Relationship between Troops - Upkeep and - 'Food'

[Myrmidon]

I'm an old school Rome I player that finds this completely different interface incredibly confusing. I currently have +1 surplus food but I'm making a lot of money, enough to pay for a lot more infantry but I wonder at some point will I build too many that this surplus food drops to 0? Or is it just some stupid arbitrary mechanic that only affects building requirements?

[easytarget]

don't believe you need to worry about troops in relationship to food, the problem with more troops is support costs, so you'll likely notice soon enough that your per turn income is dropping as you load up on troops, that will be the limiting factor on adding armies

the food component in this one ties with improving your castle and markets (may be tied to something else but i don't recall off hand), you'll see on each improvement if it costs a unit or more of food to improve

[Myrmidon]

Originally posted by easytarget:

don't believe you need to worry about troops in relationship to food, the problem with more troops is support costs, so you'll likely notice soon enough that your per turn income is dropping as you load up on troops, that will be the limiting factor on adding armies

the food component in this one ties with improving your castle and markets (may be tied to something else but i don't recall off hand), you'll see on each improvement if it costs a unit or more of food to improve

Yeah it all seems very arbitrary and convoluted like Rome II. Well good to know either way. I had this idea some stupid system was being employed where only a certain number of whole units could be built in relation to individual units of surplus food so I had been disbanding everything in favour of having a better unit so as to maintain the same number e.g. Yari for Ashigaru etc. Good to see it wasn't as silly as I had surmised though.

[easytarget]

That's a matter of opinion in my view it works perfectly.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

Originally posted by easytarget:

don't believe you need to worry about troops in relationship to food, the problem with more troops is support costs, so you'll likely notice soon enough that your per turn income is dropping as you load up on troops, that will be the limiting factor on adding armies

the food component in this one ties with improving your castle and markets (may be tied to something else but i don't recall off hand), you'll see on each improvement if it costs a unit or more of food to improve

Yeah it all seems very arbitrary and convoluted like Rome II. Well good to know either way. I had this idea some stupid system was being employed where only a certain number of whole units could be built in relation to individual units of surplus food so I had been disbanding everything in favour of having a better unit so as to maintain the same number e.g. Yari for Ashigaru etc. Good to see it wasn't as silly as I had surmised though.

Yeah no worries it doesn't work like that.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have food requirements for raising troops, but Shogun 2 doesn't do it 😀

Like EasyTarget says, the food surplus is used when you either 1) upgrade a fort to a higher tier, or 2) move into the Rice Exchange and above in the Market chain.

Something else about food, is that the surplus is applied globally, but any given province is calculated locally.

1 extra food in a province will give +1 to all provinces, so if you have 10 provinces and surplus of 1, you in effect are getting +10 to growth across your whole kingdom.

But, any particular province may be 0 or even like -2 in food production. Check the "province list" drop down in the upper right of the campaign map to see what each province has for food (list icon looks like a little pagoda or castle).

If you hover cursor over the food number in the lower right of the campaign map, it will tell you what the projected surplus or deficit will be. So if you're unsure what will happen when you upgrade a fort or something, just hover over the food in lower right after you start the building queue, and it will tell you what it will be after construction is complete.

If it is projected to be -1 or more, you'll need to upgrade farms.

Generally, you'll want to upgrade the most fertile farmlands first so you not only get the extra unit of food, but a better tax return as well.

Construction costs for farms are flat regardless of fertility, so one province might yield an extra 100 koku and another an extra 180 even though the upgrade to the farm costs 950 in both provinces.