On the topic of food, the way that food deprivation is currently handled is really poor. If a region is producing 6 bushels a day, and it needs 7, it still starves really badly. That's like saying: if you normally eat 7 slices of bread a day, and you now eat 6, you will starve. Serious wtf right there.
The only possible reasoning that I can think behind this is that the richer people horde the food and let the others starve. But the food is distributed from the regional granaries, so presumably it is controlled in some manner.