Agricultural districts. Is food irrelevant?

[Lord Patches]

A thought on agricultural districts and the role of food in the game, bracketing out for the moment catalytic converter.

Farms outside of RP and catalytic converter are often strategically minimized. And for good reason, food has limited utility and opportunities for conversion. So the initial question: should this be changed, and if so how so?

My thoughts, and I am curious to gauge interest here, is agricultural districts could be dynamic. Consider the premise of industrialism under toxoids, where for the sake of boosting outputs, one accepts a decline in habitability. What if, broadly, there was a meta-mechanic around planets over use on non-agricultural districts that reduced their future transition into agriculture?

The theory, although I'm fuzzy on the practice would be the game's drive towards alloy production results in a decline in accessible food production (admittedly not an issue for machine gestalts). Not because 'game mechanic says so' but because the incentive to alloy production leads to a food "crises"? The penchant for energy/mineral/alloy worlds means the few agri-worlds value goes up?

Again, not sure how to mechanically make this work, but having some late game tension, around depleting food stock could be interesting. Especially if the GC has legislated around industrialism.

Anyway, just a thought.
Cheers y'all...

 

[Progamere22e]

dosent this already exist in game with the relentless industrialist civic? I might be misremembering but i thought it kind of did that. technically this is already kind of simulated to an extent because building more industrial districts will take away from the amount of agri districts you can build on that planet anyways


Also the other issue with this is gonna be the phantom market place with infinite food. really food is devalued in this game because you can just buy it even if you don't produce it and its super cheap. plus you just don't really need as much of it as you would assume you would supporting an empire of presumably billions.

 

[Lord Patches]

dosent this already exist in game with the relentless industrialist civic? I might be misremembering but i thought it kind of did that. technically this is already kind of simulated to an extent because building more industrial districts will take away from the amount of agri districts you can build on that planet anyways


Also the other issue with this is gonna be the phantom market place with infinite food. really food is devalued in this game because you can just buy it even if you don't produce it and its super cheap. plus you just don't really need as much of it as you would assume you would supporting an empire of presumably billions.

For sure, I had forgotten the name but I was looking to reference relentless industrialists. The observation is exactly your second point. And that outside doing a catalyst build, food has little relevance to the game.

Perhaps I'm not communicating this well, or that people don't like the idea regardless. To try again, and I'm not sure if I'm totally on board with this as a change, outside of pitching here out of curiosity.

Basically is there a way to make food scarcity a thing? This 'could' look like planets that specialize into non-agri can't change after the fact because food shortages...

Not sure this would be the right way to approach this, the idea would be: given mid/late game pop gains, having early game decisions prevent old colonies from going agri, could provide a motive to have key agri worlds that could have late game value. Ish...

 

[Zagreb 887]

Food is like consumer goods, a resource you produce just enough to not be in negative, and sell the surplus. Not the most interesting mechanic, but I don't think that complicating things with food will improve the game.

 

[Dragatus]

Back in Stellaris 1.0 food was a local resource, specific to the planet on which it was produced. More interestingly, pop growth speed was based on surplus food and there was a government policy on how much food to hold in reserve before using the surplus for pop growth.

That system can't be brought back without some adjustments (for example, how would it work for lithoids?), but it seems to me like a fairly obvious way to make food more interesting again. Well, it's obvious if you know about how that worked. Players might not, but devs really ought to.

 

[Altruist]

I had games without a single working miner but always there were farmers.
Food is the most precious resource and you can produce it as efficiently as energy.
But other than energy you can trade food for an unholy exchange rate with the AI-players.

Alttogether this makes food the best to produce resource there is.

 

[Henlikuoth]

I have nothing against food being more important and impactful. Indeed, it would be great.
Let's hope the developers will do something about it.
There are plenty of creative options.

 

[Dr. B]

Master of Orion (1 and 2) had locally produced food where the presence of an unopposed enemy fleet in the system would block import and export of food, leading to starvation in affected systems. Stellaris would benefit from such a mechanic.

 

[M@ni@c]

This could be simulated to some degree by each pop increasing damage from orbital bombardment by +1%, and each farmer reducing orbital bombardment damage by 6%. A self-sufficient planet would be able to survive a siege longer then.

 

[A Cat]

I just use livestock instead of farming. Probably not quite as efficient, but its still effective. I assume the foods graze or something? This can eliminate the need for agri-districts completely. Unfortunately, bio-reactors won't produce energy from livestock.

If you run lithoids you can also eliminate the need to mine.

 

[Incompetent]

Farms outside of RP and catalytic converter are often strategically minimized. And for good reason, food has limited utility and opportunities for conversion. So the initial question: should this be changed, and if so how so?

The basic issue is the lack of demand for food as a "standard" empire. In classic 4X games (and even some more unconventional 4X games, like Endless Space), food is important because food that is not immediately eaten goes to a colony-level stockpile, and a pop is born when the stockpile fills up. Stellaris has long ago broken both the link between food and individual colonies, and also the link between surplus food and growth, so you just need enough food empire-wide to maintain the existing population. (We have only a weak relic of it in the form of Clone Vats, but that's only for one ascension.) But pops in the mid-game are never going to eat very much compared to what they produce; if they did, the early game would be a subsistence grind, which doesn't really fit the futuristic theme, and any bonuses to food production available at game start would become overpowered. For similar reasons, I doubt we will move back to food being a local resources, and the devs are always going to make it easy to have enough food for your existing population: starvation is not a fun enough mechanic to incentivize the devs to make it a real risk.

The devs can always add more optional ways to spend food, like the much-requested MEAT SHIPS and so on. But I doubt the game is going to change in such a way as to *force* organic empires, even Hives, to care all that much about food.

My thoughts, and I am curious to gauge interest here, is agricultural districts could be dynamic. Consider the premise of industrialism under toxoids, where for the sake of boosting outputs, one accepts a decline in habitability. What if, broadly, there was a meta-mechanic around planets over use on non-agricultural districts that reduced their future transition into agriculture?

This wouldn't achieve much because there are so many other ways of getting food, and even if there weren't, you'd only have to set one planet aside for agriculture early on, and by the time you need the second you'd have lots of planets to choose from. Typically, you can make your first Forge World somewhere with poor natural resources, so you're not really losing anything by paving it over.

I had games without a single working miner but always there were farmers.
Food is the most precious resource and you can produce it as efficiently as energy.
But other than energy you can trade food for an unholy exchange rate with the AI-players.

Unless the AI happens to be running Catalytic Processing, this overvaluing of food is an artifact of badly-designed AI, not a genuine justification for food production.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Catalytic processing.

Catalytic converters are the things that get stolen from cars.

But that aside:

My thoughts, and I am curious to gauge interest here, is agricultural districts could be dynamic. Consider the premise of industrialism under toxoids, where for the sake of boosting outputs, one accepts a decline in habitability. What if, broadly, there was a meta-mechanic around planets over use on non-agricultural districts that reduced their future transition into agriculture?

This is a tough sell for a game where you can terraform a whole planet in a couple decades.

But also, due to how planetary specialization works, your alloys typically aren't produced on the same planet as your food. Even if agri-districts were banned from every world except agri-worlds, one or two good agri-worlds is enough to carry you the entire game.

For example, even my somewhat unoptimized agri-world is producing enough to bridal carry most empires through the end-game:

Even if we wanted a pollution mechanic that limits agricultural production, the game is specifically designed for you to giga-stack modifiers and bonuses on specialized "one resource" worlds.

 

[Lord Patches]

Huh, an interesting read, and some observations I had not thought of. Thanks and appreciation!

The creativity of using food primarily as a trade good sounds like it could be fun for a run, especially with a bit of "you're only allowed minerals through trade".

In relation to the parallel to consumer goods. Not sure I am persuaded there. CGs still have macro context of limiting types of accelerationist gameplay whether tech or unity. And can also be used to influence living standards, so the is 'some' reason to pursue their production.

I get the feasibility question, e.g. 'how' to make food more interesting, and the dissociation from surplus = pop growth is a good call (noting the observations that clone labs, and that the gene modding origin provide ways to play through food). I am still interested in food as a galactic question? Maybe as a supplement to the current growth curves?

Yes, catalytic processes, I remain bad at names, thanks for getting the point anyway. I stand by a basic assessment that food is under leveraged as a game mechanic, and while I'm not sure how to adjust it's relevance, I still wonder if there's a galaxy wide way this could be done.

(Also, yes of course MEAT SHIPS, but this seems like an inevitability for the next hive mind equivalent dlc, and yes this would be awesome; my observation remains at the level of "standard" play throughs, rather than specific e.g. catalytic)

I guess a summary would be: if food is no longer tied to local production AND there is no desire to return to that model (ala Civ), then is there a galaxy wide way to attach food? (And I my head, I still imagine it as a potential source of conflict, outside of crises, in an often staid late game galaxy).

 

[Thiend]

should this be changed, and if so how so?

Yes, but only for a purpose. CG and food are both resources you want to be at as small as possible of a positive income as you can manage, because you need to have it but excess serves very little purpose. As it currently stands I see both of these as an "it is what it is" situation. Are they boring? Absolutely yes, but not everything has to be vitally important in a game.

That being said, food at least has an obvious future rework case lined up for it; pop growth mechanics are unintuitive nonsense and also very annoying. Food seems like an obvious resource to impact population growth (as indeed it previously did), assuming population growth gets reworked - if not, I see no compelling reason to make food more complicated just for the sake of it. But the two could easily go together.

I think the trick is to make food a pop growth catch up mechanic so that pop growth can be percentage-based, eliminating breeder colonies among other things, but there has to be some mechanism so that food doesn't become increasingly easy to harvest more of with a larger population (thus making it a win-more mechanic instead of a catch up mechanic).

 

[Lord Patches]

Yes, but only for a purpose. CG and food are both resources you want to be at as small as possible of a positive income as you can manage, because you need to have it but excess serves very little purpose. As it currently stands I see both of these as an "it is what it is" situation. Are they boring? Absolutely yes, but not everything has to be vitally important in a game.

That being said, food at least has an obvious future rework case lined up for it; pop growth mechanics are unintuitive nonsense and also very annoying. Food seems like an obvious resource to impact population growth (as indeed it previously did), assuming population growth gets reworked - if not, I see no compelling reason to make food more complicated just for the sake of it. But the two could easily go together.

I think the trick is to make food a pop growth catch up mechanic so that pop growth can be percentage-based, eliminating breeder colonies among other things, but there has to be some mechanism so that food doesn't become increasingly easy to harvest more of with a larger population (thus making it a win-more mechanic instead of a catch up mechanic).

I agree, for sure. In particular I agree there is no need for complexity, for the sake of complexity. And I suppose what this means is there a way to 'give' food a purpose again. I think most standard players (again excluding the specific play style of catalytic) would agree: food = minimize. Maintenance and nothing more, although I am entertained by Altruist's idea of a 'use food for trade'.

Ultimately, maybe it is just a giant shrug, it is what it is, given the alternative uses of time of the developers. At which point, still curious as a thought experiment.

All and all, I appreciate the graciousness of the community to humour me on this

 

[Evethor]

I`d like to counter argue the people who ask for local food production.

Having specialized worlds makes it so much more interesting for me.
I have a game going where my empire is snaking between two other, a two front war was inevitable when they were democratic xenophile and I was not.
Having put my agriworld out there on the frontier I had a hell of a time balancing between defeating them and going back to defend / unoccopy the planet.

It adds some tension to the game and makes it more interesting in my opinion.
All your eggs in one basket? better protect the basket

 

[currylambchop]

I`d like to counter argue the people who ask for local food production.

Having specialized worlds makes it so much more interesting for me.
I have a game going where my empire is snaking between two other, a two front war was inevitable when they were democratic xenophile and I was not.
Having put my agriworld out there on the frontier I had a hell of a time balancing between defeating them and going back to defend / unoccopy the planet.

It adds some tension to the game and makes it more interesting in my opinion.
All your eggs in one basket? better protect the basket

If they add some form of logistical transport to move food around, then specialised food worlds would still have their place in a local food system

 

[Altruist]

Farms outside of RP and catalytic converter are often strategically minimized.

That's in one sentence the main problem with food. No choice, just a necessity. Boring. In the same logic you could also force players to produce water, air etc.
Gaming is about choice, strategic choices.

Food was handled differently in prior versions of Stellaris. Once it gave a certain bonus on pop growth if you overproduced food... a bonus good enough it became a necessity and thus... boring again.

More interesting was pushing pop growth thru buildings using much of food, more interesting at least for those who like math and to calculate a lot... but with the introduction of logarithmic pop growth this has become either mathematically too challenging for the vast majority of players and as an interesting choice made obsolete once the logarithmic scaling really hits after reaching a certain pop tresh hold.

Which leaves food for trading if I, as a player, want to introduce any kind of choice.

this overvaluing of food is an artifact of badly-designed AI, not a genuine justification for food production.

Agreed.
But it was the only interesting stuff left for me considering food.

Even worse than food are consumer goods, always were. And the so called strategic resources, once I started whole wars over... are going into a very similar direction: boredom. You need them, you produce them. But you shouldn't.

If you force players to produce or build some stuff just because it is needed but without any choice... it gets boring: bad game design which, often enough, tries to hide behind overcomplexity. You introduce lots of more resources, buildings and whatsoever that it takes a player awfully long to learn to handle all this until the shallowness below can be seen.

Sounds like I don't like Stellaris... not true.... bit disappointed: yeah, probably.
Stellaris, as a game never finished, always in development, always forced to achieve new excitement with new gimmicks to make new money... possesses not only a very dedicated and very heterogeneous player base but also very dedicated developers and programmers: some specialized on the shiny, often shallow things and some as much in love with the game as the players and always trying to make the game run again and to fix the broken knots in the complicated net (usually introduced by shiny gimmicks in complete disregard of the strategic core values). Probably often enough even those programmers are forced to make the game worse and know it (which is cruel) but they don't get enough time and resources to do it right. How I hate it. How they must hate it.

Sorry, a bit too much ranting when just talking about... food.

 

[Nevars]

Try bio ascension and you will find that food is very relevant.

 

[Dr. B]

If you force players to produce or build some stuff just because it is needed but without any choice... it gets boring: bad game design which, often enough, tries to hide behind overcomplexity. You introduce lots of more resources, buildings and whatsoever that it takes a player awfully long to learn to handle all this until the shallowness below can be seen.

Sounds like I don't like Stellaris... not true.... bit disappointed: yeah, probably.
Stellaris, as a game never finished, always in development, always forced to achieve new excitement with new gimmicks to make new money... possesses not only a very dedicated and very heterogeneous player base but also very dedicated developers and programmers: some specialized on the shiny, often shallow things and some as much in love with the game as the players and always trying to make the game run again and to fix the broken knots in the complicated net (usually introduced by shiny gimmicks in complete disregard of the strategic core values). Probably often enough even those programmers are forced to make the game worse and know it (which is cruel) but they don't get enough time and resources to do it right. How I hate it. How they must hate it

You are 100% correct.
Often, the true sign of a great game is in its simplicity.

Unfortunately, this is the curse of Paradox games. Great games, sure, but never finished, always in development, and overfilled with gadgets instead of refined. The DLC model is how they keep the company running.

It is kind of a paradox.