Lets talk about food

[cristofolmc]

If I may say so myself, it is a very elegant way to represent the social development happening during the later Roman republic:
-People are pushed from their lands by latifunda (slaves, which take presidence in food production 'space')
-They move to cities
-They don't actually add anything to your country, but drain resources
- You can freely draft them into the army as you don't need them for food anymore.

But thats the problem. With just a flat output of food you dont get to represent this right? All freemen in the city will produce food. And what you will have is cities being major centres of production (as they will have more freemen than any territory), which is absolutely ridiculous and breaks the system even more than it is now.

Also, I dont like the suggestion because it leaves us much like we are now. Lots of food produced without the player doing nothing. Food production wont depend on how well you manage your pops, improve infrastructure etc, instead, the more pops you have the more food you will produce, which is again, very urealistic. And without having to do anything, which is the problem we are currently debating in this very thread. Food production should take a minimum of managment from the player if we are all agreed that was the most important economic factor. Why can we manage taxes or trade but not food? Building a few buildings doesnt mean micromanagement any more than the current system already does. Also, without going into a production and economy overhaul and assumng it remains the same, food tradegoods already produce food without having to build anything. So its not like the world would starve until you do it.

I would be willing to settle in a mixture of both proposals, where pops produce an amount barely enough (and not enough in many parts of the world to sustain itself) and you have to build those farm buildings to increase their food output maybe? Also the terrain type should be massively influential. A freeman in a farm in fertile egypt should produce a lot more than a farmer in a hilly territory Greece.

 

[Arthrodira]

Salt was common, but worthed a bit. But I don't think the Romans ate salt directly.

Nobody eats salt directly! What? hahahahaha

It's a preservative and necessary nutrient. Not literally food - come on did this need to be said hahaha. Nothing to do with Romans or not, we're all humans and more broadly animals; people don't eat mineral deposits in other cultures. hahahahaha

 

[Arthrodira]

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/

It was also common to have private farms for this sort of thing. You might grow wheat to sell, but maintain a vegetable garden to eat yourself for example. Even back then people had some awareness that eating only wheat would make you pretty sickly. Not that this helps rationalize the trade good though....

 

[Arthrodira]

Cities do not expand the whole land in the territory, even nowadays next to big cities you have patches of farm land. The building as a requirement is a too high constrain for base food production.

Yes but you know in the game thats how its represented. Thats why cities don't produce food trade goods. Territories are small enough to represent that that particular territory is mostly the city.

And I dont see why its a constrain at all. You have several building levels like with any cities that allows more and more pops to produce food as population grows, so does the farming infrastructure. Just like with any other building really.

I think its better than the massive abtraction of having every freeman in the world produce food regardless of whether it lives in a city, is unemployed, is a soldier in a legion, an artisian, a trader, etc etc etc. You might as well have the pop not consuming food and just producing +0.10 food since thats the net food output regardless of anything else at all

No they aren't hahaha. There is no ancient city, even Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Babylon, or Pataliputra, that is taking up it's entire territory tile. Have you ever noticed how small the "old" part of any modern city in the Old World is? The territories are like 10-40 square miles. There wouldn't have been a city on Earth close to that large! Most of the land even in most cities in game is still going to be farmland.

Edit: I found a quick Google search suggesting ancient Rome may have been about 7 square miles. I'm not going to vouch for the accuracy, but that feels about right.

 

[crownsteler]

But thats the problem. With just a flat output of food you dont get to represent this right? All freemen in the city will produce food. And what you will have is cities being major centres of production (as they will have more freemen than any territory), which is absolutely ridiculous and breaks the system even more than it is now.

The key here is that each territory would have a maximum amount of food which can be produced (a maximum amount of productive farmland). Any food produced in excess will be lost. So cities willl not become major centres of food production, they will be the opposite! There will be far more freemen than there will be room for them to produce food! They will need to bring food in, all the while those freemen will sittle idle doing nothing (just being a drain on resources).

This will create interesting management problems, as you'll soon have to deal with not producing enough food. All of a sudden freemen will become valuable as you need them to feed your population, instead of being able to get by on just citizens amd nobles.

Most of food production is automated, but that isn't a bad thing... Because it reduces micromanagement (and there will be a massive amount of micromanagement for larger empires), while giving the player agency to improve the situation. Agency in building specific buildings and enacting certain innovations. And agency in managing POP ratios (where laws could also play a role, with land reform laws setting different POP ratios).

 

[JJxvi]

I'm not an experienced player yet, but my impression so far is that what is called "food" in the game should really be merged into what is called "grain" in the game. Maybe pops can eat the other food trade goods (livestock and fish only really), but grain should be what can be stored in granaries, and high population areas should eat more than they produce, and places like egypt, africa, sicily, etc should produce way more than they eat. Pops should starve if there is not enough grain, the total grain supply should in fact be a limit on the total number of pops that can even exist in the game. There should probably be droughts and famines in the game. Armies should capture grain production in a territory they occupy and capture grain that is stored in granaries after a seige and carry it with them for supply. And while we're really dreaming, the price of grain should fluctuate.

 

[JJxvi]

Grain/food should also probably be something you have to deal with on a yearly basis and not the current continual/ consistent per month model.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Another issue about the abundance of food that I did not think about it before is that you are better off exporting food and then importing it for the same food benefit plus the taxes.

If food would be scarce, the player would not export the food produced locally and/or trade it domestically.

Other ‘solutions’ are really bad.

Please make food scarce, at least optionally for higher difficulty levels.

 

[stratigo]

There's not a lot of family planning going on here. That's the rosy 21st century view of things. The reality is population increases more in areas with more food because fewer people starve to death or are malnourished and so die of disease. Increased agricultural production increases the population by decreasing the amount of death. Nobody is going, you know this land is so rich and produces so much food - let's have another kid. Reduced death and migration from areas where people are starving is why the population grows in fertile regions (because it's the premodern world and there's not a lot of family planning in the desert either - nobody is going, hey we can only grow so much wheat here, maybe we shouldn't have another kid).

So actually stored food is a good model. There's food stored so people don't starve. There's food stored so people who are starving move to where the food is.

ancient people are also not stupid and do, in fact, have the ability to estimate how likely they are to feed their family. Indeed pre modern agricultural involved people are usually far MORE conscious of food supply issues than anyone today and DO plan around it. Today farming is all about profit maximization, but in the premodern times, most people would be far more concerned about risk mitigation. They'd make decisions that would look strange to modern capitalist economies, but make a lot more sense when you consider they are focused more on managing possible disasters than they are on eking out the most production. If a roman farming family doesn't think it can support another kid, it WILL leave any extra babies out to flat die. Family planning is extremely important in the premodern world because family is labor

 

[stratigo]

It was also common to have private farms for this sort of thing. You might grow wheat to sell, but maintain a vegetable garden to eat yourself for example. Even back then people had some awareness that eating only wheat would make you pretty sickly. Not that this helps rationalize the trade good though....

also if the wheat crop failed, you needed to have alternatives or you would starve to death. No one grew just one thing, though latifundias would tend to be more specialized because the owning class had less concern if their slaves starved than smaller farmers.

 

[Todie]

Another issue about the abundance of food that I did not think about it before is that you are better off exporting food and then importing it for the same food benefit plus the taxes.

If food would be scarce, the player would not export the food produced locally and/or trade it domestically.

Other ‘solutions’ are really bad.

Please make food scarce, at least optionally for higher difficulty levels.

Yeah, and just to drive this home for everyone: open your latest save and look at your trade screen (f6) and sort by exports.

Do you see any?

Last i checked i didn't even have food exports to city-states and the like...

 

[IsaacCAT]

Yeah, and just to drive this home for everyone: open your latest save and look at your trade screen (f6) and sort by exports.

Do you see any?

Last i checked i didn't even have food exports to city-states and the like...

As Rome I have 8 food exports, mainly salt.

 

[Todie]

As Rome I have 8 food exports, mainly salt.

Same, I'm exporting some salt and honey, but 0 fish, vegetables, grain or even livestock. Farms would clearly be a complete waste of money.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Same, I'm exporting some salt and honey, but 0 fish, vegetables, grain or even livestock. Farms would clearly be a complete waste of money.

I have checked if I had a surplus of grain, fish or livestock because you cannot trade something you do not have.

And yes, I produce a surplus of all of them and I am not exporting it. Clearly, food is not a priority for the AI and you are right about farms.

 

[Todie]

I have checked if I had a surplus of grain, fish or livestock because you cannot trade something you do not have.

And yes, I produce a surplus of all of them and I am not exporting it. Clearly, food is not a priority for the AI and you are right about farms.

this is the kind of thing were its very stirahgt-foward to tweak numbers and then run AI-only test games to observe what happens with the supply /demand of the goods.

 

[Kerham]

That early game surplus of food products will reduce towards 600 or so.

What is imbalanced is warm climate vs frigid climate. 50% malus is unreal. If that were a thing, Germanic invasions would have never happened. There would have been a total of three unwashed peasants begging to be left inside Rome, not endless streams of pops going all the way to the steppes, Italy, Iberia and North Africa.

 

[IsaacCAT]

That early game surplus of food products will reduce towards 600 or so.

What is imbalanced is warm climate vs frigid climate. 50% malus is unreal. If that were a thing, Germanic invasions would have never happened. There would have been a total of three unwashed peasants begging to be left inside Rome, not endless streams of pops going all the way to the steppes, Italy, Iberia and North Africa.

Yes, the -50% should be seasonal, with winter reducing the crops in frigid climates and less in warm climates.

 

[We Who Are About 2 Die]

Yes, the -50% should be seasonal, with winter reducing the crops in frigid climates and less in warm climates.

Actually make investing in Granaries purposeful besides holding out during sieges.