Food

[Tom]

I am going to say this once and once only:

Stop the !@#$ing whining around.

I am sick of it, I can't stand it anymore, and it is a very good shortcut to not getting your way.

Unless you are completely braindead, this thread clearly shows you that the dev team is in a process of actively tuning and tweaking food. That means changing values, letting things play out for a while and then checking back on what the results are, and then making further changes based on those results, zeroing in on a final setting.

If you think this is the final change, you haven't been playing BM for long. If you think that we have the time to change values around all the time, forever, you must be completely new to the game.



I will open a new Thread called "Food/Trade Feedback". That thread will accept constructive feedback only. Any and all whining will be deleted as soon as I spot it.

[Foundation]

To address the concern about the stable transition, notice that this is on the Dwilight board, so this entire discussion is pertinent to Dwilight only.

[JPierreD]

If the plan is to regularly increase and decrease production to fit the dev team's desires, then I find this a rather poor policy.

Ok, done arguing after that.

[Chenier]

Ok, done arguing after that.

It sounded bitchy, but what I meant is that changes should seek balance. This last change is unsustainable, as from what I heard, it makes everyone run a deficit. It's therefore an indirect method of attacking the food stores.

I disagree with this practice. If you want to attack the food stores, then attack the food stores, not production. Because food deficits scare people away from trading, and a long and slow decline of food stocks means that traders won't have much to do for months at a time and that, for months to come (until the food stocks have been reduced to desired levels), trade agreements will be borderline impossible to make. Therefore, putting the whole trading game on hold.

That is why I dislike how things are sounding.

I had no issue with food change 2, as it was obvious that adjustments were needed to balance things back since the population change. But food change 3 is unsustainable. What I would love is for food to be available, but hard to come by. Food change 3 changes things from "everybody has thousands of excess food they have no idea what to do with" to "everyone's running a deficit and will therefore not want to sell much until food change 4 in order to protect their own food requirements".

Just blast the food already, bring a special drought that causes fires and destroys food. But please, no month-long agony of universal deficits.

[Darksun]

Not everyone is running deficits. Under "Average" spring conditions, the duchy of Nifelhold is running a 20+ bushel per day surplus. The stronghold has enough food to last for 535 days, this is after all adjustments. I think people need to stop extrapolating that their local issues are global issues.

[Bael]

Wait, what? If Barca doesn't produce a surplus anymore, who the hell does?

Because in the top 4 food supply realms, one of them had no city left (Madina), and 2 of them have confirmed to now run deficits (Solaria and Barca). The other I have no idea about.

It really sounds as if this change has made EVERY realm start to starve...

Hah, with the current balance, I reckon Aurvandil must be running a healthy surplus

[Chenier]

Hah, with the current balance, I reckon Aurvandil must be running a healthy surplus

Why would Aurvandil run a surplus if Barca isn't?

Not everyone is running deficits. Under "Average" spring conditions, the duchy of Nifelhold is running a 20+ bushel per day surplus. The stronghold has enough food to last for 535 days, this is after all adjustments. I think people need to stop extrapolating that their local issues are global issues.

Last I checked, strongholds produced surpluses... It's entirely normal that a duchy made up of nothing but food-producing regions (no cities) makes a surplus.

But there isn't a single realm that doesn't have a city. Which makes me doubt whether there is a single realm with a food surplus at this time.

[Feylonis]

I think he's referring to the fact that three rurals (which should have surpluses) just switched allegiance from Barca to Auravandil.

[Chenier]

I think he's referring to the fact that three rurals (which should have surpluses) just switched allegiance from Barca to Auravandil.

Aurvandil just got Madina city, so... I wouldn't think these three rurals would be enough.

But is there not one single person that can come here and say "Our realm runs a surplus!"? Because I'm really looking for that.

[Solari]

But is there not one single person that can come here and say "Our realm runs a surplus!"? Because I'm really looking for that.

With the advent of summer, Solaria is once again running a healthy surplus.

[Chenier]

With the advent of summer, Solaria is once again running a healthy surplus.

It was the season penalty that caused a deficit?

From the stats that were given, though, it sounds as if your summer surplus won't cover your annual need, though. Or will it?

[Geronus]

It was the season penalty that caused a deficit?

From the stats that were given, though, it sounds as if your summer surplus won't cover your annual need, though. Or will it?

We'd probably have to get through a whole year to figure that out, wouldn't we? Especially since Tom says he'll be making further adjustments as necessary. That makes pretty much the entire time sample between now and when he's putatively finished invalid for making this determination. Might as well wait until he's done and then see how a full turn of seasons plays out before you start jumping to conclusions.

[Chenier]

We'd probably have to get through a whole year to figure that out, wouldn't we? Especially since Tom says he'll be making further adjustments as necessary. That makes pretty much the entire time sample between now and when he's putatively finished invalid for making this determination. Might as well wait until he's done and then see how a full turn of seasons plays out before you start jumping to conclusions.

Can't you extrapolate from know seasonal modifiers and current production?

[Geronus]

Can't you extrapolate from know seasonal modifiers and current production?

Only if those have remained static throughout all the changes. Same with weather modifiers. My point is, I think it is somewhat of an exercise in pointlessness to try to extrapolate anything right now since Tom has already stated that he'll be making adjustments if they're needed. New baselines need to be set and production monitored to get a real picture of the relationship between a region's listed food production value from the region page, weather, season, and actual daily food production. Such statistics will be rendered obsolete every time Tom changes anything, and could even skew our data if Tom doesn't inform us every time he makes an adjustment (and why should he have to?). I think it will be best to let finish Tom doing his thing before we take stock and make any judgments.

[Charles]

I personally am not concerned about starving.  As has been pointed out, the dev team is not going to make all realms on the continent starve.