I Hate Food

[Gustav Kuriga]

I've been stuck in Golden Farrow for well over a month now (yes, I am not lying). I finally said !@#$ it, put up as many buy orders as I could manage up for 14 days, told my steward to take care of the food while I was gone (I don't know if he's even in the region or marching with the army, didn't care), and ran off as fast as my priest hours could carry me to some roleplay.

[Penchant]

Something I think that is beneficial to everything, traders, lords, the food situation, is allowing lords to set up offers without being at a marketplace or their region. Not to be able to accept offers as they can't even see them, but simply to add to them.

[Eldargard]

The only problem I have experienced so far has been some ridiculous notion that my character should have to sell my food dirt cheap to the cities of his realm. Aside from that, I have had few problems. My character is only the lord of a food producing region and there is this infernal peace going on so I have yet to experience the full system. All I do is have my character post a bunch of food to sell at his price (He refuses to fill the ridiculously low buy offers posted by the dukes) and then goes about his business. He checks on stores before/during winter as well.

At the same time, I see how even my character's minimal food management requirements might get in the way of a good war. Not too excited about that possibility.

[Dante Silverfire]

I'd like to harp in how this system really isn't very encouraging. The two options which Anaris outlined are very important towards making the system much improved.

Right now I am very lucky to have found a very very good steward for my 60k pop city. The steward makes between 1-5 food purchases/sales per day using my 4 granaries of space as his trading center for food to stockpile for the city and to sell if he sees a really good price. All I did was give him an estate sized equally to my own as Lord (which brings him about 300-350 gold a tax) and he manages the rest all his own.

Granted, this is a unique situation as I found a trader, made him steward of my city and gave him bonuses for doing good work, but it shouldn't have to be this hard.

Personally its a great situation for me right now, but before this it was annoying to manage it when I'm dealing with other things.

[Vellos]

We desperately need auto-orders.

And a banker check-box.

In Terran we're discussing setting up rump-estates throughout the realm where Hireshmont, judge and a priest, so not with the army and always around the realm's outlying regions, can walk in, take an estate, get declared steward a few hours later, make a sale, then jump ship to the next rump-estate-rural.

We haven't gotten to the point yet where such estate-hopping is absolutely necessary... but we aren't far from it. Lords are basically permanently tied to their regions. Especially in realms that are short on nobles, you really have to keep a large number of nobles at home just to keep the food flowing.

[Tom]

So, basically, allowing you to post offers for your region no matter where you are would solve all the major problems except convenience? It would allow region lords to not be tethered to their region and all that, yes?

[Chenier]

So, basically, allowing you to post offers for your region no matter where you are would solve all the major problems except convenience? It would allow region lords to not be tethered to their region and all that, yes?

Not having to repost offers every two weeks is more important than not having to frequent your region or a marketplace to set them up.

[Eduardo Almighty]

The best option I found for Avamar (without stewards) preparing for war was order the Lords to build markets in every border region. It's hard in EC to have a single campaign for more than two weeks (14 days), time enough to return and begin to buy/sell food in any border region before reach the Capital for refit.

Maybe if we can extend the deadline for offers to twenty or thirty days, we can solve the problem. I doubt anyone will be a month away from his region or any region with a market. In fact, more than food problems, the criticism I always see is that Banker is a useless position since the first reforms. I liked being Banker in the past when there was something to do, but now it's just a regulatory service that anyone can do. It seems that the only advantage now is a chair inside the Council, but in quieter realms with little political activity, this isn't important at all.

[Solari]

There is nothing that Indirik, Anaris, or Vellos has said in this thread that I disagree with. How often can anyone make that claim?

Recognizing the value (and intent) that food can provide in creating tension and redistributing wealth and power down the lower rungs of BM society, it wouldn't be doing any harm to make food as close to "set it and forget it" as possible. Things like automatic sell offers, where a region's granaries are opened to the duchy/realm/all comers at X price until Y threshold, and a button that allows the banker to manage the affairs at the risk of reduced profits for the regional liege, would go a long, long way to getting people out of a perpetually conservative mindset that stifles fun, creativity, and action. It's BattleMaster, after all. Not EurozoneBudgetMaster.

[Indirik]

Being able to post from anywhere is a help, but by no means fixes it. It doesn't matter if there are lots of orders posted if no one is around to accept them.

But even beyond that, we shouldn't have to keep constantly posting orders to buy/sell food. We should be able to completely automate the food system. It's an ancillary part of the game that almost noe one really likes to do. Forcing people to do it, repetetively, is setting up a failure.

[Azerax]

On a somewhat realted note, the "banker" position in Lyonesse is called Royal Scribe with duties not at all relating to food since there really isn't anything they can do.

[Vellos]

So, basically, allowing you to post offers for your region no matter where you are would solve all the major problems except convenience? It would allow region lords to not be tethered to their region and all that, yes?

That would help with mobility some: but dukes would still be trapped in their cities.

Auto orders are vital too. We've been harping on this for a looooong time. Is there a reason that makes auto-orders particularly difficult to code?

[Anaris]

Auto-sell orders aren't particularly difficult.

Auto-buy orders are, because where does the money come from?

[Foundation]

There's simply been a lack of dev time to code it these last few months. i.e. not much work is happening in general, not just with new features like auto-offers.

[Vellos]

Auto-sell orders aren't particularly difficult.

Auto-buy orders are, because where does the money come from?

Then let's get auto-sell orders set up. That at least reduces the number of trapped nobles to lords/stewards of food-demanding regions only.

Couldn't we just set auto-buy orders to buy from tax revenues? That's how food used to work, as I recall.