It Is Mathematically Idiotic To Make Bread

[abislwise]

Consider the following.

1. At absolute minimum, wheat takes 12 days to grow. At absolute maximum, vegetables take 24 days to grow. This means at absolute best, you get 2 wheat for every 1 vegetable.
2. However, it takes 6 wheat to make 1 bread. (2 wheat per flour; 3 flour per bread; 2 x 3 = 6.) This means that at absolute best, you get 1 bread for every 3 vegetables.
3. This means that in order for wheat to be worth growing under the best possible circumstances, bread needs to be at least 3 times as filling as vegetables.
4. Vegetables are worth 15 filling, and bread is worth 35 filling.
5. Therefore, even under the most optimal possible assumptions, it is never more efficient to make bread.

This also does not take into account the additional space and workers needed to make bread. The windmill is the biggest building in the game so far, and the bakery is an additional 2x3; also, one windmill is insufficient to supply enough flour quickly enough to continually bake bread. Each building also needs one worker, meaning that bread's supply chain requires as much space and as many workers as a second fully stocked and worked farm. This also does not include the additional time required to refine flour and bake bread, the latter of which is fairly substantial.

The only advantage that bread has is that flour can be baked into bread during the winter. However, given sufficient granary space (which is also needed to store flour) vegetables can overcome this simply by having enough in storage to last for the winter and following spring. Also, given current hunger settings hitting any sort of food storage cap is unlikely. This means that the "compactness" of bread never really matters.

Given all this, baking bread is an absolute fool's errand. This should probably be rebalanced prior to full release.

[malorob]

this is a game not real life sim.

too many times i see people say make your game this way and make your game that way.
and yet if they just let them make the game the way they want it.

[BamBeakz]

Originally posted by malorob:

this is a game not real life sim.

too many times i see people say make your game this way and make your game that way.
and yet if they just let them make the game the way they want it.

This game isn't finished so it would be a good idea to ask things like this. It has in no way something to do with making the dev do exactly what you want if you point this out. Bread is a more luxury item and harder to make so it should be feeding more or give a bigger happiness (it does with houses close to a bakery).

I have really no idea why you say it isn't a life simulator because he doesn't say that. Some people enjoy to take on the challenge to make a optimized city. That you only want to click around without any strategy doesn't make that the game it has to be.

[Lament]

My main complaint about bread is that I never have it when beggars ask for it because it takes so long to make that it immediately gets scooped up by my villagers :(

[malorob]

Originally posted by Lament:

My main complaint about bread is that I never have it when beggars ask for it because it takes so long to make that it immediately gets scooped up by my villagers :(

I have found i do not complete every quest thrown at me sum i fail but as a king growing a town you win sum and you loose sum.

[fredreed2000]

This game is about having fun. All games are different and when It comes to making bread not every game is made the same way. I don't find It that bad for growing wheat or veggies. Remember also this game Is also In EA so these and little issues likely can get tweaked. Just give It some time. There is one thing that I don't understand is why is the mill so big I mean It should be much smaller then this. It is way too big It needs to be smaller.

[racmozz]

i agree bread seems only really useful for giving as gifts. the wheat is also needed later for food for the pigs which mean you need even MORE wheat fields.

[carnini]

I think an easy change would be two flour for bread instead of three. I think that would make bread seem more useful. I cant ever seem to have any bread on hand

[Leran]

the math just works out if it would be only nutrition that counts.

bread is used for quests, wheat is used for pigs, commoners can produce food too (as millers and bakers), bakeries make the people living in the area happier...

if you just grow veggies it's okay. if you want that commoners take a share in feeding themselves, go for both.

[Chompers]

This is good feedback IMO. The game is levels of magnitude easier if you just ignore bread production completely. It could probably use some tuning, and this is the whole reason we're here in early access.

[Zatio]

I think a simple fix would be to do 1 grain = 2 flour , 2 flour = 4 bread.

[Cmon169]

I don't understand why any bakery would bake 1 bread at a time. At least make it double.

[Lament]

I'm not sure why people feel the need to defend the game against criticism lol. It's in Early Access, now is *the* time to give feedback.

I assume more ways to get Nobility will come up in the future, but as it is, failing *any* request costs 5 nobility and many of the requests don't give any back, so there isn't much of a balance there. There's no way to save the bread or veggies for the beggars like you can with money, so this request becomes impossible to complete if it comes at a time of food shortage and your citizens immediately scoop up all available food and making more bread takes a long time between getting wheat to the mill, milling the flour, and getting the flour to the bakery, then baking 1 at a time.

[Grenaa games]

The feedback is great! And we have already made changes so bread feels more useful in mondays patch! We might have now made it too strong, but that will soon be discovered :D

EA is a marathon, not a sprint, this feedback is great and together we iterate until we find a good balance!

[carnini]

I dont see anything in the Patch notes about bread changing, kinda looks the same to me and still acting the same?. Can you comment on what the change were, really liking the game btw.

[Buntkreuz]

I kind of assumed that bread is one of the food sources for townsfolk.
So basically the plebs eat vegetables and bread, the townsfolk eat meat and bread, the nobles will eat meat and whatever comes next.
Which means that bread would be a waste on purpose, because its a fancy way to eat for the ones wanting fancy stuff to eat aka the "better people".
But you need it, or otherwise the "better people" wont settle and work for you.

In that sense, it would make sense its not feasable. Especially to waste it for the peasants that are fine with veggies.

Thats actually realistic and authentic.
In our world its the same problem. We generate a lot of direct food sources like corn, but we process it further to food for animals, which we then slaughter.
Its a wasteful fancy way of generating fancy food.
It wastes a ton of direct food and water in the process and you could feed far more people with the initial product than with the processed one.

So it would be actually clever if this game made fancy food a condition to higher grade population because they expect it for their work, but it would also mean to mathematically waste food in the process of refining it.