Regional Cart - did I waste a development point?

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

I have a food problem, no boosted animal or berries and almost no areas for good fertility so farming is a real chore and yields poor output.

Fine, so I used a trader to provide bread import. Worked ok for tiny village, but when I need more than 30 bread a month the trader simply cannot cope with demand and food availability suffers.

So I saw the Regional Cart development point and thought, why not, let's see what it does.

I put a food stall cart in the marketplace. I "imagined" it would be a short-cut to the trader bread import. Bread straight into the marketplace on-demand for regional cost. Sounds great.

But no, It has been used 4 times in the 1st month and is now abandoned every month after.

Did I waste that development point? Was my imagined purpose of this Regional Food Cart flawed?

[Perflexed]

I reroll for a new starting location whenever I get either stone or clay as one of my rich resources. The best seems to be meat and either berries or iron. Personally, I like iron since non-rich berries will be fine in the early game, and by the early/mid-game, you should have a few houses making more vegetables than you could ever consume if you tried.

Seriously though, meat is great because you can get it passively and double the output with development points, and also make the animal resource regenerate much quicker with a policy point. With the rich resource, development points, and the policy enabled, you can have 2 hunter cabins for the same resource and get tonnes of meat. That in combination with veg means you will always have 2 sources of food in abundance. Orchards might be a shout for the first development point so by the mid-late game you can have 3 food sources in abundance when the orchards eventually grow. Make sure you have several granaries fully staffed.

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

I understand all the suggestions you made about the various other sources, but I was specifically asking about the Regional Food Cart. Seemed like it would be a very useful addition to a marketplace for the supply of bread upto the amount of regional wealth you have.

It doesn't seem to work like this, when it works at all.

I've reverted to the save file prior to me unlocking Regional Carts and will use the dev point on something else.

[Perflexed]

Originally posted by AngerIsAnEnergy:

I understand all the suggestions you made about the various other sources, but I was specifically asking about the Regional Food Cart. Seemed like it would be a very useful addition to a marketplace for the supply of bread upto the amount of regional wealth you have.

It doesn't seem to work like this, when it works at all.

I've reverted to the save file prior to me unlocking Regional Carts and will use the dev point on something else.

I tried the carts and found it to be kinda meh. I mean trading in becomes less effective at generating money to buy the bread with over time unless you keep changing what you are exporting and the development point could be better spent on orchards or improving meat output to produce food locally.

Trade (including the carts) seems pretty weak if I'm honest after the first burst of early trade. Once export rates drop and you can no longer export specific items because there is too much global supply I just stop relying on it. Heck, I don't even bother with reducing trade routes to 25 coin lmao. Trade is a short-term solution and local production is ideal.

[AngerIsAnEnergy]

You can make money is abundance with trading. Import flax, make linen, make clothes, sell clothes. Similarly import barley, make malt, make ale, sell ale and supply tavern. Both these models work fine. Bulk sell 100s of rooftiles and the market collapses, similar with tools. The region I'm in has both rich clay and iron, so deep mines and rooftiles/tools was great for couple of years, but the market is swamped. Can be managed though if you like messing with quantities in the trader (or switch between 2 products periodically).

The Regional Cart is not what was promised - I'm dissappinted but glad I live in a world where save-files can help out :-)