of this is no matter what i do, low or high prosperity, my towns and castles are starving. There is no real workaround atm. So its not that great of mechanic.

 

[dicolyen]

The idea that the game should be dumbed down and interesting mechanics that were touted as making Bannerlord more than Mount and Blade with new graphics should be scrapped because some people don't understand that when towns are raided they can't produce food is...an interesting take. And no, I don't want an economics sim. I want a game where wars have greater depth than marching an army up to a castle and waiting while some tents are built.

Ok then. Walk me through the metal hard logic of having a stock of 160 food storage for an entire city settled in war times, when 160 food units is enough for them for, like, a day? two days? Go!

 

[dicolyen]

My problem with all of this is no matter what i do, low or high prosperity, my towns and castles are starving. There is no real workaround atm. So its not that great of mechanic.

Tru dat

 

[Parkerg12]

So in my playthrough were I am building my own empire I have had a lot of success with the town of Zeonica I'm on day 1100ish and have 13566 prosperity, Epicrotea also has 13700 however I have not been actively managing it so why it is so high is unclear to me. the reason for zeonicas success is clear - I never let it starve and never let issues or bandits thrive. however in regards to food: The city tends to cycle between full granaries and starving on a routine basis (which causes some garrison loss). What I see are mechanics working as intended, but flaws are showing up. When the granaries are full, demand drops off which causes traders to reroute to provide food to other cities. this causes food to drop off like a rock until the now starving city is attractive enough for traders to come back. By the time enough food has reached the city it is starving. As food reaches the city it slowly gets back in the positive direction. Quickly however it reaches a full stockpile and the demand is no longer high enough to maintain the supply. the cycle then repeats. Early on I routinely dumped food in the cities market which I bought from my soon to be invaded neighbors (it does cause their garrisons to die except during sieges for some reason and is a legit tactic). this was a stop gab as the city would then have such low demand traders would re-route. to fix this cities need to always be demanding food maybe even when they have full stockpiles as the drop off in demand caused by the full stockpile is causing a boom bust scenario. Cites should also have a higher threshold for each resource before they become abundant. This will increase the price of the goods causing the city to desire more of it and thus increasing the food supply it wants to have. Stockpiles should also be increased to balance siege warfare and garrison sizes. with these tweaks as long as the market can meet the demand of a cites food desires shortages should not occur.

I think with just a couple minor tweaks towns can have there food economy balanced while maintained the current game mechanics which are pretty darn coo. (castles are another story and either need there own market or have little to no prosperity AKA making them food producers not consumers.

 

[Pejot]

So in my playthrough were I am building my own empire I have had a lot of success with the town of Zeonica I'm on day 1100ish and have 13566 prosperity, Epicrotea also has 13700 however I have not been actively managing it so why it is so high is unclear to me. the reason for zeonicas success is clear - I never let it starve and never let issues or bandits thrive. however in regards to food: The city tends to cycle between full granaries and starving on a routine basis (which causes some garrison loss). What I see are mechanics working as intended, but flaws are showing up. When the granaries are full, demand drops off which causes traders to reroute to provide food to other cities. this causes food to drop off like a rock until the now starving city is attractive enough for traders to come back. By the time enough food has reached the city it is starving. As food reaches the city it slowly gets back in the positive direction. Quickly however it reaches a full stockpile and the demand is no longer high enough to maintain the supply. the cycle then repeats. Early on I routinely dumped food in the cities market which I bought from my soon to be invaded neighbors (it does cause their garrisons to die except during sieges for some reason and is a legit tactic). this was a stop gab as the city would then have such low demand traders would re-route. to fix this cities need to always be demanding food maybe even when they have full stockpiles as the drop off in demand caused by the full stockpile is causing a boom bust scenario. Cites should also have a higher threshold for each resource before they become abundant. This will increase the price of the goods causing the city to desire more of it and thus increasing the food supply it wants to have. Stockpiles should also be increased to balance siege warfare and garrison sizes. with these tweaks as long as the market can meet the demand of a cites food desires shortages should not occur.

I think with just a couple minor tweaks towns can have there food economy balanced while maintained the current game mechanics which are pretty darn coo. (castles are another story and either need there own market or have little to no prosperity AKA making them food producers not consumers.

Right now -1 food is -1 prosperity.
This calculation takes too much time to balance the whole thing cause it takes 50-100 (not sure about exact number) prosperity to lower food by 1. This makes it so if the -1 food drops prosperity by 1 point each day it will take 50 or more days to balance it to 0.
Granary losses food whenever it's on below 0 so if You're lucky and have full granary You may be able to keep your garrison until it balances.
In case the food drop is lower below 0 the granary depletes faster but prosperity is still dropping to slow which causes Los in garrison.
I think they should change priority of food distribution so granary depletes last after the market is empty (no food products). As long as there's any food production granary should be filled first and market second. This way granary will play its role as siege protection while lack of food will affect prosperity.
There's also a problem with some buffs to prosperity (which AI tends to use a lot) making prosperity grow while food is below 0. The granary is empty and prosperity still raises causing higher food shortage and garrison starving. It balances itself after You have empty garrison and prosperity starts dropping to the point where food is again above 0 (this however may not occur if prosperity buffs are high)

 

[Deathwish16]

So in my playthrough were I am building my own empire I have had a lot of success with the town of Zeonica I'm on day 1100ish and have 13566 prosperity, Epicrotea also has 13700 however I have not been actively managing it so why it is so high is unclear to me. the reason for zeonicas success is clear - I never let it starve and never let issues or bandits thrive. however in regards to food: The city tends to cycle between full granaries and starving on a routine basis (which causes some garrison loss). What I see are mechanics working as intended, but flaws are showing up. When the granaries are full, demand drops off which causes traders to reroute to provide food to other cities. this causes food to drop off like a rock until the now starving city is attractive enough for traders to come back. By the time enough food has reached the city it is starving. As food reaches the city it slowly gets back in the positive direction. Quickly however it reaches a full stockpile and the demand is no longer high enough to maintain the supply. the cycle then repeats. Early on I routinely dumped food in the cities market which I bought from my soon to be invaded neighbors (it does cause their garrisons to die except during sieges for some reason and is a legit tactic). this was a stop gab as the city would then have such low demand traders would re-route. to fix this cities need to always be demanding food maybe even when they have full stockpiles as the drop off in demand caused by the full stockpile is causing a boom bust scenario. Cites should also have a higher threshold for each resource before they become abundant. This will increase the price of the goods causing the city to desire more of it and thus increasing the food supply it wants to have. Stockpiles should also be increased to balance siege warfare and garrison sizes. with these tweaks as long as the market can meet the demand of a cites food desires shortages should not occur.

I think with just a couple minor tweaks towns can have there food economy balanced while maintained the current game mechanics which are pretty darn coo. (castles are another story and either need there own market or have little to no prosperity AKA making them food producers not consumers.

I really don't know how you would go about tweaking something like this. Is it possible for you to post a screen shot so I could see the price swings in detail? Other people have complained about this issue but I think you understand the game's system enough to provide a good example. Price swings like this should not happen unless there is a bug in the caravan ai or the supply and demand calculations.

 

[Parkerg12]

I really don't know how you would go about tweaking something like this. Is it possible for you to post a screen shot so I could see the price swings in detail? Other people have complained about this issue but I think you understand the game's system enough to provide a good example. Price swings like this should not happen unless there is a bug in the caravan ai or the supply and demand calculations.

I do not have knowledge of the actual code to understand what can be tweaked but I imagine cities "prices are based upon there consumption". from my understanding the higher the cities prosperity the higher its consumption should be. the rate of consumption can be seen under the manage settlement- Hover your mouse over the basket for instance Zeonica at 12k pros consumes 110 grain another city at 5k only consumes 30 grain. what I see is that this massive rate of consumption is really hard to keep up with and the city burns through its markets supply faster than caravans can keep up. especially if the city recently had a full stockpile - which would causes prices for goods to drop making caravans go elsewhere. another major issue I see is the AI is raid crazy causing alot of cities to run at food shortages. this means alot of cities are going to have High demand for food as their pillage lands cannot support them. So actually reducing the amount of raiding going on may help as less cities would be starving meaning less demand and thus less pressure on caravans to meet the demands.

 

[Deathwish16]

I do not have knowledge of the actual code to understand what can be tweaked but I imagine cities "prices are based upon there consumption". from my understanding the higher the cities prosperity the higher its consumption should be. the rate of consumption can be seen under the manage settlement- Hover your mouse over the basket for instance Zeonica at 12k pros consumes 110 grain another city at 5k only consumes 30 grain. what I see is that this massive rate of consumption is really hard to keep up with and the city burns through its markets supply faster than caravans can keep up. especially if the city recently had a full stockpile - which would causes prices for goods to drop making caravans go elsewhere. another major issue I see is the AI is raid crazy causing alot of cities to run at food shortages. this means alot of cities are going to have High demand for food as their pillage lands cannot support them. So actually reducing the amount of raiding going on may help as less cities would be starving meaning less demand and thus less pressure on caravans to meet the demands.

Its not that I don't understand how it is happening, its just I have not been able to replicate the problem in my game. All of my theories and understanding is based off of observation so I just wanted a screen shot get a window into your game. Its probably better if you don't post a screenshot because after some thought I realized that they would probably not provide and clarity to the market situation.

Assuming the caravan issue is true I believe this is because of even worse market conditions elsewhere in the world. There may be a town that is starving so badly that it is literally pulling food supplies from other towns to rectify the price imbalance, starving the towns around it. This ties into a glaring issue with the games caravans as I do not see village to town trade through the caravans so instead of drawing from the hyper food abundant villages the caravans steal food from nearby towns that certainly cannot afford to play food profiteer. The only way food from villages reaches towns is when a slow, vulnerable, low carrying capacity villager parties that are too slow to pump food into the market.

 

[heu3becteh]

The city tends to cycle between full granaries and starving on a routine basis (which causes some garrison loss). What I see are mechanics working as intended, but flaws are showing up. When the granaries are full, demand drops off which causes traders to reroute to provide food to other cities. this causes food to drop off like a rock until the now starving city is attractive enough for traders to come back. By the time enough food has reached the city it is starving.

I believe prosperity should decrease when the food is decreasing. Right now the death waves happen because:
1. Prosperity continues to increase even while food amount in storage decreases, making it decrease even faster. So even if you will just increase food storage amount - it will not help right away. Prosperity should be increased only with positive food balance. Or maybe even food shortage should be added to calculation like now, but not the food shortage below 0 (when starving), but food shortage even when town still has something in storage.
2. Food storage is small and lasts a couple of days. It does not bring much stability. I guess it should be around 10 times larger.
3. Prices are jumping faster when difference between current and stable price is higher (maybe that change follows some exponential equation too, see the topic about price formulation), so if some trader brings huge amounts of food - price drops faster than it will rise back after the food is eaten.
4. Food is eaten at much faster pace when it is available in larger amounts (overconsumption). And it even brings 10 times less prosperity.
With 1 and 2 it should already shift the food-prosperity waves equilibrium towards full granary, without garrison dying.

Right now -1 food is -1 prosperity.

More than just -1 food = -1 prosperity. It works like that for food shortage. For food surplus +10 food converts to +1 prosperity. So there is an overconsumption of one order of magnitude.
And citizens eat all the food much faster to start starving again.
And when they do start starving, as you said, it takes time to bring back the demand, to decrease prosperity again.

Price swings like this should not happen unless there is a bug in the caravan ai or the supply and demand calculations.

You can see how prices do work now here:
Supply and Demand self-balancing economy and how it does work now
There are big price shifts when stocks are huge, but close to linear (and much smaller) when stocks are 0.

I do not have knowledge of the actual code to understand what can be tweaked but I imagine cities "prices are based upon there consumption". from my understanding the higher the cities prosperity the higher its consumption should be. the rate of consumption can be seen under the manage settlement- Hover your mouse over the basket for instance Zeonica at 12k pros consumes 110 grain another city at 5k only consumes 30 grain. what I see is that this massive rate of consumption is really hard to keep up with and the city burns through its markets supply faster than caravans can keep up.

I do not have a knowledge of code, but I did some tests to find out how things work.
Prices are based on prosperity and stock amount. Generally.
And food consumed is increased when the stock is higher, so it depends not solely on prosperity. There is some cap for food consumption though.

 

[Deathwish16]

More than just -1 food = -1 prosperity. It works like that for food shortage. For food surplus +10 food converts to +1 prosperity. So there is an overconsumption of one order of magnitude.
And citizens eat all the food much faster to start starving again.

So from what I interpret from this is that there is no cap on food consumption and a town will keep consuming food even if they meet their current consumption requirements. This may cause a prosperity bonus but it is dangerous if they consume the entire supply.

You can see how prices do work now here:
Supply and Demand self-balancing economy and how it does work now
There are big price shifts when stocks are huge, but close to linear (and much smaller) when stocks are 0.

This basically means the entire economy is fundamentally broken. Both supply increases and decreases should effect the price at equal rates. If buying a commodity caused its price to increase at a slower rate than it decreases when sold that would encourage over consumption. This explains why caravans can completely raid a town of its food supply as buying the food will not increase at a fast enough rate to discourage massive purchases.
I assume Taleworlds did this so towns have a buffer where food prices are low during a shortage. However, if a town runs though its entire supply of food as a result of over consumption or caravan raids prices do not matter.

 

[heu3becteh]

So from what I interpret from this is that there is no cap on food consumption and a town will keep consuming food even if they meet their current consumption requirements. This may cause a prosperity bonus but it is dangerous if they consume the entire supply.

Well, there is a cap (for example, grain consumption will be around same for 10000 grain storage and for 5000 grain storage), but generally town consumes more food when it does have more food.

This basically means the entire economy is fundamentally broken. Both supply increases and decreases should effect the price at equal rates. If buying a commodity caused its price to increase at a slower rate than it decreases when sold that would encourage over consumption. This explains why caravans can completely raid a town of its food supply as buying the food will not increase at a fast enough rate to discourage massive purchases.

I would not say as much as it is broken. It has problems...
I think the problem is that the game changes "long-term" (changed daily) prices too fast. And it seems to be using some exponential function (so with huge stock amount changes are great), while changes with 0 stock are capped (to prevent them from becoming infinite, I guess?). I guess these "long-term" (daily) changes could be just tuned down with current price system. I did propose some other equations too with separate "short-term" and "long-term" parts (now they seem to use one function).

I assume Taleworlds did this so towns have a buffer where food prices are low during a shortage. However, if a town runs though its entire supply of food as a result of over consumption or caravan raids prices do not matter.

Food prices are becoming relatively low during shortage with "short-term" changes, which are related to the stock amount and amount purchased/sold, so if another caravan will start buying food back, it will become the same price as before (how it should be, as you said). But the "long-term" changes can shift prices too much when the date changes.

 

[TrashMan]

Food consumption should be tied with population and population ONLY.
Prosperity should affect income and also immigration into the town (which should also be affected by other things, like war, relations of nearby villages, population density?)
And food stockpiles should be much, MUCH higher.

HOWEVER, recruiting troops from villages would reduce village food production (lass farmers)?
Recruiting from town would reduce town population?

 

[Tintenkobold]

With my towns being safe as hell (as I'm actively partolling them and selling items only there) my prosperity sky-rocketed. It's just impossible to keep up with food production or decrease prosperity. There is no option other than war but that breaks the whole concept of having a town.

So what are my results after 100h+ play time with this save?

• ~5 towns
• All have food up to 160 but it drops zu zero every now and then for no clear reason
• Garrison is 0 - all my worthy soldiers died because of starvation
• Constant war against all factions - they know about the missing garrisons and want to make a quick win
• Donating food gives a small boost but can't solve any problem in long term
• Since there is constant war, all armies suffer, everybody has crappy soldiers and towns are often completely without food
• Since there is so much weakness in the system, bandits feel free to do whatever they want and steal additional food from villages
• Bannerlord transformed to "get thousands of grain, donate it and watch your garrisons die"-simulator. I gave up on this, my towns stay without garrison and I keep my bst soldiers in my own, massive army (336 max atm...still increasing with clan tier, perks and policies). Tier <4 gets dumped into the towns for hunger death

If you ask me that's another broken mechanic regarding food.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I don't want to lose my garrison troops for any reason. The only purpose of a town or castle is to hoard troops. They can stop paying taxes, the militia can disband, I could get -influence and relations with notables, FINE, but my army is mine and it comes before the stupid town and it's stupid NPCs.
I hope for an option to set food priority so the town can **** off if it can't hack it and I can store food my self for MY ARMY not some useless crap people.
For now I just buy literally all the food and sell it to my towns (inadvertently weakening enemy garrisons)and store some for later in stash. I wish I could just give to the town food stock or just the garrison in a more controlled, transparent way.

I'm all for the eco-strategy game stuff in Bannerlord, but if I can't put a dependable amount of troops in storage and leave to raise more and have them be there when I get back...... I'll mod it out, because building troops up is the point of castles and towns.