Basically this would be an option for either the lord/steward of a region, or the banker. It would allow you to ration any food in your warehouses.
For instance, there is 500 food in your warehouse, and your region consumes 100 bushels a day. Your realm can't supply any more food for another 10 days. Normally, you would be faced with the following scenario: after 5 days, your food is gone and your region starts losing peasants until the next shipment arrives. To me it just doesn't make sense... no sensible Lord would let his peasants feast for five days and then starve for another five days.
With rationing, you could make that food last 10 days instead of five, by only giving out half the required daily rations. Your region will go hungry, but there will be no widespread starvation killing off a bunch of your peasants.
This would make managing developing cities a bit easier, especially big ones. For instance, Giask on Dwilight is causing us some major headaches. We want to stop the city from growing by controlling how much food goes there, so they peasants have just enough food to sustain themselves, but they do not procreate. It's a logistical semi-nightmare that requires some micromanaging, which I believe is not the way the game is supposed to head towards. Adding an option to ration food would make things a lot easier.
Giving the ration option to the bankers also gives them some more to do besides setting taxes and crunching food numbers, and at the same time it gives them the means to check the power of Dukes, by allowing them to shut off the food supply to the cities. To prevent it from being too powerful, perhaps rations should be set at a bare minimum of 50% of the required bushels.
I like this idea. I was actually thinking about suggesting this as well but wasn't sure if the dev team would say yes.
Maybe the banker or duke can control something like a quarter ration, a half ration and a full ration kind of things? Setting your ration on a quarter should reduce production, morale and control quickly too since people won't be able to work as hard as before with only eater a quarter of what they used to. (+ reducing population growth to almost none)
Getting a city like Giask to go from 0 to 160,000 is supposed to be a logistic nightmare :)
Yes, but the idea is to stop growth you cannot feed. Right now, cities are in boom-bust cycles where the population reaches unsustainable levels, starves, and then grows to an unsustainable level again.
I concur that it would be very, very nice to have some form of rationing that effectively zero'd population growth.
Quote from: Zakilevo on August 13, 2011, 10:07:39 PM
I like this idea. I was actually thinking about suggesting this as well but wasn't sure if the dev team would say yes.
Maybe the banker or duke can control something like a quarter ration, a half ration and a full ration kind of things? Setting your ration on a quarter should reduce production, morale and control quickly too since people won't be able to work as hard as before with only eater a quarter of what they used to. (+ reducing population growth to almost none)
AFAIK, the famine rules are as follows:
-Supply 100% of daily required rations, and your city be well-fed and it will grow in population.
-Supply between 50% and 100%, and your city will go hungry. Population won't grow, but there won't be any starvation, and I think there is a penalty to stats as well.
-Supply less than 50%, and the city will starve.
If that's correct, then sending quarter rations would still cause starvation. Not only will there be no growth, there will be a decline in population.
I once came up with a system for rationing food to alleviate the explosive growth followed by devestating starvation that we have now. Tom didn't really care for the idea too much. The quarter cup a day of grain that peasants get already isn't exactly a feast. But maybe if enough people want it, and we can come up with a simple enough system, he might agree to take another look at it.
Just add the option to feed them 50%, instead of 100%, and face exactly the same results you'd face as if you only had 50% of the needed food in the warehouse. It's quite simple.
I do think, though, that it should be an option for each Lord, not for the Banker.
Right now, all you have to do is send 25 bushels to a region of any size and it won't starve. That seems a much more like gaming the system than an actual rationing system.
Some sort of rationing system is really needed. Either what has been suggested, or just a percentage system, releasing a certain percent or what the region normally would consume daily.
Hmm, yes, but a minor quibble: it should be granaries instead of warehouses.
Or an alternative system: chase undesirables. Set a wanted max population level. Population growth past that limit is chased away to other regions. :P
forced migrations have been well-documented in the MA. :)
Quote from: Shizzle on August 14, 2011, 11:38:14 PM
forced migrations have been well-documented in the MA. :)
Good. Now do it! 8)
That wouldn't really work if the city is surrounded by fully populated regions :P
Quote from: Sacha on August 15, 2011, 12:16:41 AM
That wouldn't really work if the city is surrounded by fully populated regions :P
They can then push them farther out. To Barca, in this case.
it would work if accompanied by lower morale.
"they went to the next region... honest" *chop*
Quote from: fodder on August 15, 2011, 12:38:53 AM
it would work if accompanied by lower morale.
"they went to the next region... honest" *chop*
Some kind of region stat drop would obviously be necessary for balance. 'cause really, one doesn't need 100% population for 100% production. That excess population that isn't needed for production would always be chased away. Mind you, I guess they *do* represent overcrowding in a way, as they aren't working (or their work is countered by loss of efficiency by others)...
As already discussed, there is a "hungry" status where there are stat penalties and the like when you have some food but not enough. Those would not go away.
Quote from: Chénier on August 15, 2011, 12:17:06 AM
They can then push them farther out. To Barca, in this case.
When we take regions with no people in them, being able to forcefully repopulate from other regions would we awesome, but I could see some play balance issues, such as "stealing" people from other realms during a war.
Regarding the original idea (rationing), it's not that hard. Just have a rationing setting with four options: full, half, quarter, none
Someone already listed the current results of having food available to those percentages, just use those. The food needs of Darfix far outstripped the increase in food growth in the rural regions surrounding it. In no time the realm (Niselur) collapsed. Similarly, Golden Farrow crashed because there was no way to preempt the loss of food income during the winter after the rural regions were trashed by an invading army. Once the granaries are empty, that's that and down it went until spring and revolt. Some kind of control would be good.
If you do set the rations less than 'full', it should include that in your daily region report. It should be an anomaly that you use these settings for a stable realm, not a daily thing.
Quote from: acrandal on September 01, 2011, 06:26:48 AMThe food needs of Darfix far outstripped the increase in food growth in the rural regions surrounding it. In no time the realm (Niselur) collapsed.
Uhh... No. That's not what happened. Yes, Darfix may have been growing faster than the rurals could grow to feed it, but that's not what really caused the food problems. It was human error, in the form of a banker/lord disappearing, while all the food was stored in his region.
Quote from: Indirik on September 01, 2011, 03:08:32 PM
Uhh... No. That's not what happened. Yes, Darfix may have been growing faster than the rurals could grow to feed it, but that's not what really caused the food problems. It was human error, in the form of a banker/lord disappearing, while all the food was stored in his region.
An emergency request to your friendly neighborhood trader, to come and hit up the black market in exchange for freedom from prosecution, could have helped that situation.
Assuming there was a skilled enough trader in the area that could have done it. Distances involved would have prevented anyone coming from another realm to do it. Darfix had been having food shipped in from Under Darfix every day to prevent the city from growing too fast. Once starvation hit, the city was doomed. No way to do it fast enough. And once Darfix population was devastated, the realm was history.
Quote from: Indirik on September 01, 2011, 10:03:45 PM
Assuming there was a skilled enough trader in the area that could have done it. Distances involved would have prevented anyone coming from another realm to do it. Darfix had been having food shipped in from Under Darfix every day to prevent the city from growing too fast. Once starvation hit, the city was doomed. No way to do it fast enough. And once Darfix population was devastated, the realm was history.
such a sad tale :'(
Quote from: Peri on September 01, 2011, 10:29:05 PM
such a sad tale :'(
I lived through it. :-)
And there was some black market work to get that food freed. No comment on who was involved in that, though...
Feeding 160,000+ people takes 320 bushels/day (2240 bushels/week). For a city that size, unless you have 7 *very* good food producing regions that never falter you'll never reach full population. Darfix can handle 180,000 or more. We did get over 160,000 and then in the heart of winter both of our defensive forces were crushed at the same time. The rest of winter wasn't great because we couldn't recruit fast enough to rebuild a defensive force. After that the realm didn't last a year.
There was no way to slowly bring the population down, or limit it so we just starved out and once you're on a bust cycle its really tough to recover.
Quote from: Indirik on September 01, 2011, 03:08:32 PM
Uhh... No. That's not what happened. Yes, Darfix may have been growing faster than the rurals could grow to feed it, but that's not what really caused the food problems. It was human error, in the form of a banker/lord disappearing, while all the food was stored in his region.
Clearly they were doing something wrong to 1) have all the food in a region other than the city and 2) not be able to hold out long enough to find a solution.
Quote from: acrandal on September 02, 2011, 03:42:05 AMWe did get over 160,000...
No, sorry. Darfix never got anywhere near that high. Arrakis, the founder/ruler of Niselur, and duke of Darfix, says it really only got up to about 50-60k.
Quote from: Chénier on September 06, 2011, 03:57:59 AMClearly they were doing something wrong to 1) have all the food in a region other than the city and 2) not be able to hold out long enough to find a solution.
The colony was attempting to stop the city from growing too fast, and outstripping their ability to feed it. So they were keeping it on half rations by using daily food shipments from Under Darfix. The lord of Under Darfix ox-carted in half the amount the city needed every day. This worked great until the lord of Under Darfix, who was also the banker, went inactive. It took five days for the banker/lord to auto-abdicate, and then a new lord appointed and start shipping food. By then some monster packs had moved in, the city starved, and the tax base of the realm was destroyed. There were some other problems, too, including some poor choices on how to defend the realm, and some really bad military decisions. They all hit around the same time, and the realm just imploded.
Quote from: Indirik on September 06, 2011, 02:49:38 PM
The colony was attempting to stop the city from growing too fast, and outstripping their ability to feed it. So they were keeping it on half rations by using daily food shipments from Under Darfix. The lord of Under Darfix ox-carted in half the amount the city needed every day. This worked great until the lord of Under Darfix, who was also the banker, went inactive. It took five days for the banker/lord to auto-abdicate, and then a new lord appointed and start shipping food. By then some monster packs had moved in, the city starved, and the tax base of the realm was destroyed. There were some other problems, too, including some poor choices on how to defend the realm, and some really bad military decisions. They all hit around the same time, and the realm just imploded.
How much food was hanging out in Under Darfix? That sounds like it would lead to rot. Not to mention that ox carts result in spoilage. Even without Under Darfix, the other rurals should have been able to send a caravan to Darfix without unloading food in the townsland first.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ox carts result in spoilage".
As for the rest, I really don't know too much more of the situation. While I was involved in starting and supplying the colony, I wasn't actually in it.
Ox carts are at risk of being attacked by bandits, losing some food in the process. As I understand it, lower loyalty/control increases the risk of this happening. Though in my spell as Duke of Askileon, the losses were negligible. 5% of all food carted around, if that.
Well, yes, theft on low Control. But I've never heard it called spoilage.
Quote from: Indirik on September 07, 2011, 02:19:29 AM
Well, yes, theft on low Control. But I've never heard it called spoilage.
I call it spoilage, because it's consistent and a theft-free alternative exists. Using ox carts when one could use caravans is nothing else than throwing that food away. The quantities are small if control is high, but I've seen over 95% of the food in a transfer getting robbed. And even with good control, you'll lose some.
It's spoilage by handing it out to thieves, even if it doesn't rot, because that lost food is worth more than the cost of the caravan needed to send it.
And I wouldn't consider 5% to be negligible. In D'Hara, a 5% drop in food stocks is often the difference between making it through a year without starvation and having Port Nebel revolt to five different realms in the same season.
I'm not sure if Port Nebel even has 5 different Realms to revolt too ;D
Maybe if Port Raviel secedes Port Nebel could flip over to the new realm :P