I Hate Food

[Kwanstein]

It has been demonstrated, time and again, that the vast majority of players are either apathetic toward or outright frustrated with the food system.

Did you ever actually poll the player base to come up with that conclusion? Because drawing conclusions from the anecdotes of some people complaining on this forum is a poor substitute. For one thing, people are always more vocal when it comes to complaining than they are otherwise. For another, I've only seen between ten and twenty people complaining about food anyway.

Personally, I enjoy food trading. I enjoy playing the market, attempting to maximise my profits. The only problem I have with this current system is that it chains Lords to their regions, unable to leave for fear of neglecting their food distribution duties. I think that enabling trade transactions regardless of character location would solve this problem entirely. I don't see the act of placing food offers as being cumbersome in the least, however I would welcome automation of it, so long as it still allowed willing players (such as myself) to continue manually managing buy and sell offers. I like Dante's proposal, as it is simple yet effective.

[Chenier]

Did you ever actually poll the player base to come up with that conclusion? Because drawing conclusions from the anecdotes of some people complaining on this forum is a poor substitute. For one thing, people are always more vocal when it comes to complaining than they are otherwise. For another, I've only seen between ten and twenty people complaining about food anyway.

Personally, I enjoy food trading. I enjoy playing the market, attempting to maximise my profits. The only problem I have with this current system is that it chains Lords to their regions, unable to leave for fear of neglecting their food distribution duties. I think that enabling trade transactions regardless of character location would solve this problem entirely. I don't see the act of placing food offers as being cumbersome in the least, however I would welcome automation of it, so long as it still allowed willing players (such as myself) to continue manually managing buy and sell offers. I like Dante's proposal, as it is simple yet effective.

People who are harmed by the system are more likely to complain, not people who dislike it in general. Hence the problem: all of the rural lords who just don't give a damn. Which is the biggest problem with "there needs to be responsibilities for the rewards": the lords with the responsibilities don't feel the pain for their failures, it's the lords without the food surpluses that do.

I enjoy trade... as long as there's trading to be done. I don't enjoy seeing a bunch of the food rot because the rural lords don't care for profits and another chunk just getting shipped to NPCs to avoid their wrath, despite general reductions in food production and deletion of mass portion of the food stocks.

Then there's all these talks about forcing realms to get more traders... but who'd want to become a trader when there are no damn sell offers on the continent? You just walk and walk and walk and never do any actual trading.

[Kwanstein]

Out of the six realms I've been a part of, only one suffered from starvation due to the neglect of region lords. That one realm suffered only briefly, and it was a realm where neglect ran rampant in all areas of gameplay, from trading to government to military, it was a very apathetic realm. So your claim is not something that I can sympathise with.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Out of the six realms I've been a part of, only one suffered from starvation due to the neglect of region lords. That one realm suffered only briefly, and it was a realm where neglect ran rampant in all areas of gameplay, from trading to government to military, it was a very apathetic realm. So your claim is not something that I can sympathise with.

"Due to neglect of region lords" would be the key words there. How many times was it because of drought?

[Chenier]

"Due to neglect of region lords" would be the key words there. How many times was it because of drought?

Often?

[Anaris]

Feeding an army was the #1 logistics challenge of most ancient and middle-ages warlords.

Frankly, I'd rather make feeding regions significantly easier (or at least less trouble than it is now), and feeding armies slightly harder on average—but also create the ability for armies to march further from home without the need to return home every week, assuming the appropriate people can handle the logistics properly. (Some form of supply line, with a user-friendly implementation of creating and maintaining it, but make it a necessity if you're fighting far from home, and be possible to interrupt/attack/sever...)

[Kwanstein]

Frankly, I'd rather make feeding regions significantly easier (or at least less trouble than it is now), and feeding armies slightly harder on average—but also create the ability for armies to march further from home without the need to return home every week, assuming the appropriate people can handle the logistics properly. (Some form of supply line, with a user-friendly implementation of creating and maintaining it, but make it a necessity if you're fighting far from home, and be possible to interrupt/attack/sever...)

I don't think it was typical for Western European armies to make use of supply lines during the middle ages. I think they generally just commandeered supplies as they went. Could be wrong.

"Due to neglect of region lords" would be the key words there. How many times was it because of drought?

Never.

[Azerax]

I was extremely frustrated when the new trading system went in because it removed pretty much everything I did as a banker and a trader.  Since then I've adapted, had to work more with Dukes/Duchess and adapted.

Perhaps Atamara is different but I have no issue buying and selling food outside of my Kingdom - perhaps my extreme range helps, but food availability isn't a big deal.

The only thing I really, really miss is the black market.  I used to be able to stick food in a starving region without a Lord (just after a take over), which I can't do.

Anyways, just seems people are frustrated with other players hoarding food, and not the game mechanic itself.

I am in favor with auto-buy and auto-sell as it adds flexibility to the system.

[Chenier]

D'Hara pretty much bears the brunt of every drought on Dwi, because droughts rarely make any realm starve, it just makes them unable to sell surpluses...

And food, as it is, barely ever matters as far as armies go, save for starving one of your own regions to inefficiently hurt an invading army.

[Indirik]

My frustration with the system is the constant attention it requires. It shouldn't need that. Yes, food should eb important, I get that. But it shouldn't be a constant fight for the people that need the food to convince the people that have the food to sell it. They should want to sell it, to get the money.

Perhaps what we need is to make rural regions produce less gold, and thus give the lords more incentive to want to sell their food. That way their apathy toward selling their food would hit them in the wallet.

[Vellos]

My frustration with the system is the constant attention it requires. It shouldn't need that. Yes, food should eb important, I get that. But it shouldn't be a constant fight for the people that need the food to convince the people that have the food to sell it. They should want to sell it, to get the money.

Perhaps what we need is to make rural regions produce less gold, and thus give the lords more incentive to want to sell their food. That way their apathy toward selling their food would hit them in the wallet.

+1

Except: we've talked before about penalizations. Do we want to make MORE penalties?

Frankly, I'd rather make feeding regions significantly easier (or at least less trouble than it is now), and feeding armies slightly harder on average—but also create the ability for armies to march further from home without the need to return home every week, assuming the appropriate people can handle the logistics properly. (Some form of supply line, with a user-friendly implementation of creating and maintaining it, but make it a necessity if you're fighting far from home, and be possible to interrupt/attack/sever...)

Yes please.

Make food part of the military infrastructure, so that the "bureaucratic players" (me!) and the "military players" (very much not me) are playing the same game again.

[Penchant]

I am against making rural lords dependent on selling their food to get a good income. Their knights don't receive that gold; they actually have a reason to charge high prices to city lords which is bad as gets away from the supply and demand aspect somewhat; and that helps give apathetic rural lords to sell but hurts everybody, not just the apathetic rural lords.

[Indirik]

Except: we've talked before about penalizations. Do we want to make MORE penalties?

I understand what you're saying. But in a way, it's like Chenier said: If the people that have the food don't give a damn, and don't do anything, then there is *no* disadvantage to them. Particularly those regions which have high food production, as they also have high gold production. They don't sell their 600 bushels a week? Who cares? They also got 600 gold this week.

The advice normally handed out to deal with these people is to start fining, and then eventually banish them. Oh look, they got penalized.

The game used to be overly centralized, and the realm basically controlled everything. The rural lords had all their food taken, and got nothing for it. Then we went over the top the other way. Now the rural lords have all their gold, all their food, get more gold for their food, and have zero reason to sell it, or even pay attention to it. Unless they're feeling patriotic, or whatever.

What we need is a balance. The people that have the gold need to food. The people that have the food have to need the gold, or we're totally lopsided.

But even so, that's not my chief complaint about the food system. My problem with it is that it takes way too much time and effort. I shouldn't have to be looking at the marketplace several times a day hoping to find available offers. And I shouldn't have to keep on doing it every day, day after day, forever.

[Indirik]

I am against making rural lords dependent on selling their food to get a good income. Their knights don't receive that gold;

That can easily be changed.

[Chenier]

Has the trading game really improved since we decentralized it all?

I know that this is the direction that's been taking since a while, but that doesn't mean it's the right one. Traders don't seem any more useful because of this (when they do seem useful, it's for other reasons). Heck, it almost makes them feel less useful, because they can't trade on behalf of the centralized food manager (banker) as well anymore, because there is not more centralized food manager.

I could understand giving the lords the power to prevent the banker from starving their regions, but the measures taken just go way beyond that.

And at least with automated offers, like back with the caravans, I could send 'em a bit everywhere and many would come back with food, because the lords only had to set offers once and often didn't remove the offers set by the previous lords. But now, every 14 days...? Sell offers are so rare...