Food production struggles V65

[Goldenzim]

So I'm having food production issues. I never feel like I can get a buffer for food production. I currently have around a 500 population and around 220 is working farms, fisheries, pastures. small amount of hunters about 20 workers for farms are for cotton production for cloths. I've upgraded the fisheries as well. I have some tech for farms and fisheries as well as some other tech unlocked 30 population working tech. Most farms are 85% plus fertility some are high 70%. I'm using canals to bump up production. So not sure what is holding me back also I'm cold climate . I appreciate all suggestion and recommendations.

[Mitocondrian]

Ive been struggling as well. I was trying to do only meat and fish for a bugmen playthrough but couldnt get more than a days buffer up to almost 300 pop. I started over and diversified a bit but still couldn't get more than a couple days. Then I realized I forgot bread. Super cheap to buy wheat and the bakery is easy as well. Its helped quite a bit so far but food is still tight despite me producing 140 versus consuming 75.

[Goldenzim]

Originally posted by Mitocondrian:

Ive been struggling as well. I was trying to do only meat and fish for a bugmen playthrough but couldnt get more than a days buffer up to almost 300 pop. I started over and diversified a bit but still couldn't get more than a couple days. Then I realized I forgot bread. Super cheap to buy wheat and the bakery is easy as well. Its helped quite a bit so far but food is still tight despite me producing 140 versus consuming 75.

I think I figured it out right click on the race picture on the right side of your screen then click the ? icon in top left and select whatever race you want and scroll down till you get to employment hover over the different farms and things and see the skill attached to each race seems to heavily affect it. So for an example a 27 by 27 95% fertility produced about 150 fruit a year with the Dondorians working it and same 27 by 27 fruit farm work by Cretonians with a fertility of 86% produces about 215 fruit a year. I didn't realize how big of a penalty or boost the race was to certain productions. Start a quick new game with Cretonians and about 70 workers on fruit, veg, and grain farms and 14 day food supply and growing to my 190 population.

Edit: wanted to add for the bugmen looks like they get 150% skill for the balticrawler breeder and 130% skill for fishing, but everything else they do has a really low skill%.

[ZirzoR]

Yeah food production early is somewhat harder since v65, I just start with pastures, get a few vegetable farms going and then get enough furniture for a big hunter cabin. (If in cold climate fishing/hunting is king)

Obviously trading is also a huge factor, if your race is good at crafting something, you can capitalize on this and sell in bulk and buy cheap food or wheat. (Make bread for example without having farms for it) (Selling warprisoners is also a huge thing)

I never play bugman, they just make better soldiers, and most other races dislike them, supposed to be a very fight heavy nation, so build huge swarms and just take over regions and use taxes and tributes to cash in on food supplies and other things, take advantage of the endless breeding and the ability to just replenish soldiers endlessly. (Aswell as getting slaves for each region of skill that is lacking)

Cretonians for farmwork and husbandry, humans for research, Dondorians for mining/crafting things. (Warprisoners as slaves or just use the new surplus of denares and wait for the slave trader)

[AOC Feet Pics]

I think the big change is that Fisheries got absolutely dumpstered to the point that they aren't really worthwhile anymore. A Fisherman catches one fish a day by default, which will stop that individual worker from starving. With the upgrade it goes up to 1.5 fish/worker, still abysmally low. Transition to agriculture of any kind ASAP

[Mitocondrian]

Regarding fisheries ive found that they need to have sufficient access to deep water for them to be worth it. If your fisher has boats then you should get a much better yield. Building them when there isnt a large area of shallow water with deep water then it will not be worth it. It would be better to use the space for pumps to make farms in my opinion.

[AOC Feet Pics]

My fisheries have access to deep water and boats, but the gathering rate is unaffected, base of 1.00, upgrades and efficiency bring it up to ~1.50, though it is fresh water and not salt water which could also make a difference.

[Mitocondrian]

I looked at this again in another game that has a lot of sweet water and made some large ones. Im playing as Garthimis and they get a small bonus so its like 130% i think. It is one per worker but each worker consumes .50 rations a day and produces 1.00 ration per day. With the race bonus and nothing else i get enough food to feed double the amount of workers plus a little more. Its less than it used to be i believe but still a good source despite the large workforce needed. I feel like quantity over quality is important especially when it comes to bonuses. The garthimi get a bonus for the balticrawler and its way better the bigger you build the pen but its a huge resource sink for the beginning. I think Im getting like ~5 meat a day or a little more for 3 workers so its better just requires like 400 stone and 100 something wood to make the pen compared to the fishery at about max size was like sub 50 resources total.

[salzlaender]

Originally posted by Mitocondrian:

It is one per worker but each worker consumes .50 rations a day and produces 1.00 ration per day.

Do I understand the stats (I am new) correctly that 50% for the non-glutunous means they eat 1 food (fruit, vegetable, meat, whatever) per 2 days? Because they eat at 100% and the need reduces to 0%?

In other words: If I have a farm with 1 worker saying 1,13 production, it basically means that 1 farmer is feeding themselves, and about 1 additional pop (bc. some are gluttunous)?

[Mitocondrian]

Im still looking at this but my current game my population is perfectly double my food consumption. I dont know if I have any glutinous citizens but my interpretation right now is that each citizen consumes .5 a day. Wether that is they eat 1 unit of food and are good for 2 days or only eat half a unit of food and the game just doesn't display that but keeps track in the background is unknown to me at this time. I dont think it would matter too much in the grand scheme of things which it is but maybe if you are min maxing things it may be useful. Maybe somebody else knows specifically how this works?

For the farms its a little different because they are counted by food produced per year whereas fishers, hunters and husbandry are all measured per day. For me I look at as a way to boost your reserve as its more difficult to calculate that in a day to day way. However it produces say 10 units that would provide 20 meals to normal citizens.

Food is calculated a little weird and while I dont personally understand it exactly, so far just making sure that your overall production including the yearly dump from your farms is greater than your consumption you should be ok. When you get close to passing your production rate is when you run into trouble because you are burning through your buffer/warehouse stock. Also, remember that food in your stalls is not shown in your general stock. Only what is actually stored in your warehouse is shown on the right side of the screen.

Bottom line is make sure about half of your pop is making food and try to make your farms and pastures as big as you can to get the biggest bonus.

[plong999]

Originally posted by AOC Feet Pics:

I think the big change is that Fisheries got absolutely dumpstered to the point that they aren't really worthwhile anymore. A Fisherman catches one fish a day by default, which will stop that individual worker from starving. With the upgrade it goes up to 1.5 fish/worker, still abysmally low. Transition to agriculture of any kind ASAP

+1

[salzlaender]

I think the spoiling may be the reason for the soft buffer of the OP. Especially in the early game when you try to increase fields etc. that also drags down the production, any bigger stock you have will shrink to spoilage.

[LuRaZ]

Yeah, I dont know what has happened with food in 0.65, but it seems feeding your population is almost impossible. I cannot even get to feed 20 ppl, even though I have 1 farm with 10 animals. Since when is 1 farm with 10 animals not enough to feed 20 ppl? This does not seem realistic for me. Anybody has any tips on how to survive with food? Good to note, is that I am playing as humans in the North where it is very cold. Since I wanted to play a bit of a challenge, I know that in the North the fertility is very bad and I cannot really have any farms. However, I wonder how can I survive then on meat only?

[Mitocondrian]

Originally posted by LuRaZ:

Yeah, I dont know what has happened with food in 0.65, but it seems feeding your population is almost impossible. I cannot even get to feed 20 ppl, even though I have 1 farm with 10 animals. Since when is 1 farm with 10 animals not enough to feed 20 ppl? This does not seem realistic for me. Anybody has any tips on how to survive with food? Good to note, is that I am playing as humans in the North where it is very cold. Since I wanted to play a bit of a challenge, I know that in the North the fertility is very bad and I cannot really have any farms. However, I wonder how can I survive then on meat only?

Trade. Trade and more trade. Mine up a bunch of stone or wood and sell it then buy wheat and turn it into bread at scale. Sell the bread and buy more wheat. You will make a food source and money at the same time. Grow your food over time and try to build mostly food sources in the start resist the urge to tech up fast. Ive had some success with building things small and gradually rebuilding larger and larger workshops and even farms as my population allows it.

Build hunters. So far ive been able to build 12 hunters before they start to lose production otherwise its 3 meat a day per hunter before bonuses. Try to maximize on your races specialities as much as you can and even look at rations as an option at least early on or only make rations. Again trade for the herbs with the money you've made selling bread. Hope that helps!

[LuRaZ]

Originally posted by Mitocondrian:

Originally posted by LuRaZ:

Yeah, I dont know what has happened with food in 0.65, but it seems feeding your population is almost impossible. I cannot even get to feed 20 ppl, even though I have 1 farm with 10 animals. Since when is 1 farm with 10 animals not enough to feed 20 ppl? This does not seem realistic for me. Anybody has any tips on how to survive with food? Good to note, is that I am playing as humans in the North where it is very cold. Since I wanted to play a bit of a challenge, I know that in the North the fertility is very bad and I cannot really have any farms. However, I wonder how can I survive then on meat only?

Trade. Trade and more trade. Mine up a bunch of stone or wood and sell it then buy wheat and turn it into bread at scale. Sell the bread and buy more wheat. You will make a food source and money at the same time. Grow your food over time and try to build mostly food sources in the start resist the urge to tech up fast. Ive had some success with building things small and gradually rebuilding larger and larger workshops and even farms as my population allows it.

Build hunters. So far ive been able to build 12 hunters before they start to lose production otherwise its 3 meat a day per hunter before bonuses. Try to maximize on your races specialities as much as you can and even look at rations as an option at least early on or only make rations. Again trade for the herbs with the money you've made selling bread. Hope that helps!

But how do you trade at the beginning of the game? I cannot create any embassies and therefore cannot identify any towns near to me. So I cannot even make trade agreements. How do you trade in your first year then? Seems I am missing something

[Mitocondrian]

I believe you unlock the trade depots after 25 or so population but you do not need any of that to do a trade. Go to the the overworld map and click on another nations city. Go to the diplomacy tab and add in resources to the offer and demand sections. Try to make sure the value is blue and they give a positive reputation gain. These two things are on the bottom of the screen and change as you add and remove things. Once you get a favorable trade accept it on the bottom right and you will get the money right away but resources will have to travel. You can do this right away I believe. The trade agreement is for when you build the trade depots for automatic trading but I have seen it work even without it but I may be wrong there. So mine like a couple hundred stone or wood, sell it and buy wheat and build a bakery. There are many ways to do this and they change as you progress but this has worked well for me.