The questions I suppose should be made first are:
1) Do people enjoy the food game?
2) Would they enjoy such harsh food game?
3) Can it be made so it is both harsh but not the sole focus of attention, so that the crisis can be manageable without devoting huge attention to the food game? Or would it not be possible to balance such unpredictability with a simple food system?
1) It is not very enjoyable at the moment, but I do hope it could be one day. The scarcity measures and tweaks will probably help. Food has to be important enough to cause at least people to notice if there is a hiccup in the system.
2) Yes, definitely I would enjoy a harsher food game. Granted, my character is but a lord of a rural region at the moment, producing surplus, so my situation would be better. Others might have different experiences.
3) Food could every now and then cause large scale problems. What I would like to see is a system which most of the time ran smoothly, with perhaps a little bit of competition over food, some scarcity and starvation here and there, but overall not a very big concern. But then from time to time there could be some warning signs that would or would not lead to a major food disaster. A volcano could erupt, cooling the climate, causing failed crops etc. So the effect could be predicted in advance, prepared for... and then you either have the food disaster or not.
Now I do not know how the majority of the players would feel about something like this. Perhaps it is a kin to diseases - while fun to simulate, detrimental to the overall fun factor. I do not know.
