Food Help

[Grimm Spector]

I've got around 130 people in my city now, and I've never really had food problems, but now I do. I have a massive ranch for the pigs, the cows and a smaller ranch for the sheep, I've got a huge fishery with the fish guys fishing, several large farms employing like 30 people for all the food types, and of course bakeries.

No matter what I do I run out of food, my farms don't produce nearly enough food, I always have 300+ meat in the warehouse, my bread vanishes quickly despite getting ~200 grain a season, and I get like 40 veggies and fruit per season which disappears basically immediately. As far as I can tel I never build up any fish at all the production is crap, like +2.00 or something. I have Cretans doing the farming, the fish guys doing the fishing, what am I doing wrong here? I don't have tech points to spare on random stuff, and I've even tried buying some tools to improve my yields but it's had no discernible impact.


Please help, it's becoming unplayable

[Grimm Spector]

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

yes veggies are supposed to be upper class food. just go and make bread. it's weird, but currently designed that way.

That brings me back to the logistical issue of I have two fields producing 256 grain, but it's not all ending up in the warehouse, but it's also not rotting in the field. It's like production decreased even though I have no indication of this.

Originally posted by icedude94:

You probably have too much labor on pastures.

Shift more farm production to grain. You don't need vegetables or fruit unless you are trying to promote happiness for immigration or need food for nurseries.

Get a laboratory up for research. The first few levels in farming tech are really cheap and start to make a difference when you have over a hundred.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229960328

Most of my production IS grain, though it's apparently not enough 512 can't feed 100 people.

I have a lab, farming tech is NOT cheap it takes an entire lab to have the first tech that costs 500 points, it's one of the most expensive things you can purchase early in the tech tree. And for what, a 10% boost? When I'm already seeing mathematical problems in what the game is presenting to me not seeming to be true?

[Grimm Spector]

Originally posted by icedude94:

You probably have too much labor on pastures.

Shift more farm production to grain. You don't need vegetables or fruit unless you are trying to promote happiness for immigration or need food for nurseries.

Get a laboratory up for research. The first few levels in farming tech are really cheap and start to make a difference when you have over a hundred.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229960328

I DO NOT, this city has ONE pasture with 2 workers, which produces nothing and is literally a waste of time.

The math IS wrong, I have a fertility 85% size 288 grain farm with 3 workers and it is making 256 while the 100% fertility size 290 farm with 3 workers is making HALF that much. Wtf is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

I DO NOT, this city has ONE pasture with 2 workers, which produces nothing and is literally a waste of time.

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

I have a massive ranch for the pigs, the cows and a smaller ranch for the sheep

If you want meat, don't use pastures initially for it. Use the hunters workshop, once you have some furniture. Far more effective for meat but limited to 15 workers. It's only useful for food very early on because you get it daily or if you are making them into rations later. If you need meat in a pinch, just hunt the animals on the map.

Farm labor will always round up. If the game tells you that you need 1.01 farmers for a field, it'll hire 2. Always try to go as close to the next full number without going over or you are wasting labor.

A field can also have lower yield if certain days they weren't able to get the full daily work on tending in. That can happen when your farmers go off to build stuff for you, forage crops or fell trees far away.

Also using Cretonians for any kind of processing other than making bread is likely wasted labor. People all too often make the mistake of making their Cretonians make furniture to sell when they should instead be making bread to sell.

The farming tech upgrades are additive, not a multiplier.

[Grimm Spector]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

I DO NOT, this city has ONE pasture with 2 workers, which produces nothing and is literally a waste of time.

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

I have a massive ranch for the pigs, the cows and a smaller ranch for the sheep

If you want meat, don't use pastures initially for it. Use the hunters workshop, once you have some furniture. Far more effective for meat but limited to 15 workers. It's only useful for food very early on because you get it daily or if you are making them into rations later. If you need meat in a pinch, just hunt the animals on the map.

Farm labor will always round up. If the game tells you that you need 1.01 farmers for a field, it'll hire 2. Always try to go as close to the next full number without going over or you are wasting labor.

A field can also have lower yield if certain days they weren't able to get the full daily work on tending in. That can happen when your farmers go off to build stuff for you, forage crops or fell trees far away.

Also using Cretonians for any kind of processing other than making bread is likely wasted labor. People all too often make the mistake of making their Cretonians make furniture to sell when they should instead be making bread to sell.

The farming tech upgrades are additive, not a multiplier.

I'm not using the pasture for meat, more for hides at this point, it's a waste of people really entirely.

I have humans and Dondorians making furniture, this post isn't about industrial tasks.

So you're telling me it's not 10% more it's literally one tenth of a piece of bread more ... even better wow...

Also I have them with tools assigned and cannot tell if they're using them but the yield didn't change a single point. So that seems a waste too. Nowhere else is assigned to use tools.

[kaibioinfo]

You need way more farms. A huge farm still only needs 3-4 workers, so having ~1/3 of your population working on farms and mills means you need a lot of large farm fields.

Also place your farms next to the river. This makes them most efficient. If you have food problems then focus on grain and mills, as this is the most efficient food production chain.

Pastures are only for happyness - meat production is usually too small to feed a large population. You can make good money with pastures though, if you sell the domested animals.

[Grimm Spector]

Originally posted by kaibioinfo:

You need way more farms. A huge farm still only needs 3-4 workers, so having ~1/3 of your population working on farms and mills means you need a lot of large farm fields.

Also place your farms next to the river. This makes them most efficient. If you have food problems then focus on grain and mills, as this is the most efficient food production chain.

Pastures are only for happyness - meat production is usually too small to feed a large population. You can make good money with pastures though, if you sell the domested animals.

My farms are 300 squares on average and require 3-4 workers, is that not the huge that you mean? If I make them any bigger the work % goes down with that few workers and the yields are even more crap.

I'm literally not using pastures.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

Originally posted by kaibioinfo:

You need way more farms. A huge farm still only needs 3-4 workers, so having ~1/3 of your population working on farms and mills means you need a lot of large farm fields.

Also place your farms next to the river. This makes them most efficient. If you have food problems then focus on grain and mills, as this is the most efficient food production chain.

Pastures are only for happyness - meat production is usually too small to feed a large population. You can make good money with pastures though, if you sell the domested animals.

My farms are 300 squares on average and require 3-4 workers, is that not the huge that you mean? If I make them any bigger the work % goes down with that few workers and the yields are even more crap.

I'm literally not using pastures.

You can switch the hunters to collect leather instead of meat. Still more effective than a pasture for the early game.

Tech is additive like if a Cretonian gives you 140% yield, one level of tech adds 10% to the end harvest amount or it's like making the yield 154%.

[icedude94]

See here: Using Cretonians to farm. Just the first level in farming researched.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3231445348

154% bonus.

1100 area with 12 farmers. 1,640 grain per year. That .10 additive from the first level of the technology equals 149 units of grain or 149 bread.

[icedude94]

About 3,000 grain per year. I have 2 bakeries with 12 bakers each making food. I am making far in excess of what I need so I am exporting it instead of letting it spoil.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3231445588

[icedude94]

I did this in V65.

And v66 made all your base raw resources and materials more productive and the starter techs that affect things like farming are cheaper so it's so easy in the beta to get a LOT of food.

[fortydayweekend]

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

Originally posted by fortydayweekend:

You might have too many pastures, and not big enough farms.

200 grain and 40 vegetables/fruit isn't a big enough yield for 120 people. How many employees are your farms?

300 meat is also a lot to have stockpiled. How many workers are in your pastures?

If you aim for 1/3 of your pop in food production early on that's 40.. and you might want roughly half of those in grain, so 20 working grain farms and 20 spread around everything else.

For fine tuning check the Goods tab and hover over previous season bar graph to see consumption of each food type, and try to produce slightly more than that. Keep in mind that shows seasons (4 days) so divide by 4 to get daily or multiply by 4 to get annual amounts

new game, high fertility, yield on vegetables is still crap, 20-40 for a worker versus SUPPOSEDLY 256 for 2 workers on grain, but the amount of grain reaching my warehouses doens't match the 2x 256 fields I have, though it did work when I only had 10 workers with 1 of them on 1 of those fields (didn't have two at the beginnig). So idk wtf, since I watched them move the grain, it shouldn't have rotted.

Hard to tell what's going on and where the grain is going without seeing it unfortunately

2 workers is a very small farm though, you'd need a few of them. I think 6 workers is about the minimum size I use.

Are you messing with the worker numbers to get high workload % or just leaving them as the default?

Are you on latest v66 or an earlier version?

What does your production/consumption chart say for grain (in the Goods tab)? I.e. how much production during the last harvest and how much is consumed / lost to spoilage

[fortydayweekend]

What is your pop and how many total workers on grain fields?

You're right about tech, it's not worth investing in production upgrades until you have at least 100 farmers (focus on tech that will get more migrants first like services)

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

Originally posted by icedude94:

You probably have too much labor on pastures.

Shift more farm production to grain. You don't need vegetables or fruit unless you are trying to promote happiness for immigration or need food for nurseries.

Get a laboratory up for research. The first few levels in farming tech are really cheap and start to make a difference when you have over a hundred.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229960328

I DO NOT, this city has ONE pasture with 2 workers, which produces nothing and is literally a waste of time.

The math IS wrong, I have a fertility 85% size 288 grain farm with 3 workers and it is making 256 while the 100% fertility size 290 farm with 3 workers is making HALF that much. Wtf is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I wonder, what makes you believe they only produced that low amount actually? what do the productivity hover over statistics say? It may really be that the wrong species works on that farm.

[kaibioinfo]

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

Originally posted by kaibioinfo:

My farms are 300 squares on average and require 3-4 workers, is that not the huge that you mean? If I make them any bigger the work % goes down with that few workers and the yields are even more crap.

It's hard to see in your screenshots. You need a lot of farms with a lot of workers. That's intended. Your early society should consists of many farmers until you improve your technology.

However, one thing I cannot emphasize enough: build your farms close to the river! This gives you a huge boost in output. You don't need canals and pumps early on, they are way too expensive anyways (without upgrade a single pump needs 6 workers but can only moisturize 1-2 fields, thus it is more effective to build more fields instead). But if you build your fields close to the river, they are already moisturized. Build your pastures in the inner country where you have enough space. Build your farms on the river bench.

[Grimm Spector]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

My farms are 300 squares on average and require 3-4 workers, is that not the huge that you mean? If I make them any bigger the work % goes down with that few workers and the yields are even more crap.

I'm literally not using pastures.

You can switch the hunters to collect leather instead of meat. Still more effective than a pasture for the early game.

Tech is additive like if a Cretonian gives you 140% yield, one level of tech adds 10% to the end harvest amount or it's like making the yield 154%.

Someone else said it's additive not multiplicative? I didn't know about that with hunters, I'll definitely check it out.

I don't know what version I'm on, whatever the default current steam version is??

Originally posted by fortydayweekend:

What is your pop and how many total workers on grain fields?

You're right about tech, it's not worth investing in production upgrades until you have at least 100 farmers (focus on tech that will get more migrants first like services)

Uh 3 grain farms with 15 farmers and 12 bakers turning it all into bread in very short order, the farms should all in theory be producing over 250 grain every year.

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

I DO NOT, this city has ONE pasture with 2 workers, which produces nothing and is literally a waste of time.

The math IS wrong, I have a fertility 85% size 288 grain farm with 3 workers and it is making 256 while the 100% fertility size 290 farm with 3 workers is making HALF that much. Wtf is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I wonder, what makes you believe they only produced that low amount actually? what do the productivity hover over statistics say? It may really be that the wrong species works on that farm.

Yeah I'm having trouble controlling who works where, I've tried modifying the priorities slightly, but unsure if I'm missing something. And why? Because that's all that made it to the warehouse and the fields were empty. And also when I hovered over the one field it literally say 134.

Originally posted by kaibioinfo:

Originally posted by Grimm Spector:

It's hard to see in your screenshots. You need a lot of farms with a lot of workers. That's intended. Your early society should consists of many farmers until you improve your technology.

However, one thing I cannot emphasize enough: build your farms close to the river! This gives you a huge boost in output. You don't need canals and pumps early on, they are way too expensive anyways (without upgrade a single pump needs 6 workers but can only moisturize 1-2 fields, thus it is more effective to build more fields instead). But if you build your fields close to the river, they are already moisturized. Build your pastures in the inner country where you have enough space. Build your farms on the river bench.

I built the first farms I have on the most fertile ground available, until I had canals and made my own 100% land, which seems to not actually evenly distribute the water, I am guessing I'm missing some hidden mechanic there as some spots it doesn't seem to penetrate as far fully.