Is it worth to use rations instead of regular food?

[Friends with Benedicts]

Rations require herbs + a food, My main source is fish and I got tons of it. Ive also got like 2k rations and no citizen is eating it since is my understanding I need rations for campaigns

I also need booze, weapons and clothing. Ive already got the weapons, clothing is starting to pile up, and Im starting my booze production.

My question is, is it worth to just go about turning ALL my food into rations? Id need a hell of a lot of dedicated people towards making more herbs and more rations per second.

Ive got around 870 pops, almost 500 amevs and the rest is the rest (humans crets dondorians and tilapis)

I ve been itching for invading neighbors. Im very bad at this game as you may have seen, got hundreds of hours and still barely crawling. But I appreciate help either way, no shame in admitting that.

[Micromanicment]

TL;DR: I would say rations are too expensive as everyday food.

Converting *all* food would mean your people miss out on positive mood from eating their favorite food.

If you have limited food (but plenty of herbs) you can lower food lost to spoilage by storing rations. But other than that, I would primarily make enough to feed your armies.

At some point I used large amounts of rations in warehouses to get the mood boost from having many days of food in storage. But I'm not sure if that's worth it in general - I had a region that supplied all the herbs I could want - if you produce herbs in your own city, I'd use rations only for armies (and the small handful of rooms that need them).

[Friends with Benedicts]

should I stop making them? Ive gt 2.5k rations with a steady 7k fish supply for around 900 pops.

[RoriconKnight]

Originally posted by Friends with Benedicts:

Rations require herbs + a food

Nope, 3 rations NEED 4 fish/meat/bread + 2 herbs or 5 fruit/vegetable + 2 herbs.
the only food you can't make ration out of is mushroom.

it will be expensive endeavor and may severely starve your army. its better to keep rations for the "food days" statistics to attract more immigration. you might want to use rations in case a wide scale starvation due to failed harvest or raid in case your normal food stockpile isn't enough.

though some consider fixing starvation and wide spread death using cannibalism, lol.

[an entire Roman legion]

it's still a valid export-ressource and once you have your world-army up and running you're gonna need all your rations for that

[Micromanicment]

Whether or not 2.5k rations is enough is hard to say. For a small army it should suffice. Be careful to get a feeling how much they need - and that you have the means to expand your production - before you expand the armies further.

Not quite your question, but maybe relevant nevertheless: I found it vastly easier to use mercenaries to conquer my first regions. A regular army is cheaper in upkeep, but has much more initial cost. With a region or two boosting one's economy it's much easier to afford a regular army.

[RoriconKnight]

Originally posted by Micromanicment:

Whether or not 2.5k rations is enough is hard to say. For a small army it should suffice. Be careful to get a feeling how much they need - and that you have the means to expand your production - before you expand the armies further.

Not quite your question, but maybe relevant nevertheless: I found it vastly easier to use mercenaries to conquer my first regions. A regular army is cheaper in upkeep, but has much more initial cost. With a region or two boosting one's economy it's much easier to afford a regular army.

How did you hire mercs without having a region? v64 give the player no starting region but a bunch of too close for comfort kingdoms - if RNG is bad, they will have 1K standing army and garrison.

[Micromanicment]

I focus on producing one kind of item in the beginning and sell it, almost everything else I buy. With a bit of research into that one item I produce and trading, as well as scaling it up, I can eventually afford to buy a small amount of mercenaries, so not thousands, but enough to conquer one of the smaller neighboring factions or a rebel controlled region.
For larger factions this approach wouldn't work though. If one needs one of their regions, buying it is the only method.

If money is tight, I also disband the mercenaries as soon as I don't need them anymore. If you like a bit of cheese: they also appear instantly when bought, so you can walk a tiny army next to your target and only then buy a bunch of mercenaries. That way you don't pay them for walking around the map.

I read somewhere that the game is supposed to guarantee some smaller regions next to one's starting spot, but also that this possibly does not always work. So it might be that I was lucky so far in that regard. Buying regions should almost always be possible though.

[RoriconKnight]

Originally posted by Micromanicment:

I read somewhere that the game is supposed to guarantee some smaller regions next to one's starting spot.

its a couple updates ago.