I Hate Food

[Foundation]

I remember brankrupting Paisly, and it did not require prices of 50 gold per bushel, but more an average of around 35 I think, 40 tops.

Having food so expensive that cities can't financially feed themselves even if they wanted to doesn't add anything to the game, other than a ton of frustration.

Last time I calculated an average city on AT produces at around 70-80 gold/100 bushels. It was a couple of years ago and might have changed somewhat after the population rebalance, but can't be that much worse... Can you give actual data on Paisly?

[Gustav Kuriga]

It's not like I really have a choice in the matter. Either I keep it fed, and it grows in population regardless of my wishes (wishing I could force additional growth in population to emigrate elsewhere), or I let it starve, and the city stats plummet, and I go back to where we started, low population and little gold. To start the cycle all over again. IF it doesn't go rogue before I can get food to stop the starvation after the population has dropped.

[Chenier]

Last time I calculated an average city on AT produces at around 70-80 gold/100 bushels. It was a couple of years ago and might have changed somewhat after the population rebalance, but can't be that much worse... Can you give actual data on Paisly?

No, I can't. And values changed since then, so I couldn't re-run it even if I wanted to.

There's infrastructure upkeep to consider too. And rot.

But to answer your question, as i said, I can't rerun the numbers for you and say why it happened, just that it did. And that I wasn't paying max price.

Also, I gotta say that I really dislike how granaries break apart due to low production, now... I like that we can build more, but cities need a lot of peasants to feed before production is high enough to prevent granaries from breaking apart. Which resulsts in lots of rot. And thus more expenses, for food that the cities don't produce much gold to buy with to begin with.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Last time I calculated an average city on AT produces at around 70-80 gold/100 bushels. It was a couple of years ago and might have changed somewhat after the population rebalance, but can't be that much worse... Can you give actual data on Paisly?

Atamara is not a good comparison to Dwilight.

One: it doesn't have seasons.
Two: It wasn't rebalanced to produce less food in order to "fix" the "problem" of select regions storing too much food. (just as an aside, there was an IC group that was actively working to hoard food in multiple regions that was based in Morek. I know at least one of the members who admitted it to me, but would rather not say who without his permission)
Three: It can basically defined as one large landmass. Dwilight is made up of two main continent-size landmasses, a subcontinent (where the Grand Duchy of Fissoa is, along with half of Luria Nova), a large island (where Madina once was), and two other small islands (the D'haran island and the one controlled by Astrum). The two main landmasses are separated by a large body of water, effectively preventing much direct trade between the two. Two mountain chains, one near astrum, and one where Swordfell is, split parts of the main landmasses off from each other via their lack of food producing, further reducing trade between food rich and food poor areas. Morek, the breadbasket of the eastern landmass, is separated from the south by this chain of mountains. Iashalur, located in the area with the most rurals on the western landmass, is also separated from much of the rest of the continent, Astrum being the only other realm near enough to benefit from their trade regularly. The eastern and western landmasses rarely trade on a large scale with each other, at least from what I have seen.

[Dante Silverfire]

On Atamara, my city Lord/Duke refused to purchase food for anything more than 30 gold/100 bushels. By doing so over a large portion of time, and being the largest food consumer in the area, I forced prices down to that level in my area.

I would frequently purchase food off of the market at the price of 20-30 gold/100 bushels. A common price that I purchased at was 25 gold/100 bushels. VERY common. All of those food purchases come from outside of my realm. Some are allies, some were neutral, some were at peace with me.

Recently, I've had a steward handle all of my food purchases. We had an agreement where I would pay him 30 gold for every 100 bushels he purchased for my city regardless of the price that he bought the food for. (Sent to him through private gold shipments on a bi-weekly basis). I'm fairly sure he commonly turned a profit on these trades. Not all the time. Sometimes he would buy for 30 gold/100 bushels or once or twice at 35, but never higher.

I'm in the very center of the continent though, so perhaps I have access to the largest variety of markets, so I always get a good deal. With a 60k pop city I certainly make plenty of food purchases.

[Chenier]

Food rot isn't as much of a concern to continents without seasons, too... On Dwi, you are forced to have exceptionally large reserves before winter arrives, to survive the season. And much of it rots regardless of how many granaries you build.

[Kwanstein]

I did the math in the other thread, the only way Golden Farrow should be losing gold is if there's some massive expenses or inefficient taxation going on. How much militia is there and what are the tax rates (both the region tax as well as the vessel tax)?

[Chenier]

Oh yea, and militia too, let's not forget those.

It's NORMAL for a city to have militia...

[Dante Silverfire]

Food rot isn't as much of a concern to continents without seasons, too... On Dwi, you are forced to have exceptionally large reserves before winter arrives, to survive the season. And much of it rots regardless of how many granaries you build.

Um... Seasons are MUCH easier now than they were.

Winter used to be DEVASTATING on Dwilight. You'd have like 3 weeks of no harvests or half harvests or whatever it was. This was just pure death. At least now, you're not simply dead when winter comes. You just prioritize and plan some. Before, if you didn't have it saved, you literally had no recourse. Everything shut down.

Plus, this thread is in the GD forum, not the Dwilight Forum. Therefore, opinions on all continents is important.

[Chenier]

Um... Seasons are MUCH easier now than they were.

Winter used to be DEVASTATING on Dwilight. You'd have like 3 weeks of no harvests or half harvests or whatever it was. This was just pure death. At least now, you're not simply dead when winter comes. You just prioritize and plan some. Before, if you didn't have it saved, you literally had no recourse. Everything shut down.

Plus, this thread is in the GD forum, not the Dwilight Forum. Therefore, opinions on all continents is important.

Yea, but back then, thousands of bushels had not been arbitrarily deleted and food production globally reduced either.

I don't get what the huge aversion to food surpluses are... cities will always need to buy food no matter how much of it overwhelms the market. You've got your interaction right there. In a buyer-biased market, there will be maximum food sales and there will still be room for negotiations as rural lords try to turn rotten food into scraps of profits and margraves attempt to minimize their food expenses. Everybody wins. Rural lords still make more gold than the lords of badlands, mountains, and woodlands, cities aren't constantly starving, and margraves don't have to spend so much of their time trying to find any deals whatsoever to meet the bare minimum their regions need.

A seller-biased market just brings a ton of frustration, forces a ton of people to stay at home to avoid starvation or to minimize its penalties, cripples cities and therefore realms' abilities to wage war, and creates an even bigger gap between rurals and woodlands/badlands/mountains.

[Sypher]

For Beluaterra, at least in Fronen, there seems to be a general surplus and we have supplies to last a while. I believe it is due at least in part to which regions were lost permanently. The continent lost a disproportionate number of cities & townslands compared to other regions.

I'm not a trader but there are usually a number of sale offers sitting on the market. Prices seem low (between 20 and 25 gold with some less than that) due to the abundance of food in regions so rural lords have an incentive to reduce prices to try to get cities to buy before it rots.

[Indirik]

The balance on BT has been literally blown away. It cannot be used as an example for any other island. The number of coastal cities that were sunk was phenomenal. Once the island returns to full production, BT will produce times more food than it consumes.

[Sypher]

The balance on BT has been literally blown away. It cannot be used as an example for any other island. The number of coastal cities that were sunk was phenomenal. Once the island returns to full production, BT will produce times more food than it consumes.

Yeah I agree. I wasn't trying to use it as an example for other islands except maybe as a contrast.  The island already produces many times what is needed to feed everyone and is perhaps the test case for what happens in markets where an excess is produced. There are no realms with a deficit. Fronen had a brief deficit back in Dec when we had a drought but with months of excess food it wasn't an issue.

[Foundation]

Chenier, the calculation was done for cities, doesn't matter which continent it's on, cities have similar stats.

Sure, you can argue all you want that additional gold generated by additional population must go somewhere else. When it comes down to it, you're expecting to do everything with a city when it is in an area with a low access to supplies of surplus food as when it is in an area with tons of surplus food.

By the way, by data I meant population, food consumption, production, gold values, tax rates, that kind of thing. Surely that data cannot be lost?

[vonGenf]

It's not like I really have a choice in the matter. Either I keep it fed, and it grows in population regardless of my wishes (wishing I could force additional growth in population to emigrate elsewhere), or I let it starve, and the city stats plummet, and I go back to where we started, low population and little gold. To start the cycle all over again. IF it doesn't go rogue before I can get food to stop the starvation after the population has dropped.

This is a real concern. If it were possible to keep a city at a lower population without regularly going into starvation and degrading your infrastructure, then food would not be so much of a problem.