Lets talk about food

[Hemothep]

I don't really see the surplus food thing as a problem, since all trade goods work like this. You can change that if you overhaul the trade system as a whole.

My main grief with food is that it is calculated in each provincial capital instead of in at the province level.
This means that the local food multpliers of the provincial capital get applied to all food imports.
If you want to heavily urbanize a province (meaning you need to rely on food imports) it makes more sense to make a slave estate or farming settlement the provincial capital than one of its cities.
It also means the same amount of grain can feed more people if it is exported to warmer climate. This doesn't make any sense.
This could all be resolved if food was calculated on the province level.

 

[Pro]

Vegetables were also rare because they came from the country side and you know they rot quickly.

I think vegetables generally came from cities or near cities actually. Cities is where you have people rich enough to pay a premium that would make it worth the lower yield per labor. As you mention fresh produce is hard to transport and store without modern technology, so it would mostly be grown in urban gardens and the farmland closest to cities.

Here's an interesting article about how a city would in ancient and medieval times impact the patterns of land use around it: https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/

 

[Battlex]

I like that explanation, but still don't quite understand how it represents surplus. Because the pops themselves eat food. So, they're not eating some abstract amount of non-surplus fish. They're eating "food" producted by the province irrespective of fish.

1 man can catch 1.1 fish, 1 man will eat 1.00 that he catches leaving 0.1 fish behind, so 10 men are needed to catch 11 fish, giving a surplus. Local province food from terrain type is wild berries picked for the nobles? I don't know
Also it wouldn't just be about catching a surplus, but being able to prepare a surplus, so the drying cooking and salting not leading to spoilage

 

[crownsteler]

I am less bothered by the amount of surplus trade goods as I am by the general surplus of food. The overabundance of food leads to food to be less important, and with it so do food trade goods, food buildings and more generally farmland.

One of my top priorities would be to change food production from a flat province output to a pop based output. Where slaves, freemen and tribesmen produce food, but only up to a terrain and climate dependent maximum. This should overal reduce the availability of food, change the desirable POP composition, and allow for interesting effects such as unemployment and food supply issues due to raised levies.

 

[Todie]

I don't really see the surplus food thing as a problem, since all trade goods work like this. You can change that if you overhaul the trade system as a whole.

My main grief with food is that it is calculated in each provincial capital instead of in at the province level.
This means that the local food multpliers of the provincial capital get applied to all food imports.
If you want to heavily urbanize a province (meaning you need to rely on food imports) it makes more sense to make a slave estate or farming settlement the provincial capital than one of its cities.
It also means the same amount of grain can feed more people if it is exported to warmer climate. This doesn't make any sense.
This could all be resolved if food was calculated on the province level.

well, it sees to me like food is so abundant that it becomes irrational for anyone to build a farm, ever. thats not exactly immersive or good gameplay, particularly not considering all the modifiers that exist to boost food production.

the balance of food seemed to be significantly better in earlier patches.

 

[IsaacCAT]

the more pops there are, the less an additional filled granary impacts the growth.

this way of growing population aught to be worthwhile, but with respect to the cost of granaries and alternative means - slave raiding, it's absolutely not a means of population growth that is significant enough to drive demand for food.

if you make a form and produce surplus food, you're more than likely not ablet o sell it, because even the AI knows it doesn't need to import it. even if there is space in granaries, the use for higher food production is only temporary - until the food storage is filled to the brim once again.

If we ignore the good point @Iosue Yu has made on the previous post for simplicity's sake, we know the province bonus for food:

Food - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

For every 12 months of total food consumption stored, up to a maximum of 120 months (i.e. 10 times), a province will get the following modifiers:

• +0.05% Local Population Growth

This bonus is a percentage of total POP, increasing total POP growth as more POPs are there. The table below shows that a city with a full storage of 120 months consumption can grow 0,25 POP/year. If you compound this for the Province and for every year is not insignificant. However, slave raiding should always be more important than organic growth.

Storage	Population	POP growth/year
12​	1​	0,00​
24​	1​	0,00​
36​	1​	0,00​
48​	1​	0,00​
60​	1​	0,00​
72​	1​	0,00​
84​	1​	0,00​
96​	1​	0,00​
108​	1​	0,00​
120​	1​	0,01​
12​	50​	0,03​
24​	50​	0,05​
36​	50​	0,08​
48​	50​	0,10​
60​	50​	0,13​
72​	50​	0,15​
84​	50​	0,18​
96​	50​	0,20​
108​	50​	0,23​
120​	50​	0,25​

 

[Battlex]

If we ignore the good point @Iosue Yu has made on the previous post for simplicity's sake, we know the province bonus for food:

Food - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

For every 12 months of total food consumption stored, up to a maximum of 120 months (i.e. 10 times), a province will get the following modifiers:

• +0.05% Local Population Growth

This bonus is a percentage of total POP, increasing total POP growth as more POPs are there. The table below shows that a city with a full storage of 120 months consumption can grow 0,25 POP/year. If you compound this for the Province and for every year is not insignificant. However, slave raiding should always be more important than organic growth.

Storage	Population	POP growth/year
12​	1​	0,00​
24​	1​	0,00​
36​	1​	0,00​
48​	1​	0,00​
60​	1​	0,00​
72​	1​	0,00​
84​	1​	0,00​
96​	1​	0,00​
108​	1​	0,00​
120​	1​	0,01​
12​	50​	0,03​
24​	50​	0,05​
36​	50​	0,08​
48​	50​	0,10​
60​	50​	0,13​
72​	50​	0,15​
84​	50​	0,18​
96​	50​	0,20​
108​	50​	0,23​
120​	50​	0,25​

But then you're building ever more and more granaries to support that excess of food

 

[Pro]

50 population across an entire province is almost nothing though. Something like 100 to 125 pops is more reasonable. If we assume 100 pops that are 1/6 citizens, 1/6 freemen, 2/3s slaves (the make up of a republics rural provinces). The monthly food consumption is 15 per month or 180 every year. Getting a 10 year supply (120 months) would then require 1800 food stored. Assuming ten territories that's 8 granaries necessary to achieve the full bonus. Which is going to mean multiple cities, which would skew the population composition towards higher classes that consume more food.

All that of course is completely ignoring the fact that this still has nothing to do with food production, only food storage, ie. building slots used.

 

[IsaacCAT]

But then you're building ever more and more granaries to support that excess of food

if you divide food stored / population, it is constant (12 months) you are building the necessary infrastructure to support your people needs for at least one year of food shortages.

 

[IsaacCAT]

All that of course is completely ignoring the fact that this still has nothing to do with food production, only food storage, ie. building slots used.

You seem to forget about the formula: food stored away = food production - food consumption. Food stored away is maxed out with the number of granaries and cities you have. But it is not constant, it can be negative if food production < food consumption.

 

[Pro]

Yes. I agree that it matters whether you produce more than you consume. It doesn't matter how much more you produce though. Any unused storage is very quickly filled up.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Yes. I agree that it matters whether you produce more than you consume. It doesn't matter how much more you produce though. Any unused storage is very quickly filled up.

We have to model the whole thing, the population growth curves are shown below, it seems you are only concerned with the area highlighted in yellow. How do you model the area outside?

 

[Ruck]

The current food system is nonsense in an antiquity civilization builder game. Food goods are currently basically trash goods which no one cares for beside having +1 vegetables for slave movement and +1 cattle for ascent speed. Grain has basically the same worth as bronze swords have in 2021, which is mildly spoken not very immersive or fun.

Grain in large quantities should make 80-90% of the economy in great empires, maybe some smaller uncivilized tribes in Iberia or Britannia could make 40-50% of their money with metals like copper, tin, iron, gold and silver.

Food was what made empires great since the bronze age, probably even since the early neolithical (stone) age, although we dont really have knowledge about that early times. Without great food surpluses the science generating pops shouldn´t exists. If we want science, great food surpluses should be the first thing to think about. Taking food away from empires should result in great descent of science generating pops, if those empires dont find other means to get to food.

Anyway I guess we will have to wait for the trade&production rework to see how the devs will reintroduce the food implementation then.

It would be also nice to see how on game start more or less free men would own and work on the grain fields, but later through abundance of slaves and changing laws, nobility buys most grain fields and let slaves work there instead, which lets freemen wander into cities. This could be even done with the current holding system I think, where on game start grain fields could be in "private" freemen holdings, but later noble great families are buying these fields and let their own slaves work there.

 

[Pro]

We have to model the whole thing, the population growth curves are shown below, it seems you are only concerned with the area highlighted in yellow. How do you model the area outside?

View attachment 690800

By decreasing population growth when the province no longer produces much more food than it consumes. Which is completely seperate from how many building slots are used for long term storage.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Food goods are currently basically trash goods which no one cares for beside having +1 vegetables for slave movement and +1 cattle for ascent speed.

I try to have all other bonus as well, they are quite good:

Grain in large quantities should make 80-90% of the economy in great empires, maybe some smaller uncivilized tribes in Iberia or Britannia could make 40-50% of their money with metals like copper, tin, iron, gold and silver.

Interesting thought. Food should be essential for population growth, that finally gives you all other benefits. In game food is granted without much effort. As @crownsteler said, food production should be function of POPs:

• Noble: -0.50/month
• Citizen: -0.30/month
• Freeman: -0.20/month +0.30/month
• Tribesman: -0.20/month +0.28/month
• Slave: -0.10/month +0.15/month

We already proved that this was possible here

 

[Pro]

I like the idea of pops producing food, but I think each food producing pop should then also decrease the amount of food produced by each pop. There's no way you can have a hundred slave pops in Rome all producing as much food each as if they were only 10. Combine that with pop growth from excess food production and you should have a ruleset that produces nice logistic growth.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I like the idea of pops producing food, but I think each pop should then also decrease the amount of food produced by pops. There's no way you can have a hundred slave pops in Rome all producing as much food each as if they were only 10. Combine that with pop growth from excess food production and you should have a ruleset that produces nice logistic growth.

Negative quantity represent food consumption by POP, positive quantity represents food production by POP.

 

[Pro]

I know. My point was that as you add more pops to the same land they can't linearly increase the amount of food produced. The amount of land available to farm presents a limit. This should be reflected in by a decreasing marginal food production as more marginal land is brought into cultivation and land usage is switch to more labor intensive forms of agriculture.

This would avoid the situation where a megacity could be self sufficient in food produced by vast numbers of pops.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I know. My point was that as you add more pops to the same land they can't linearly increase the amount of food produced. The amount of land available to farm presents a limit. This should be reflected in by a decreasing marginal food production as more marginal land is brought into cultivation and land usage is switch to more labor intensive forms of agriculture.

This would avoid the situation where a megacity could be self sufficient in food produced by vast numbers of pops.

Indeed, @crownsteler suggestion had this thought out:

Each territory can produce as much food as the type of territory plus 1 if it has a farm and plus 3 or 5 if the good produced is food (5 for grain).

To trade food you need to have a surplus, all food that is not stored is traded away (in batches of +3 or +5 if grain). This will make food trading variable on time. I am ok with this, as seasons and variations on harvest should be introduced in the future.

 

[Pro]

I much prefer decreasing marginal production to a hard limit. With a hard limit I see players frustrating themselves trying to play around it, for example moving slaves out of territories where excess food is "wasted".