Starving to death in early game?

[Carcinus]

I'm beginning a new game and have a 16x14 fruit farm with 75% fertility that produces about 60 fruit per harvest, then I have a huge Auroch pasture with around 16 animals. The pasture started off producing like 3-4 meat but is slowly growing, however, by winter of the first year, my 30-ish people have eaten through all fruit and rations and are now starving to death!

I have lost 10 people and counting to starvation, and this is even more frustrating because I can't seem to slaughter like a single Auroch just to get by. The only option is to "slaughter all" which I don't want to do. I also started building a fishing area because of river access, but it takes EIGHT furniture which takes four carpenters ages to build while my people all starve to death waiting. Why does a simple fishing hut require eight furniture when a hunter needs none? That doesn't really make sense unless you're like building boats or something.

Is hunting the only way to go early game? Was I just too slow with my food production? I'm just returning to the game and trying to re-learn/remember, but this seems kind of not intuitive and unrealistic as I feel like with a big farm and big pasture full of animals, my people shouldn't be literally starving to death.

Any tips are appreciated, thanks all.

[an entire Roman legion]

did you harvest any wild stuff? did you build hunters? those are my go-to starting options

[Ethonal]

Couple of start methods.
1)as bob mentioned wild food is amazing, you harvest it on 3rd? day of autumn, but you can give the order at any time.
2)hunting.
3) buying food, bread is very cheap. so very viable for your 1st season. (selling that 3-4 meat will ironically allow you to buy some 20 bread)

The biggest issue with pastures is without research there kinda bad for "survival" the hides and animals creates they produce is there main draw, and the farms you planted have no value untill next autumn.

[Carcinus]

Thanks for the answers guys that makes sense. I noticed the pasture value slowly increasing, and I do have some wild edibles but they said "not ripe" so I was wondering if I would waste them if I harvested them before they were ripe, or if my people could just wait until they ripened to eat them lol.

[puggy]

Your people will harvest when they are ripe and eat them if stored since you've already given the command. After harvesting the command still persists and will repeat next year when it is ripened again

[Chrisme]

Originally posted by puggy:

Your people will harvest when they are ripe and eat them if stored since you've already given the command. After harvesting the command still persists and will repeat next year when it is ripened again

It should be added that the workers will only harvest them if the workload is not too high. Gathering forageables appears to have a very low priority by default. Better to oversee the foraging in the beginning when food is scarce. I like placing Workstations at important locations when summer ends. That guarantees that someone will take care of the job.

[Chrozayis]

I haven't starved to death yet, but I am having food problems. My fruits and vegetables get entirely eaten by the end of winter. I can't seem to import bread fast enough either. I didn't have this issue playing Cretonians in the previous version. Maybe I used to build more farms, or maybe I've gotten better at making efficient eateries, but it does feel different from before.

[Chrisme]

Originally posted by Chrozayis:

I haven't starved to death yet, but I am having food problems. My fruits and vegetables get entirely eaten by the end of winter. I can't seem to import bread fast enough either. I didn't have this issue playing Cretonians in the previous version. Maybe I used to build more farms, or maybe I've gotten better at making efficient eateries, but it does feel different from before.

Did you build your farms on fertile soil? Identify clusters with high base fertility with the minimap filtering tool and build your farms or ranches there. For farms I like to make them 20 tiles wide flanked by canals with a size of 3 x 3 for greatly improved output. A 100 % fertility farm produces 40 % more crops than a 60 % fertility farm. The total output of the farm is also affected by other modifiers though - like education, techs, experience, nobles.

Also, vegetables don't have a very high output in general and fruit farms also suck. However, fruit orchards supply you with a ton of fruit. The downside is that they take a few years to grow.

And finally... once you reach 1000 pop and can rule neighbouring regions and get loads of food in the form of tribute. It will get nerfed in future versions but right now it makes things nice and cozy. You can also plunder them once you reach Mayor (much recommended as you will rebuild them from scratch later anyway). This will give you a great temporary boost in resources and money.

[Chrozayis]

Yes, all my farms are at least 75%, and most are 85%+ fertile. I have a number of orchards, even risked starvation early on to build them ASAP, most of them are producing now. I didn't know about the canal width thing, that's new, I did supect it. Unfortunately I don't think I can sustain 1000 pop yet, and I haven't really figured out the plundering mechanic yet. Right now rations are uneconomical to buy or produce and I haven't gotten raided on this version so my army is somewhat lacking. I see some people say you can buy regions, and I did start with free lands near by, but I haven't found that buy button yet, or made nearly enough cash for that.

[Ethonal]

Originally posted by Chrozayis:

but I haven't found that buy button yet, or made nearly enough cash for that.

if you select the land you are interested in and open there diplomacy screen (there flag)>diplomacy>regions>select the name of the one you was after. when you hover above it as a demand you can see the amount they want for it. (you cant buy capitols)

On the case of food are you storing it fast, it spoils very fast sat on the fields, and have you put points in spoilage reduction, its one of the 1st places i always spend some research, food gets some extreme gains from the 1st 2-3 points of spoilage reduction.

[Chrisme]

Hmmm 70%+ fertility usually works for me. Maybe you really just need more farms. You could also try Cretonian slaves (unless you already play as a Cretonian ruler...). Their race modifier further increases farm output by a larger percentage (+40 % compared to races other than humans). They also eat slightly more but the improved production is worth far more (stacking modifiers).

And if you're really desperate for food you can always build some fisheries. They produce food reliably and at an acceptable production rate without spending anything on improvements. Bread can also be mass produced without much farming input. But you also need a big bakery which I feel is a bit of a pain in the butt (trading is more efficient without investments but since your traders can't keep up you could just make it yourself).

Also, yes, channel size has an impact. Channels bigger than 3 x 3 increase the water level further but I feel that it doesn't really make up for the lost area. Smaller field size width also increases fertility more (if flanked by channels => better water distribution). 16 or 20 is best in my opinion though. Makes creating orchards less of a headache.

Late edit: a bigger import depot may also solve the problem with the traders. They can only sell items in quantities of 32 and small depots can only hold a couple of crates.

[Chrozayis]

Fishery is one of my main industries, there's no shortage of fish to eat, but I'm concerned about the happiness effects of no plants to eat. I just checked my city, I have 400 agriculture workers out of 1055 citizens, about 80 each in vegetable farms and orchards, should be producing 5-6k fruits+veggies per year to feed 400 Cretonians. I'll build some more warehouses to harvest faster, though I think I'm fast enough, and ban other species from eating those crops. I think my limit on imports is cash, not capacity.

[Chrozayis]

Thanks for all the help guys, I didn't know about the flag leading to the diplomacy menu.
I also reduced rations from 2 to 1 for my cretonians and now I've made it back to harvest season without completely running out of fruits+vegetables.

[Ethonal]

i didnt realise you was using double rations, that adds up quite fast, when it comes to manpower needed id be looking at access to services before doubling food. (same happiness bonus for less manpower (generally) once you get a region food is a thought of the past (for now).

If we assume only your cretonians are farming and your other 600 are other species, so 400 at single rations would consume about 3200 food a year (6.4k with double rations), this doesnt include any spoilage. as you can see its already a hefty number.

[Chrozayis]

Yeah, I just did that math too. It's funny though, I don't remember double rations being an issue in my cities in previous games. What's the point of the opinion summary if other access has greater benefit? My top asks are always, more food, more clothes, more food reserves (which would mean reducing rations), arena (I don't have any prisoners 🙃). Never a bathouse or hospital. Is this game like Surviving Mars where citizens' demands aren't what will actually make them happy?

[Ethonal]

The catch to remember is happiness may have no value, they will want and accept anything you give them, but anything above 100% loyalty has no real value, as you grow the amount of happiness ect needed grows too.

So having a loyalty of 100 and a target of 110% (the target is your rough actual loyalty) means you have a 10% leeway before you need to consider doing more or risk trouble. but you can always give them more and boost it to 120% ect.

(happiness is a big modifier to loyalty)

Some of the things they ask for in the opinions, are massive happiness bonus's but there just not the easiest to get or even effect everyone (pardons for example). but you can look at the population screen and cherry pick what you want to boost. consider opinions more like flavoured guidance.