I Hate Food

[vonGenf]

They don't care about selling their food. They don't even want to put in effort once a month. They want to be able to tell their region, "Sell all the food over 200 bushels in the granary for 20 gold per hundred" once, then leave it forever.

Future trades could take care of that similarly to auto-trade. "Put 100 bushels on the market every week" and be done with it for a long time, unless something happens to your region to make your average surplus change significantly. I just wish "a long time" would be more than once a month.

[Chenier]

Future trades could take care of that similarly to auto-trade. "Put 100 bushels on the market every week" and be done with it for a long time, unless something happens to your region to make your average surplus change significantly. I just wish "a long time" would be more than once a month.

And then a drought hits and your region puts its last 100 bushels on the market? It needs to be "above X threshold".

I can understand that the caravans were awful code, and that it's desired that it work more at the lord's level than at the region level now... but I have not seen one soul say "aye, thank god offers now never last more than 14 days, gosh I hated it when we could set it and forget it forever". While I see the rest of the changes as being rather neutral (the system is different, but neither better nor worse), the inability to set it and forget it I definitely consider to be a downgrade.

Being able to set offers in advance doesn't fix the problem. It still requires one to create a spam of offers, and it still limits one to the reserves (be it gold or food) one has on hand at any given time. It just makes things less bad than they are now, but not as good as they used to be.

And because of the current noble:region ratio, we can't reasonably say at the moment, "Well, they accepted the Lordship, they need to accept the duties that come with it."

They'd rather just say "screw it" and let the food rot and the cities starve, because it doesn't affect them in any way.

Indeed, 'cause often that'd basically mean not having a lord for that rural region, and thus losing it. And even if you manage to get them replaced, there's no guarantee the other guy will do any better.

Were the food surpluses on Dwilight really that much of a bad thing? That they needed to be decimated, and the surplus production radically reduced? Hoarded just had more rot, but at least those willing to give a damn put reasonable amounts on the market.

[vonGenf]

And then a drought hits and your region puts its last 100 bushels on the market? It needs to be "above X threshold".

I think it's reasonable to require Lords to suddenly revisit their trade arrangements when a drought (or looting) occurs. The problem with the current system is in big part that you need to take care of it constantly even when nothing particular is occurring, which becomes tedious because there is really no judgment involved. Create a system where player input is required only when something has changed and you will ensure that players will need to think about their actions before pressing the buttons, and no one will complain that that's tedious.

[Indirik]

The system really needs some way to automate things. There is no reason that a simple enough way to do that can't be found. Yes, food should be important. But it's an ancillary part of the game that should not, under normal circumstances, require much, if any, effort.

While the "future offers" may make the system slightly more bearable, they are in no way a fix. They are a band-aid. I don't understand why there is so much resistance to allowing for the automation of posting orders. It will still require manual action to actually fill the orders.

[Eduardo Almighty]

I liked the old system where we had "auto-transfers". This could have some changes with higher limits and a kind of contract. A Lord have an oath with his Duke and it's interesting to have a "contract" where every month or every season a certain amount can be sold since there is gold available for transfer. This can be done in RP? Yes, it can along the game mechanics.

And we have to find new jobs for the Banker, because control food is out of his office with the system we have now. They're useless. He cannot enforce anything without a good Judge to punish the Lords. Despite some special options, the Dukes have the same options to control food. Now the Banker is just a beautiful ornament to put in your Council.

[Chenier]

I think it's reasonable to require Lords to suddenly revisit their trade arrangements when a drought (or looting) occurs. The problem with the current system is in big part that you need to take care of it constantly even when nothing particular is occurring, which becomes tedious because there is really no judgment involved. Create a system where player input is required only when something has changed and you will ensure that players will need to think about their actions before pressing the buttons, and no one will complain that that's tedious.

I don't. They'll simply not bother with selling to avoid the risks. I've seen people stockpile ridiculous amounts (and thus waste a lot) out of fear of droughts, in realms where it never will be an issue.

No one is arguing that trade should do itself. All the automation that is requested is so that trade only require one party to be actively involved in trading, instead of both parties. Back during the days of caravans, people still needed to manually send them out. But at least the lords could set an automatic offer to sell/buy all over X at Y price. Which is the main thing people are requesting.

Because, let's face it: what does food bring to this game? Not much, aside from a wealth redistribution from rural regions to city regions (leaving all other non-rural non-city region in relative poverty). A rare few exceptional realms require imports, which helps stimulate interaction, aye. But not to much if there's no sellers to interact with. Not to mention that the food precarity forces a relative peaceful diplomacy in order not to alienate too many food sources. So in the cases where food is in imbalance, it doesn't create conflict, it creates friendship. Because food is too important to go to war over, it's much more effective to befriend food sources than to risk your whole realm to scavenge a handful of bushels from an enemy.

And if food was of great importance for the logistics of the days, that's not how it is emulated in BM. Provisions emulate that for sea travel, but the amount of food that troops take in comparison to region population is so small that it could easily run in a system apart from it.

[vonGenf]

I don't. They'll simply not bother with selling to avoid the risks. I've seen people stockpile ridiculous amounts (and thus waste a lot) out of fear of droughts, in realms where it never will be an issue.

I don't have a problem with people stockpiling insane amounts for IC reasons. The cities will starve for those IC reasons. It's all good.

The problem is when people stockpile food not for IC reasons, but because they've done all that could be done with food and get bored.

[Azerax]

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.

So, this issue is the amount of micro managing it takes.  I just stocked up 30 days worth of food for Hawthorne, it took building another granary and buying food at 50 gold per, but it was easy.

[Azerax]

Atamara is probably different, especially since it does not have seasons like Dwilight and Far East.

Ah ha!  Good to know - thanks!

[Azerax]

I believe we can solve the food issues without compromising the existing system with two fairly simple changes:


One, allow lords to create (but not accept) trade postings while away. This way they do not have to stay at home, but to complete a trade it needs either someone staying at home or a trader. The whole realm could be away on a war with a few traders back home brokering all the trade deals the lords post.

Two, allow lords to post future trades. In addition to an end date, you can also give them a start date. For simplicity, one to four weeks in the future. That way, you can deal with food once a month and be done with it.


This would allow for the usual recipe of making things less hassle but if you invest the time to micro-manage, there's a small advantage in it. And it would still require intentional actions instead of automation and "not my problem".

If they have the option for how many weeks an order will remain - wouldn't they most likely pick the longest duration possible?  It's in their favor to do so.

[Azerax]

I think part of the problem, Tom, is that a lot of rural Lords consider it to be "not their problem."

They don't care about selling their food. They don't even want to put in effort once a month. They want to be able to tell their region, "Sell all the food over 200 bushels in the granary for 20 gold per hundred" once, then leave it forever.

And because of the current noble:region ratio, we can't reasonably say at the moment, "Well, they accepted the Lordship, they need to accept the duties that come with it."

They'd rather just say "screw it" and let the food rot and the cities starve, because it doesn't affect them in any way.

This just points to a player issue, not a mechanics issue.  Have the Treasurer issue an order, have the Judge fine them for failing to follow said order.

[LilWolf]

Food should be a set-it-and-forget-it sort of system until something goes wrong(drought, looting, what ever). Anything more and it just forces unpleasant duties on people who come to play a game for fun. The old system with carts was like this. Why can't the new system be?

Tom said food was a major part of the logistics of war during middle ages and that may be so, but this is yet another time when realism does not make for a more fun game. The way starvation is handled these days is another one. Though this is just me assuming a fun game is the actual goal here..

[Anaris]

This just points to a player issue, not a mechanics issue.  Have the Treasurer issue an order, have the Judge fine them for failing to follow said order.

Ah, yes, dismissing the problems with our current player culture with, "So fine them."

Really? You think it's just that easy?

First of all, you need a Judge willing to fine for this. Second of all, you need a realm that's unwilling to protest a Judge out of office for it. Third of all, you need Lords whose problem is primarily, "I would rather actively hoard than post offers," rather than, "I can never remember to post offers, and I'm rarely near a marketplace anyway, since I'm in the army that's marching 2 weeks to war."

The current system is a UX nightmare. Dismissing that out of hand with a suggestion to, essentially, punish the users for the bad design is completely the wrong approach.

[Kwanstein]

An assumption that everyone's making is that a critical number of realms are starving due to inept Lords never bothering to sell their food. I'm guessing that this problem is exaggerated and that if we actually compiled a list of realms that this is happening in, we'd find that it is a very minor problem.

So how about listing all of the realms that are starving, accompanied by a short blurb explaining why they are starving.

Out of the six realms I've played in, I can list none that starved due to inept rural Lords.

[Anaris]

An assumption that everyone's making is that a critical number of realms are starving due to inept Lords never bothering to sell their food. I'm guessing that this problem is exaggerated and that if we actually compiled a list of realms that this is happening in, we'd find that it is a very minor problem.

So how about listing all of the realms that are starving, accompanied by a short blurb explaining why they are starving.

Out of the six realms I've played in, I can list none that starved due to inept rural Lords.

No; I don't believe anyone's making that assumption at all.

The problem is not so much that it's crippling realms by starving them. The problem is twofold: first, that it is causing many characters to have to stay either at or close to home in order to ensure that the appropriate orders are posted in a timely fashion (thus reducing the number of people available to go to war), and second, that largely because of this, the system itself is frustrating and should not require so much manual effort.