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.
