Simply put, the current system in game for food management with castles and cities is completely broken.
Currently the two biggest issues with this game mechanic:
-Increased prosperity reduces food. As your population grows, your food needs go up - yes, this makes sense, however, it is counterproductive from a gameplay standpoint.
-Garrisons consume a huge amount of food.
Here is an example:
In this moderately prosperous castle, I am suffering a - 16 modifier from prosperity. Since the max upgrades from food in this castle don't even come close to making up for -16, there is no way for my castle to be prosperous, and also make enough food. There is currently NO ingame mechanic that I can see to increase my food production in this castle. Selling food to villages does not help, I cannot sell food to the castle directly, and there is no way to "add" food to the castles stockpile directly, despite the fact that I have the resources to buy thousands of units of food.
You will also see in the above screenshot that my garrison reduces food by another -8. Currently, I have 160 troops garrisoned at this castle.
Now, there are two ways for me to "temporarily" fix this issue:
- I can wait for the prosperity to tick down as the castle starves, and eventually that -16 will hit a point where food is positive again. However, this means I can NEVER let my prosperity grow beyond that point or we are again going to be starving. While I think there is something to be said for balancing fief growth. As a player, this is not only counterproductive from a gameplay loop perspective (I do not want to be constantly micro managing every fief to ensure this is intact), it is also somewhat horrible from a role play perspective that I am sitting on 300k gold and 500 stacks of grain in my army, waiting for a castles population to slowly die until the food is sustainable. Why would this ever happen?
- I can remove 100% of my garrison.
I think the reason why this does not work is obvious. At this point in the game, enemy lords regularly run around in armies of 300-900, and having no garrison in my castle would mean it is defenseless. At this point in the campaign I need at least 250-300 troops in every castle to form an adequate defense.
It is worth noting that constantly clearing bandit bases and roaming bandits around your settlements does seem to boost the food boosts you get for your castle, but only by 1 or 2, and it requires CONSTANT presence fighting bandits around your home area.
What all of this means is that, currently, the fief ownership system is:
-incredibly micro heavy, causing you to stay at home and fight bandits all day and night
-leave your castles largely undefended
-avoid gaining prosperity, as you cannot have prosperity, food, and troops, only 1 of the 3
-no hope of ever seeing your fiefs garrisoned with 600+ defenders, like what the game will throw at you
The food management system needs a serious overhaul, if campaigns are ever going to function correctly.
Possible solutions:
-Add more tiers to granary production
-Instead of a +1, make granary production a % modifier that scales with prosperity / population
-Allow the player to deposit food directly to fiefs - after all, you did pay for a granary upgrade
-Allow some kind of upgrade to villages that expands food production
-Rehaul trading/caravan system to allow for a focus on food getting delivered where it needs to
It is very frustrating to have spent the last 20 hours in game training up a huge army, upgrading every building on my fiefs, and sitting on hundreds of thousands of gold, to find that I cannot garrison troops in my fiefs and basically need to watch everyone starve.
Currently the two biggest issues with this game mechanic:
-Increased prosperity reduces food. As your population grows, your food needs go up - yes, this makes sense, however, it is counterproductive from a gameplay standpoint.
-Garrisons consume a huge amount of food.
Here is an example:
In this moderately prosperous castle, I am suffering a - 16 modifier from prosperity. Since the max upgrades from food in this castle don't even come close to making up for -16, there is no way for my castle to be prosperous, and also make enough food. There is currently NO ingame mechanic that I can see to increase my food production in this castle. Selling food to villages does not help, I cannot sell food to the castle directly, and there is no way to "add" food to the castles stockpile directly, despite the fact that I have the resources to buy thousands of units of food.
You will also see in the above screenshot that my garrison reduces food by another -8. Currently, I have 160 troops garrisoned at this castle.
Now, there are two ways for me to "temporarily" fix this issue:
- I can wait for the prosperity to tick down as the castle starves, and eventually that -16 will hit a point where food is positive again. However, this means I can NEVER let my prosperity grow beyond that point or we are again going to be starving. While I think there is something to be said for balancing fief growth. As a player, this is not only counterproductive from a gameplay loop perspective (I do not want to be constantly micro managing every fief to ensure this is intact), it is also somewhat horrible from a role play perspective that I am sitting on 300k gold and 500 stacks of grain in my army, waiting for a castles population to slowly die until the food is sustainable. Why would this ever happen?
- I can remove 100% of my garrison.
I think the reason why this does not work is obvious. At this point in the game, enemy lords regularly run around in armies of 300-900, and having no garrison in my castle would mean it is defenseless. At this point in the campaign I need at least 250-300 troops in every castle to form an adequate defense.
It is worth noting that constantly clearing bandit bases and roaming bandits around your settlements does seem to boost the food boosts you get for your castle, but only by 1 or 2, and it requires CONSTANT presence fighting bandits around your home area.
What all of this means is that, currently, the fief ownership system is:
-incredibly micro heavy, causing you to stay at home and fight bandits all day and night
-leave your castles largely undefended
-avoid gaining prosperity, as you cannot have prosperity, food, and troops, only 1 of the 3
-no hope of ever seeing your fiefs garrisoned with 600+ defenders, like what the game will throw at you
The food management system needs a serious overhaul, if campaigns are ever going to function correctly.
Possible solutions:
-Add more tiers to granary production
-Instead of a +1, make granary production a % modifier that scales with prosperity / population
-Allow the player to deposit food directly to fiefs - after all, you did pay for a granary upgrade
-Allow some kind of upgrade to villages that expands food production
-Rehaul trading/caravan system to allow for a focus on food getting delivered where it needs to
It is very frustrating to have spent the last 20 hours in game training up a huge army, upgrading every building on my fiefs, and sitting on hundreds of thousands of gold, to find that I cannot garrison troops in my fiefs and basically need to watch everyone starve.
) and sell it to my villi ages at a loss - this boosts the food for a bit.
