Food should be a resource similar to ducats and manpower

[Light Wave]

I've been thinking about the possibilities of having food as a manageable resource. Imagine the possibilities that comes from needing to manage food yield and its impact on your populace and armies.

Food will accumulate each month, but after the harvest season you will get a huge bonus of food added to your storage. The food depletion rate will depend on the size of your armies, how big your country is, and how highly developed your provinces are. Developing provinces with livestock, fishes, wheat, and other foodstuff will increase the food yields that you receive each month. Developing provinces with Farmland terrain will also increase the yields as well. There should also be an option for you to change certain viable terrains like grassland and wood terrain into farmlands!

Having sufficient food will keep your populace happy and give your armies a bonus in morale. If you run out of food then you will receive a hit in stability, unrest will increase, and your armies will suffer from low morale and high attrition. Provinces that have been scorched during wartime will receive a penalty in food output. Plundering provinces will also yield food along with ducats.

What do you guys think? It's radical changes I know, but the game feels too unrealistic at times.

 

[Styria]

Well, I'm all for grain, fish, and livestock actually having a mechanic other than money. I feel like it should affect manpower/recovery more than a new happiness mechanic, or army morale, however.

Like, your maximum manpower is dependant on, or related to, how much grain and meat production your provinces have. If your manpower cap increases, it would be necessary to either import more food, increase national food production via development, or conquer some new fertile regions to promote food production. This sort of thing would encourage a player choice between cash crops like cotton or silk, food production for export only (for sweet ducats), or food production to support your manpower.

A food system would also need to tie into supply limits, and maybe encourage a new supply mechanic for keeping armies fed far from home. I dunno if it's doable, but I'd love to see something modeling food systems, as long as it isn't a huge chore to manage.

 

[Light Wave]

Those are good suggestions Styria! I like it! Honestly, the more I think about this the more surprised I am at the fact that the developers, for some reason, decided that food wasn't important enough to be a resource! To live is to consume!