My concern here is a "heat death of the universe" type situation where there simlpy runs out of enough food by mid-late game to support your nation/armies anymore.
I dont get this, how would your nation grow to the point of starvation when growth is linked to food-exess ?
I can perhaps see a nation ravaged by war end up in a bad cycle of unrest and famine, where the food shortage constrains your from stompibg out the unrest and defend borders & vs bsrbarians / rebellions ... but if this happens, pops will die and migrate far away until the land can once again sustain its people.
... its interesting to consider acess to food as a new constraint on warfare alongside fold and manpower, especially on war-torn borderlands. Perhaps saturating provinces with many big armies for extended periods will cause starvation that creates lasting trouble with unrest / province loyalty .... such that you may want to limit your drain on that food even if you arnt worried about attrition.
Btw. Immagine full width heavy cav in defensive provice when you have plenty of food stored. The dorthraki in an open field, Ned.
Still this frightens me a bit.
As for now, it looks like the only way to increase the general production of food, is either to build farms in settlement, or produce some good surplus with slaves.
Will it be enough to account for the massive pop growth we see in game?
The balance is going to be difficult, and if not perfect, I fear it will end as one of these mechaniscs where:
- early game you don't care about food at all
- end-game it becomes super critical, so you need to put every slaves in farms, generating frustration
Dont forget food imports. Maybe these can be rebalanced in some way compared to local production, as it seems youl be able to peoduce with 10 or less slaves in farm settlements.
I highly doubt youll disregard food earlygame, gicen its interaction with supply/attrition and defensivness.
If you have are defending and have food, you can disregard supply to outmatch enemy width with confidence, and you can bidr your time behind your fort(s) for however long your food supply will last, with extra defensivness (=siege time) for each extra year of food storage.
Late in the game i think you will be able to disregard the food mechanic in many places and many wars. If youve got enough manpower, you can take the attrition and you can handle some brief starvation in fringe provinces.
... regarding dense central urbanized provinces late in the game, their food acess should be able to balance itself out without intervention through migration. It shouldnt be any worse than it is with pop cap currently. The food storage will serve as a grace period.
If it is any issue, adding migration-atraction modifiers onto negatice food income or less-than-a-year stored should easily fix it.
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