Best food generation?

[snowyonetwo]

I'm nearing the endgame and my population is exploding. I've got almost 1000 people in my capital. Needless to say, this means I need to FEED that many people and I wanna do so quickly and effeciently. What's the best way to generate massive amounts of food?

[FIDGER]

bakeries, many bakeries.

[Seal Enthusiast]

Bakeries and fisheries, nothing else really compares. In fact, at that population I would either set up colonies to produce wheat or buy it and produce tools and coal and such to make up the difference.

[teeray33]

I have 700 people and 700+ food, but starving people. Is it a distribution problem, or quantity one?

[snowyonetwo]

Related... Can we PLEASE buff the irrigation reservoir? It's not only tied to rivers (which usually have high fertility anyways) but it's range is just pathetic for it's size. It would need to be double the radius to reach the actually troubled areas and even then it's of questionable value. It would be a lot more useful if it wasn't tied as harshly to rivers (so it could reach problem areas) and had more range since it's basically taking up a farm slot just to increase fertility.

[uncle3]

Originally posted by teeray33:

I have 700 people and 700+ food, but starving people. Is it a distribution problem, or quantity one?

the food production is not really good. My citizen is always straving

[Siger]

fruit gathereres are the best early to mid game,after that yeah bakeries with sustainnability books and burning wood instead of coal cause it gives a 30% production boost

[buds]

For me nothing beats fruit gatherers. My almost 1800 population on deity has more than 233k reserve and more than 200k produced are fruits.

Wheat and bread are just good on lower difficulty and lower population when farm workers are still efficient.

[hN@S]

Mushroom farms!
- you can build them everywhere cause they dont need fertilized ground
- 2 book slots
- they produce all over the year, so no break in winter
- with electricity they get +50% workspeed (really good for endgame)

I have abount 65 farms for 1300 people and also produce mushroom beer out of it. Never runed out of food or beer. I started with 1 farm just at the beginning and was able to sell some food before first winter arrived. Tryed it with fish and bakeries before and was not happy with it.

[War Chicken]

Originally posted by hN@S:

Mushroom farms!
- you can build them everywhere cause they dont need fertilized ground
- 2 book slots
- they produce all over the year, so no break in winter
- with electricity they get +50% workspeed (really good for endgame)

I have abount 65 farms for 1300 people and also produce mushroom beer out of it. Never runed out of food or beer. I started with 1 farm just at the beginning and was able to sell some food before first winter arrived. Tryed it with fish and bakeries before and was not happy with it.

... Urist McPlumphelmetfarmer, is that you?

[Maxxwell]

Food is a building block element. This is to say: You can't have beer until you can sustain bread and you can't have bread until you can sustain enough wheat. Once I generate 2X's the basic staple, I then open the next in the chain. So if my few years I consume 200 wheat, I farm until I can farm 400 for the year. Once I can do that, I set the limit to 500 and open the next level in the chain (breads). Rinse/repeat.

Basics are, (I place in order): Cabbage(tons of it)/Wheat/Fish/Mushrooms/Fruit gatherer + Forester/hunter

I'll load up productivity cards into the fish/mushroom slots ASAP

REMEMBER: Food limits are both your friend and enemy

They're great to have to limit production and force that labor elsewhere when not needed on the farm, however limits on farms during high population grows will choke off base supply for the ladders you've developed (i.e. Wheat -> Bread -> Beer) because suddenly the beer goes and bread goes and the remaining backup is consumed in the following production year, that farm yield (on limits) will not refill the reservoir of food you once had. So watch out, if you see a sudden growth, tighten down the ladder and open up the gates of the staples so the following year your new population can get fat on the excess...

Other food items like potato/melon/etc I'll place sparingly at first, knowing that if my wheat is abundant later on and the melons aren't, I can always switch the field type from wheat to melon to adjust.

It's a rat race of sorts, this game is... I play it that way and chase the food. I can't gather rocks and mine coal if I don't have the labor due to constant issues with hunger... Good luck!

[Maxxwell]

Originally posted by teeray33:

I have 700 people and 700+ food, but starving people. Is it a distribution problem, or quantity one?

Hold curser over food category in left panel. It will tell you: Yield/Consumption

You can do this with every category there.