Town starving but I can't give them food

[Adrivan]

I got my first town recently. The food level is 0 with expected change of -13. Because of this, the town's loyalty is decreasing every day.
I'm buying tons of food from nearby towns and selling it to my town, but I don't notice any change in the food value. Expected change is still -13 even though the town has a lot more food in its stock now.

Is this a bug or am I understanding the mechanics wrong?

 

[paladinx333]

I don't think that selling grain to the market does anything for the food calculation.

The whole way towns and castles food supply works is just terrible. You should be able to give them food directly by storing it in a granary. The food mechanic for settlements and castles needs to be reworked.

 

[Falrock]

I think there should be some kind of way to supply your town but make sure it isn't too easy to do so. Maybe do something like every 1000+ units of food given to the town gives it +1 or something like that. That way it won't be too easy to instantly replenish your towns supply but it will enable you to do so.

 

[ThirdHorseman]

How do villages and towns supply themselves with food?

 

[Fahn]

So the main detractor from food seems to be prosperity. If prosperity is too high, you will run out of food. This will drive prosperity down until it equalizes with food supply, from my experience. It takes a while for an equilibrium to be found however.

 

[ombror]

+1 my only town starve because of high prosperity (5000+). A prosper town starving, wtf ? properity give me -105 to food. can't do anything against that.

 

[TheWitchIzalith]

+1 my only town starve because of high prosperity (5000+). A prosper town starving, wtf ? properity give me -105 to food. can't do anything against that.

Town is rich, people move there for work, Population surges, initial wealth gets spent. No actual Demand for work in town, Still need to eat. Become homeless. Drag prosperity down.

It's actually a quite real simulation. Though as far as gameplay + fun I'm not sure it's a good idea.

But yeah, historically poor people would try to move to rich towns to get a piece of that Hollywood Riches etc and ultimately end up poorer as they left everything behind to gamble on making it big in the city.

 

[kalarhan]

Expected change is still -13 even though the town has a lot more food in its stock now.

what are the negative factors? Hover your mouse at that for the list.

I had a town with too many garrison troops, so even adding food was not enough and it was still 0. I had to remove that negative factor before things got better.

 

[TheUndeadGentleman]

I understand that prosperity should take down the food reserves, but in my town it's ridiculous, it shouldn't be possible that prosperity rises every day when the town is starving to death, every time I supply the town with food, the stock that's build up one day get's eaten after 2-3 days IG. When there is a steady supply of food the town should be able to get a breather and stock up food instead of making more and more prosperity and militia forcing to make even more food somehow.

 

[xTITANx]

I should be able to buy food and give it to my people. It's obvious. I should be able to HAND THEM FOOD. By the cartload if I want. I'm the damn KING. I have plenty of money but I can't buy peasants food? Ridiculous.

 

[Brano]

1. Check what level are Orchards in your city. They provide +food.
2. Villages bound to your city are probably raided.
3. You dont mention which city you own. Some of them have inherited issue with food as their bound villages are mostly producing non-food items.
4. You have too many soldiers in garison eating up all the food available. Reduce their amount.

 

[Doofus]

--Prosperity is a horrible term for TW to use. Prosperity, in Taleworld terms, is actually population. You have high population and no food, so you starve. Starving is obviously not a sign of prosperity in the real world.

--The town is probably starving because it was besieged by your kingdom and couldn't get food AND because as soon as your kingdom besieged it other lords of your kingdom immediately went and raided the villages associated with it. So even after the siege the villages can't send food to the town. This should work the opposite of what it does. As soon as a town is besieged the accompanying villages should immediately be put off limits to raiding. Raid other villages of the enemy kingdom, this makes sense (they can't recruit troops from a raided village and their towns starve), but do not ever raid a village of a town you are besieging.

--Its easy for people to say raise the level of your orchards, but that takes time. A starving town is more likely to rebel quickly.

--The best thing you can do is set up a companion or family member as governor for the town who is of the same culture as the town, ideally one that will give it bonuses.

--The -3 penalty for a town owned by a lord of a different culture is too severe. A negative might be reasonable, but when you are treating a town better than it has ever been treated and they still hate you it is unreasonable. Make the penalty a -1 or maybe a -2, but -3 is too severe. Either that or have the town changes its opinion faster when it is being treated well.

--Reducing the number of garrison troops might help with the food problem, but then it makes for a bigger security problem, making it just as likely for the town to rebel.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Fief management in this game is the absolute worst. Whoever designed it deserves to live in one of these hellholes.

In a game where the stated goal is to conquer the entire map, why would you make managing each fief such a chore? Even if you've got a ton of clans on your side, you still wind up directly controlling a ton of fiefs and each one requires constant babysitting if you don't want it to starve or rebel. The food issues are cancer. You have to have just the right companion to serve as governor or your loyalty plummets and if he's not an engineer it takes forever to build any improvements. All the increase garrison capacity buildings and perks are a cruel joke. I've never been able to fill one more than 1/3 capacity without my food going negative. These issues wouldn't be so bad if you were only intended to own a single town, but you're supposed to own the whole map!

I own Myzea in my current run. ~4000 prosperity, 3 non-looted villages, Level 3 Orchards, and an Empire governor with good steward and engineering skills, and its still doing -20 food. I have less than 200 guys in the garrison and even if I take all of them out, its not nearly enough to counter the whopping -103 prosperity penalty. So I have to keep coming back to personally deliver grain or the place will starve. Its ridiculous and not anything I would ever consider fun gameplay.

 

[Brano]

Having a city not able to support itself with enough food cries for possibility to organize trade routes.
Why do I need to ask some random merchant to create a caravan upon which I have no authority? I want to organize a caravan myself, decide how much/which type of troops the guard will consist of and where and what it will trade.
Or better solution. Why even bother with caravan? I click "create party", assign a leader, put troops inside and click another button "assign trade route" which brings another window where I choose where to go, what to buy and where to sell.
In time of peace the party will earn money finally (now they are just burden eating my budget) and in time of war I can switch off trading and party becomes warband.

 

[xTITANx]

Having a city not able to support itself with enough food cries for possibility to organize trade routes.
Why do I need to ask some random merchant to create a caravan upon which I have no authority? I want to organize a caravan myself, decide how much/which type of troops the guard will consist of and where and what it will trade.
Or better solution. Why even bother with caravan? I click "create party", assign a leader, put troops inside and click another button "assign trade route" which brings another window where I choose where to go, what to buy and where to sell.
In time of peace the party will earn money finally (now they are just burden eating my budget) and in time of war I can switch off trading and party becomes warband.

This is what I don't understand. Why can't I simply send out a servant to get some ****ing food from the town next door. Better yet, why don't my Governors or my merchants already do this?! Instead, they just sit and starve? Ridiculous.

 

[Doofus]

Yeah. Governor bonuses are nice (sometimes) but they don't actually do anything. Why don't they do anything about hideouts (another rebellion trap) when they have so much garrison and militia at their commend? Why do I have to take time out from the war we are having with 3 other empires to find a hideout that there isn't even a quest for when I have a governor?

 

[xTITANx]

Trade should automatically fix this issue, and then we should have to spend more money to import the proper items. It would give me something to spend money on. If I had some resource management, where I could see how much food/material was produced in the settlement and then choose what to import/export that would be far better than how things work atm.

 

[Pentagathoos]

In 1.8 villages bound to castles will no longer send parties to the nearest town they aren't at war with but rather to the nearest town in their faction. So if you own a town but the nearby castles don't belong to your faction this could be part of the problem. It seems like a strange change to me.