Your Thoughts on Food and the Marketplace

[Penchant]

Pissing off the people with food won't help you get any more of it.

Food shortages were the #1 reason why D'Hara always pursued a policy of "let's try to be friends with as many people as possible", until the lurian betrayal, at least.

Food shortages don't create conflict, they create peace. Interdependence.

War has never been profitable food-wise as those trying to get food are usually being idiots. The last war I know of that they claimed they needed food, all they ever did was do brutal takeovers and loot the regions to the ground. Don't expect a region to be productive after burning it to the ground. War not being profitable food-wise, I have only ever seen being the one needing the foods fault for it not being profitable. If you have several cities, let one starve and keep the others going. If you have  one city, let it starve for 3 days, then bring in the food as if you only one city you can support it somewhat and you will get roughly 5-6 days of starvation reducing the pop to a sustainable amount. If you have been at peace, you should have plenty of gold so max out your entire army to get takeovers done quickly then you have food to keep the city. Be extremely agressive, looting your enemies core regions as much as possible, not the border regions and go for peace. Done.

[Foundation]

800 bushels still isn't enough. Libidizedd needs over 1300 to make it through winter. Other cities require significantly more. I think your calculations are incomplete. You are counting on food coming in to the city every day, I think. But you're not accounting for the fact that the food coming in to the city has also been subject to rot for the entire time it was sitting in the warehouses of whatever region it was in. You have that food just appearing fresh every day.

Starting with 800 bushels at Spring means you end up with about 2000 bushels at the end of fall.  You're misunderstanding the equations. They're summing food production and consumption not in the city, but in the region, assuming that the region is perfectly balanced in terms of total food production and consumption. i.e. it doesn't matter when you buy/sell the surplus food, the changes are negligible, so to make the equations more straightforward I had +40 and -40 as the standard.

Plus your example has a city that can feed itself during normal production... which in itself is a bad assumption.

Again, as stated before, the city consumes 40 bushels every day, and 40 bushels arrive every day for the city at 100% production, i.e. regions around it, trades, whatever. Of course in a normal game they wouldn't be every day, but in chunks of 100, 200 bushels at different times, but for ease of calculation it is spread to a daily incoming food based on season. So it's perfectly balanced during 100% production. Please read more carefully before criticizing.

[Indirik]

But those 40 bushels a day are also subject to rot. By the end of winter they have been rotting in *someone's* warehouse for up to 21 days. (And, to be honest, that also applies through most of spring.) For all intents and purposes, all the food that is consumed by a city, and most of a townsland, is produced by the last day of autumn. It is not a steady-state thing where you have food coming in and out. So that food is subject to 21 to 42 days of rot, at 1% per day.

Maybe I'm just not understanding your equations, but what you've done, while mathematically accurate, does not appear to model what is actually happening.

[Penchant]

But those 40 bushels a day are also subject to rot. By the end of winter they have been rotting in *someone's* warehouse for up to 21 days. (And, to be honest, that also applies through most of spring.) For all intents and purposes, all the food that is consumed by a city, and most of a townsland, is produced by the last day of autumn. It is not a steady-state thing where you have food coming in and out. So that food is subject to 21 to 42 days of rot, at 1% per day.

Maybe I'm just not understanding your equations, but what you've done, while mathematically accurate, does not appear to model what is actually happening.

+1.

[Foundation]

But those 40 bushels a day are also subject to rot. By the end of winter they have been rotting in *someone's* warehouse for up to 21 days. (And, to be honest, that also applies through most of spring.) For all intents and purposes, all the food that is consumed by a city, and most of a townsland, is produced by the last day of autumn. It is not a steady-state thing where you have food coming in and out. So that food is subject to 21 to 42 days of rot, at 1% per day.

Maybe I'm just not understanding your equations, but what you've done, while mathematically accurate, does not appear to model what is actually happening.

Correct. It's not the 40 or 80 bushels per day that are subject to ~21 days of rot for winter, it's the 10 bushels that are added in my equations for winter. Most rurals cover their own production for spring, summer, and fall, and only experience a minor deficit in winter. The 10 bushels for winter are the only ones that are substantially subject to this necessary regional warehouse rot, which results in their influence of 0.01 * 10 * 21 = 2.1 bushels is negligible, as I've previously stated.

It is also true that in my equations, for most of the year, including most of the dreaded winter, there is 1.5 to 2 times the safety margin than the corresponding seasonless city. This advantage is not expressed at all in the equations.

In general, the equations give a lot of leeway in favour of the season version of city consumption, and model the real effect of rot with much margin for error in favour of season (i.e. actual rot has less of an effect than the calculated rot).

If you want an impossibly generous estimate on how much worse rot is on perceived consumption, it's about 105% of normal consumption, meaning the addition of seasons is less of an effect on food than adding 5% to consumption, much less. This includes adjustments for minimum safety margin same as seasonless and adjustments for food rotting in rural regions plus a lot more buffer room.

Rot is, at its core, not enough of an influence except a small incentive to sell/buy food quicker.

[Gustav Kuriga]

One could translate this to the way science (at least in astronomy and astrophysics) has turned form an observation-based model to a mathematical model. Every theory is based on the equations, rather than the equations being a way to describe the observations of a theory.

So Foundation, while your equation in itself is sound, it does not match observation. Observation should always trump the equation if it shows something different is happening than what the equation describes.

[Indirik]

Rot is, at its core, not enough of an influence except a small incentive to sell/buy food quicker.

I disagree, completely. I think your method does not address the realities of how food is actually handled on Dwilight. Until you've actually had to manage a city, or possibly a townsland, on Dwilight I don't think you can really know how it works.

I ran some quick numbers myself, based on the following assumptions:
1) A city that consumes 60 food per day. (i.e. it has to remove 60 bushels from the warehouse per day.)
2) All food is stored in warehouses, and subject to 1% rot per day.
3) On the first day of Winter, the city has enough food stored to feed itself through the entire winter period. This is how things usually work. You normally do not manage to buy food during the winter. But even if you do, then due to the low production of all regions, the food you buy was harvested in Autumn, and has been sitting in someone else's warehouse rotting away since then. So it rots one way or the other.

We start with 1200 bushels. After 21 days, we have lost only 111 bushels to rot, or 9.3%. No too bad. But any city lord who only stocks enough food to get him through the Winter is in for a world of hurt when no one will sell him food come spring time. And they won't, because they will need that food themselves.

So let's modify our original assumptions to stipulate that we stockpile enough food to last us through the end of Spring. This is a more realistic scenario, as it takes time for the lightly increased spring harvests to build up enough reserves to let the regions start selling. And you need reserves to make sure that you have enough time to actually buy it, in case someone else gets the first few sell orders.

In order to get through all of winter and spring, the city needs to stockpile 3200 bushels. Of that total, a whopping 648 bushels will rot away or 20.3% of your stockpile.

Stockpiling enough food to last that long is not out of the ordinary. Nor will any city lord think it overly excessive. Nor will any sane city lord routinely maintain a situation where his city has only 6 or 7 days of food in stock, if he can possibly help it. (Note that this is for Dwilight, where it can often be hard to come by food. Other island may vary.) You want at least two weeks of food on hand at all times in case of emergencies.

Also, note that the 20.3% rot only counts food for that half of the year. I haven't tried to deal with the rest of the year. But that will only make the total rot figure go up even higher.

The way in which winter affects the handling and stockpiling of food makes rot much more significant that you're making it out to be. I may be exaggerating a bit, but I don't think that anyone who plays a margrave of a city on Dwilight will find too much fault with my assumptions here.

[Foundation]

My last statement was dubious, my apologies. I meant, as was my original purpose in making these calculations, that rot is, at its core, not enough of an influence except a small incentive to sell/buy food quicker when comparing islands having seasons to islands not having seasons.

Have you considered that having such a great amount of surplus while ignoring all production during winter and spring creates dubious numbers at best? If you do not produce enough surplus to cover the majority of your food needs in spring at 75% production, you will not produce enough to stockpile for winter and spring. Thus this is an impossible scenario. Even in this impossible scenario, it is only 20% that is lost due to rot, and in a similar scenario without seasons at least 12-18% of the food will be lost due to rot anyways.

I agree. Stockpiling great amounts of food will cause a sizeable portion to be lost due to rot. Keeping an extra 1000 bushels all year round on top of the X days' worth of buffer will of course produce a ridiculous amount of waste, losing ~10 bushels every day. That's fairly obvious. The formulae are available to all. The theory is sound. If the observations do not match the theory, it simply due to differences in assumptions.

As I have demonstrated, if all lords and margraves are willing to work together to simulate what I described, satisfying my assumptions, the result is clear. Rot does not play a key part in differentiating the food system on islands with season and islands without season. What does differentiate the two is the willingness to part with food as appropriate on the part of the lords and the ability to resist anxiety and gather surpluses as appropriate on the part of the margraves.

I maintain that when base production meets consumption, these formulae hold, and it is human behaviour that is different.

[^ban^]

The wrench in your assertion is that base production is subject to weather.

The stocks of cities and townslands must buffer for potential droughts, and that has been considered in none of these scenarios. Failure to have a drought buffer will result in the devastation of not only cities, but any region that loses food in a drought, which includes many rurals.

What Indirik meant when he said that food is not being immediately sold in the spring is that the rural regions will themselves build up a buffer -- to protect themselves against droughts. They wont sell food until they feel safe, which is entirely reasonable.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Especially since the Farronite Republic went through two droughts in a row. That's kind of a major drag on the entire realm.

[Dante Silverfire]

The wrench in your assertion is that base production is subject to weather.

The stocks of cities and townslands must buffer for potential droughts, and that has been considered in none of these scenarios. Failure to have a drought buffer will result in the devastation of not only cities, but any region that loses food in a drought, which includes many rurals.

What Indirik meant when he said that food is not being immediately sold in the spring is that the rural regions will themselves build up a buffer -- to protect themselves against droughts. They wont sell food until they feel safe, which is entirely reasonable.

Why? Why MUST they do this?

Why MUST the rural lords build up a buffer for themselves, yet allow their cities to starve? Why would they not freely give what surplus they have to avoid starvation when they can even if it means that they too may starve later due to unforeseen drought?

If a realm truly is one's "team" then these lords wouldn't be self-serving to build a buffer for themselves, but work to make it such that their entire realm gains from the benefits which they have as well. Just as a knight trusts that his lord will continue to provide him with gold from his estates on a regular basis, and thus recruits a unit on the knowledge that his estates will serve him more gold to pay the unit later, so too should the lords of the rural regions trust that should drought come, that their realm will suffer together, instead of prioritizing themselves over the city lords. Even this knight cannot be certain that his estate will provide him with gold down the line, his lord can always raise taxes on it, lower its size, or revoke it altogether. But, the lord and his knight work together towards common cause.

What you say is a MUST is not a MUST. If a drought comes, then someone will suffer. If all lords are only self-serving than the realm will suffer greatly due to the lack of cooperation ahead of time. But, if all lords serve the needs of the realm then the realm need not store up such large buffers. The realm will suffer less food rot, and be able to feed more of its regions. The realm will then have more food available in the case of droughts, and ALL lords are better off as the realm as a whole is better.

You make assumptions as to what must be done, yet you ignore the fact that these assumptions are based upon sand which can so easily be changed towards a better method. Cooperation yields better results across the board. All else equal, selfishness will always be worse for both the lord and his realm as they are invariably connected.

[Foundation]

The wrench in your assertion is that base production is subject to weather.

The stocks of cities and townslands must buffer for potential droughts, and that has been considered in none of these scenarios. Failure to have a drought buffer will result in the devastation of not only cities, but any region that loses food in a drought, which includes many rurals.

What Indirik meant when he said that food is not being immediately sold in the spring is that the rural regions will themselves build up a buffer -- to protect themselves against droughts. They wont sell food until they feel safe, which is entirely reasonable.

You're forgetting that weather is not a factor as it exists on all islands. Thus is not a consideration at all. Of course regions keep buffers, so do regions on islands without seasons.

[Chenier]

My last statement was dubious, my apologies. I meant, as was my original purpose in making these calculations, that rot is, at its core, not enough of an influence except a small incentive to sell/buy food quicker when comparing islands having seasons to islands not having seasons.

Have you considered that having such a great amount of surplus while ignoring all production during winter and spring creates dubious numbers at best? If you do not produce enough surplus to cover the majority of your food needs in spring at 75% production, you will not produce enough to stockpile for winter and spring. Thus this is an impossible scenario. Even in this impossible scenario, it is only 20% that is lost due to rot, and in a similar scenario without seasons at least 12-18% of the food will be lost due to rot anyways.

I agree. Stockpiling great amounts of food will cause a sizeable portion to be lost due to rot. Keeping an extra 1000 bushels all year round on top of the X days' worth of buffer will of course produce a ridiculous amount of waste, losing ~10 bushels every day. That's fairly obvious. The formulae are available to all. The theory is sound. If the observations do not match the theory, it simply due to differences in assumptions.

As I have demonstrated, if all lords and margraves are willing to work together to simulate what I described, satisfying my assumptions, the result is clear. Rot does not play a key part in differentiating the food system on islands with season and islands without season. What does differentiate the two is the willingness to part with food as appropriate on the part of the lords and the ability to resist anxiety and gather surpluses as appropriate on the part of the margraves.

I maintain that when base production meets consumption, these formulae hold, and it is human behaviour that is different.

It's not a dubious scenario. That's how we deal with food in D'Hara. Heck, our goal was to stockpile enough food throughout the realm to be able to last a whole IG year by the time winter arrived. We massively invested in granaries in all of our regions (back when they were super expensive), trying to get at least 2000 in cities, 1500 in townslands, and 1000 in rurals. We did always have as large as stockpiles as possible. Because we relied on exporters. And exporters one years were not always able to export on the following year. Offer was extremely variable. And finding new trading partners often had to wait until summer when everyone's granaries were overloaded and they felt like they could spare a bit more. And because warehouses were so expensive, food was often stocked beyond their capacities, because not doing so would often mean starvation.

Things have changed since, but rot remains a considerable issue.

Why? Why MUST they do this?

Why MUST the rural lords build up a buffer for themselves, yet allow their cities to starve? Why would they not freely give what surplus they have to avoid starvation when they can even if it means that they too may starve later due to unforeseen drought?

If a realm truly is one's "team" then these lords wouldn't be self-serving to build a buffer for themselves, but work to make it such that their entire realm gains from the benefits which they have as well. Just as a knight trusts that his lord will continue to provide him with gold from his estates on a regular basis, and thus recruits a unit on the knowledge that his estates will serve him more gold to pay the unit later, so too should the lords of the rural regions trust that should drought come, that their realm will suffer together, instead of prioritizing themselves over the city lords. Even this knight cannot be certain that his estate will provide him with gold down the line, his lord can always raise taxes on it, lower its size, or revoke it altogether. But, the lord and his knight work together towards common cause.

What you say is a MUST is not a MUST. If a drought comes, then someone will suffer. If all lords are only self-serving than the realm will suffer greatly due to the lack of cooperation ahead of time. But, if all lords serve the needs of the realm then the realm need not store up such large buffers. The realm will suffer less food rot, and be able to feed more of its regions. The realm will then have more food available in the case of droughts, and ALL lords are better off as the realm as a whole is better.

You make assumptions as to what must be done, yet you ignore the fact that these assumptions are based upon sand which can so easily be changed towards a better method. Cooperation yields better results across the board. All else equal, selfishness will always be worse for both the lord and his realm as they are invariably connected.

Because you want the realm to survive. Feeding cities at all costs is the best way to kill your realm. We've learned this the hard way: in some of our first starvations, the whole realm pretty neared revolted, leaving us with nothing but a really battered capital and unproductive regions come summer. Feeding the rurals should be the number one priority, because otherwise, you are royally screwed come next winter, because none of your rurals will have produced the food you'll have needed to survive it. Sacrificing the cities reduces overall consumption and therefore helps you return your food consumption ratio to an acceptable level. The rurals can survive on their own, cities cannot. It's not worth ruining your entire economy and risking total realm implosion to slow down your cities' starvation.