Spend less time baybysitting towns

[limier]

Could be great to spend less time babysitting towns,
cities that are producing foods stuff are starving when you increase the number of caravans because they buy all the food.
example : Argoron with the fish.

you constantly need to buy and inject food into the market to prevent the garrison to starve.

 

[Koshkasa]

Could be great to spend less time babysitting towns,
cities that are producing foods stuff are starving when you increase the number of caravans because they buy all the food.
example : Argoron with the fish.

you constantly need to buy and inject food into the market to prevent the garrison to starve.

What version are you on? I've had a few different fiefs over my e1.3.0 beta saves, and the only case when I needed to manually bring food was when my villages were raided. Caravans and lords buying food got me down from 160 to 100 food reserves at most.
And the last example was a pretty funny situation where any campaign originating from Sturgia would go through my Epicrotea into imperial lands, buying everything there was to buy.

 

[limier]

i'm currently playing in 1.3.0 (beta branch). My food is going down really fast because the price of the fish in argoron is very low and each caravan entering buy 100 fishs, 10 caravans and everyone is starving. i don't know if i am the only one having this problem but my granary is at top and i conquered the closest castles around the city (lochana and atrion) and puted everything at max but i'm still struggling with food.

 

[Koshkasa]

i'm currently playing in 1.3.0 (beta branch). My food is going down really fast because the price of the fish in argoron is very low and each caravan entering buy 100 fishs, 10 caravans and everyone is starving. i don't know if i am the only one having this problem but my granary is at top and i conquered the closest castles around the city (lochana and atrion) and puted everything at max but i'm still struggling with food.

Are villagers safely reaching the city? They could be eaten by a trillion looter parties.
Are Lime Kilns on max level? (guessing from your previous post that they are).
What's the prosperity level of the city / Garrison and Militia sizes?

None of these counter caravan shopping runs, but food might be leaking away in one of these spots. Sorry if these questions are dumb, just something one could theoretically miss at first glance.

An interesting observation nontheless, gotta try getting a more active trade city on the next playthrough to see for myself.

 

[gulegule]

It would be good to have better tools to see why food shortages are happening. Town 'security' can be at 100 but that doesn't really tell you if villagers or caravans are getting hit by bandits. I also think that towns with 1 main food product are more vulnerable, since villages producing that product will drive the price down, which means a caravan will want to scoop it all up while selling some non-food trade good. Dumping other food types can help, since the price stays high enough that traders don't cart it off.

Having some town ordinances for this stuff could be useful: like 'Rationing' which reduces the prosperity effect on food supply, but reduces prosperity and loyalty, or 'Export Ban on <food product>' which prohibits merchants from buying a product, but reduces prosperity growth and maybe does a hit to local notable relations.

 

[Koshkasa]

Having some town ordinances for this stuff could be useful: like 'Rationing' which reduces the prosperity effect on food supply, but reduces prosperity and loyalty, or 'Export Ban on <food product>' which prohibits merchants from buying a product, but reduces prosperity growth and maybe does a hit to local notable relations.

First, the function of granaries needs to be fixed. So far the towns continue to grow in prosperity during shortages (food reserves being depleted), and it only stops when the town is already starving with no reserves left. Granaries therefore amplify the effect rather than serving as a buffer.

I've seen a much more in-depth post on the matter, but I can't seem to find it.

 

[limier]

well, i have some parties in the area sometime, never had any raid on villages and i always destroy the bigger groups of looters / bandits around, even the hideouts. the number of villagers travelling to the town is superior to 100 so the looters bandits doesn't attack them, or never saw this happened. i aggree that more tools to manage prosperity would be good, the prosperity of my town now is around 5000, 200 garrison top tier soldiers ( top tier troops are not eating more than regular troops i guess?) and some close cities like Amprela or Saneopa have higher prosperity and garrison (280 -350, <7000 prosp) but they are always positive in food supply.

 

[hruza]

Food shortages are part of the overall balance. They prevent prosperity to raise indefinitely. When town raises in prosperity, it will start consume more food. Food becomes scarce and can cause starvation, which will lower prosperity, which makes town consume less food, restoring food supply. On top comes other factors like wars, raiding, trade, looters and so on.

As a player you can influence this process only to some extend.

Btw, bringing too much food and dumping it on the town in the well meant effort to remedy shortage may cause prices of the food to bottom down attracting traders to come and buy it off. You may as well make things worst by doing so.

 

[Owen Wulfson]

At this point, the system regulating food surplus for settlements is counter-intuitive and more than a little daunting for new players. It should be far more clear-cut and easier to manage. When you're given a town or castle for the first time, your immediate instinct is to begin setting up a robust garrison so you can increase your power and protect it from traveling AI armies. But nothing save for extensive studies on the forum will actually explain the mechanics of maintaining a Garrison, so most players in such a situation will only find out when their newly installed troops (some likely veterans) start deserting.

Simply put, the ease by which we can maintain hundreds of soldiers in the field is reversed by how hard it is to maintain a garrison of only a handful of men. A fief should be an opportunity for the player to be able to assemble a capable force and raise the floor for possible failure in the event of a total defeat on the field. What it is right now (even with planned Beta Updates) is somewhat of a liability since we can't be sure if the troops we garrison won't start deserting with turn of the winds whilst we are out campaigning.

If this issue is not fixed by the developers by the time I start up a new campaign, I will find the best mod available for eliminating the garrison food issue utterly. As it stands, the idea of fiddling with such a matter sounds like something meant for an ironman campaign, not a normal or even hard play-through.

 

[Koshkasa]

Food shortages are part of the overall balance. They prevent prosperity to raise indefinitely.

It's certainly the intention, but with the current implementation fiefs don't gravitate towards a prosperity they can reliably supply, but rather exhibit a suicide sinusoidal prosperity oscillation that kills some fraction of your garrison every time the food dips to zero. That makes it look like a mistake on the player's behalf, which it really isn't.

 

[Owen Wulfson]

It's certainly the intention, but with the current implementation fiefs don't gravitate towards a prosperity they can reliably supply, but rather exhibit a suicide sinusoidal prosperity oscillation that kills some fraction of your garrison every time the food dips to zero. That makes it look like a mistake on the player's behalf, which it really isn't.

I concur. While I understand that the dev's had the idea of creating a balance against bloated garrisons, the result seems more mistake than calculation. In all honesty, I would rather they had not bothered with such a system at all or at least limited any adverse effects to non-player troops among the militia. The emphasis should always be on "fun" and not "fiddly."

 

[hruza]

It's certainly the intention, but with the current implementation fiefs don't gravitate towards a prosperity they can reliably supply, but rather exhibit a suicide sinusoidal prosperity oscillation that kills some fraction of your garrison every time the food dips to zero. That makes it look like a mistake on the player's behalf, which it really isn't.

I don't think fiefs are made to gravitate to some prosperity on their own, I think food shortages are meant to limit prosperity to the level local economy can support at any given moment -all factors including. In other words, food shortages are inevitable and they are not meant to be avoided.

Now I am not defending this system. I am not saying it's good ...or bad for that matter. It's very complex one and I don't understand it in all it's complexity. I am simply pointing out that fighting it and trying to prevent food shortages is like pissing against the wind. Since economy is designed to autobalance, when you as a player do something that upsets that balance, usually by trying to raise prosperity and food supply, the opposite forces gets triggered to restore the balance. More effort you make, the stronger opposite force becomes.

This is why players gets frustrated, because it seems, that game itself plays against them and their efforts. They see food shortage, go buy ton of food, dump it on the strawing town ...only to see prices crash and caravans from all over Calradia rush in to buy it off -carrying it back to places where you bought it from to begin with -because by buying all food there, you have raised the price and thus profit in bringing it back.

So my advice is: don't dwell too much on the "housekeeping" your fiefs. Build improvements, set policies, but consider fiefs only as a resource. Don't try simvilage, simcastle or simcity on them. It won't work.

There of course is an issue with strawing garrisons and judging from the fact, that devs are tweaking it, I take that they are aware of the problem. But here again overall intention is to prevent garrisons to become too powerful and unbalancing the game. I think solution would be to create some buffer that would prevent food shortage spikes causing garrisons to desert. As you have pointed out, granaries right now does not do that.

 

[gulegule]

So my advice is: don't dwell too much on the "housekeeping" your fiefs... Don't try simvilage, simcastle or simcity on them. It won't work.

I mean obviously none of us want to do that (see the title of this thread). The problem is, as it stands the game makes you. The system that exists is too complicated to predict, and punishes failing to predict it.

 

[KnightNI]

why would they have a dumb system of food to stop prosperity from getting to high? a more logical solution would be to put a "cap" on prosperity so it cant go past a certain number.

 

[hruza]

why would they have a dumb system of food to stop prosperity from getting to high? a more logical solution would be to put a "cap" on prosperity so it cant go past a certain number.

Probably because prosperity is tied to consumption of not just food, but also other trade goods in the game. It's part of the oweral economy. But I don't know the details, just guessing here.

 

[Maximum997]

why would they have a dumb system of food to stop prosperity from getting to high?

Too many things in this game looks cool only on paper...

 

[Maximum997]

Towns should not sell any food, if their food storage lower then 25\50% (make it optional). Problem with starvation solved.

 

[D0c1]

i'm using this mod and i didn't have to babysit my 3 towns in my 1500 days playthrough.

V's Food Supply Wariness

People are now wary of their food supply. This mod addresses the prosperity -> food death spiral by reducing prosperity growth depending on a town's food situation.

www.nexusmods.com

 

[paladinx333]

In 1.2.1 I am not having the food supply issues that I experienced in earlier versions. All of my possessions have positive food even with decent sized garrisons.

 

[limier]

i'm using this mod and i didn't have to babysit my 3 towns in my 1500 days playthrough.

V's Food Supply Wariness

People are now wary of their food supply. This mod addresses the prosperity -> food death spiral by reducing prosperity growth depending on a town's food situation.

www.nexusmods.com

i don't want to use mods right now, i'm waiting for the last release of the game but the problem with prosperity is that you have no efficient ways to decrease it in the current version of the game (1.4.0 beta now for me).

edit : i just saw they increased the granary bonus in the 1.4.0 version ! maybe it could solve this food problem after all. The top granary food bonus is +600 now.