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• Knights and Nobles wouldn't need any food only the gold. The food and gold would be taken from the region that produced them. The initial gold would come from a regions daily collected gold from taxes or a treasury. The food would be removed from the granary or from the daily surplus.
• Single estates wouldn't effect the recruitment centre's but the average of all the estate's efficiency would. So if theirs 3 estates that altogether have an average efficiency of 90%. This would increase the base gold or food cost of training units by 10% to represent the inefficiency of the region
• The lord would be able to add a levy to the base price or subsidize by reducing the base price. The gold from sales would then go into the region coffers till tax day when they are sent to the lord. Using this a lord would then purchase food if needed
• Another way to draw gold to and from RC's would be to add a treasury to them. To produce troops a lord adds gold. Then after sales the gold is replaced with any profit added or subsidies removed

[Title]

Title:
Change how recruitment centres work

Summary:
To change recruitment centres so they consume in game resources, currently food and gold. The amount of food/ gold consumed would depend on quality and type of unit. Lords would have the ability to invest/ divest in said recruitment centres and control their price.

Details:

• Is to make it so when recruitment centres are built it would take both food and gold to build troops.
• Region lords would have the option of investing their gold or family gold into the recruitment centres boosting either/or/both? Training or Weapons and Armour. This would increase the cost of the unit significantly.
• The region lord would be able to control the price. Their would be a base price based on the average cost of food and the gold for the equipment, but a lord would be able to add a levy or subsidy to troops trained in his/ her recruitment centre.
• Recruitment centres would be potentially be effected by estate efficiencies. For example badly managed estates would add to the cost in resource consumption/requirement in gold/food.
• If/when more resources (wood/metal) are added to the game the recruitment centres would be rebalanced to include these.
• If linked to the war chest, would allow marshals to encourage certain units being recruited, by subsidising them, to balance armies without asking people too.

Benefits:

• To help prevent permanent war. During peace resources would be massed. Which then would be spent during war. War would be linked to the economy and encourage protection of resources
• Encourages a variety of war such as small skirmishes leading to larger battles. After all you need to replace those resources somehow.
• Helps to balance realms sizes, by making larger realms that would be able to gather and store more resources. Spend them extra resources to do the same job as a smaller realm that is more efficient but not be able to gather as many resources. This would be based on estate efficiency
• Encourages interaction between realms/players and regions.
• Offers the ability to go to war by proxy. This would add a little diversity and intrigue.
• Could be used as a way to spend family gold
• Reduce the constant rebalance in game of food and gold, by incorporating it into the game play.

Possible Downsides/Exploits:

• Lords raise/lower the price too much- Could be balanced by adding a range that the price can be adjusted by.
• A Lord would be able to invest into too many upgrades- Two ways to limit this, Increase the cost so its not entirely worth it compared to a newly formed recruitment centre of the same specification. Also to limit the upgrades.
• Upgrading a full recruitment centre- The cost of the upgrade would increase based on the number of soldiers in the recruitment centre and the number of upgrades.
• Recruitment centre's using all a regions food- Set recruitment centre's to stop recruiting when the granary is low on food.
• Too many realms supply or subsidizes a small realm to avoid inefficiency- This would auto balance as this realm could easily be looted for resources by the warring realm, thus the extra resources would supply the enemy.
• Increase game complexity- By making it so that recruitment centre's would not negatively impact a region if left alone. For example does not consume all the food during winter or low food supplies. This would allow people to experiment and micro manage or leave alone.

I would like the war islands to return.

I am a region lord in Dwilight and my region is suffering the effect of starvation, peasants begging in the street etc. My question is would a family investment be benificial. The region would normally produce a large excess of food, but has suffered looting, extended winter and went rogue for a bit. I am worried of investing in the region for the starvation to only wipe out the investment. If the investment endured the starvation for a few turns it should produce enough food for a while. Any advice would be welcome.

I have a character on Dwilight in one of the realms suffering what I believe is a major food shortage. I think that the food production for the Island should be returned to what it was. I understand that it was reduced to help remove some of the food as a way to increase its value and encourage trading. Below are 3 ideas that I have that could be used instead;

1.   Rework food Rot- Thought I agree with the idea of food rot, especially as a way to discourage food hording. I think it could do with a slight adjustment. For example food rot won't kick in till storage hits the 25% mark (This would be explained by rotating new food from the farms with that stored in the granary). Between 25-50% it would be at normal rates of rot, 50-75% 1.5 times normal rate of rot and at 75% or above it is at double the rot rate. To avoid abuse of this you could implement a varying cost of maintaining granaries, which would increase with every granary built(This would be reflected with the increase cost of pest control, caused by having so much food in one area)

2.   Realm to Realm trading- I think the current system of trading alone is rather good. It's to a point realistic for medieval style economy and reflects the difficulties of supplying large realms without penalising smaller realms. The problem can come from trying to trade between realms. Would it be worth bringing back caravans as a way to trade food between realms over a larger distance? They could be treated like small granaries on wheels, subject to food rot etc. For example anyone could buy them, once owned make buy or sell orders but only traders can complete the sale in the same way sales of food with regions is done.

3.   Food rebalancing on an Island level- There is 2 ways that I can think of that would help to rebalance an island's food supply. First off to prevent food hording on a Realm scale would be to create a new problem for if too many regions in the same realm horde food over a certain level for too long it attracts pests(Mice, Rats, Locusts etc) which will consume there food down to normal or acceptable levels. This will encourage people not to hold onto, too large of a stockpile of food. Without penalising everyone. For example if 2-4 regions in the same realm,  have 80% of their food storage full for longer than a week it would kick in the above event. Should food be distributed extremely well and everywhere has all the food it needs, all you would have to do is change the threshold at which the above event kicks in.

The other option is to link troop production to food consumption. So to train troops you would have to provide food as a resource (The training of troops is tiring work and an army marches on its stomach).  This could also be linked to other resources if or when added to the game. This would also have the effect of varying the price of troops depending on the resources consumed.