How do I feed a large colony?

[Hunter]

I had a colony of about 300. I had 25 full size wheat plots, countless of the other plots with lot's of cooks. 6 berry plots. I had bread and food being processed faster than it could be farmed but the colonists ate it all! I couldn't keep up with the demand no matter how hard I tried.

How am I supposed to keep a colony alive? It's disheartening to have 30 hours of work just gone because they all starve to death.

[Auger]

I feel your pain. I just quit a 150 colony cause the same thing. It's a fine balancing act that can go bad real quick if your not prepared ans find yourself short of supplies. My downfall was I was using a ton of arrows and never had enough feathers so made more chicken coops but they needed more barley. So I had to hire more colonist which lowered my happiness which meant it cost more to food to recruit.

[aRPeaR]

Before version 0.7.0, I would have 30 wheat farmers and 6 grindstones and 6 ovens or 60 berry farmers for a colony of 300, these numbers might have changed a little with 0.7.0, but it is a start.
Limited what the work stations produce to only what they need for 1 or 2 days, if a you have more than 1 of a specific work stations and they are already done mid day, then you might want to remove a work station. Forget about making cakes when your colony is not ready for it, and don't hire new people when they are unhappy, rebalance your colony first with the people you have.

[Hunter]

I might have to watch a video on how to set up a colony and guards properly. I am finding it HARD to properly guard everything against the strong monsters, even on the lowest wave setting. This game is harder than I thought...

I sure would love the option to decide how big the safety range from the flag is :p

Thanks for the replies so far, they are very helpful!

[aRPeaR]

If you press 2, you can see the green safety range of your banner, this can be upgraded through science.

Dig a moat 2 blocks deep at the border of the green banner range. Create a single walkway from your banner to the outside by digging a moat on each side of the walkway, this will protect your guards from being atack first when zombies enter your colony. And than make a walkway for zombies outside your colony that goes back and forth in range of your guards before they enter your colony.

[Teamkiller]

To feed your colony in new patch you need to switch to high-tier foods when colonists number grows. Bread alone will not help: 1 bread is only 1 200 Kc (not enouph to feed one colonist a day), while luxary food (that sup) is 10 000 kc (5 colonists a day). Raw berries is totaly usless for large colony in both - as food and as happiness (but they needed in high-tier food). It is better to set consumption of raw berries to 0 (o near zero - I use them to "fine tune" consumption)

and you can't have colony more than abut 500 without supporting colonies in other biomes - you wil not get enough happines without imported goods.

[Kelldath]

Originally posted by Teamkiller:

To feed your colony in new patch you need to switch to high-tier foods when colonists number grows. Bread alone will not help: 1 bread is only 1 200 Kc (not enouph to feed one colonist a day), while luxary food (that sup) is 10 000 kc (5 colonists a day). Raw berries is totaly usless for large colony in both - as food and as happiness (but they needed in high-tier food). It is better to set consumption of raw berries to 0 (o near zero - I use them to "fine tune" consumption)

This is the answer to OP's question. You need 5 or 6 berries per colonist to feed them half of their daily requirement.
Once you get stoves, lower the amount of raw berries your colonists are given, and use them to make cakes, stews and so on. Little by little you stop using berries, then bread. The ingredients are more valuable if you use them for better food.
Don't be afraid to lose the 10 happiness from not having berries, but will trade for +65 or something from having more fancy food.

[Hunter]

I do play on no happiness mode. A little cheesy, I know. But I want a more casual experience while I learn to balance a colony properly.

In regards to how many calories I need a day per colonist, what is the number? I found that I could affect how much of something they eat using the rations slider, but I never knew how many calories they do actually need.

[aRPeaR]

2000 calories, you can read it in the recruitment menu.

[♥♥♥♥♥♥ Boners]

Food does seem to be a bit difficult to manage. I got to about 60 colonists and realized I was putting too much into research and upgrades and not enough into food supplies so I basically remade my whole colony from the ground up.

I made just the basics, 4 berry farmers, 4 wheat farmers, 1 chicken farmer, 2 bee farmers, 1 barley farmer, 1 olive farmer. I also made 2 grindstones, 2 ovens, 2 cooks and a workshop. Then I had a couple fisherman and water gatherers (I dug a long tunnel into my colony from a water source so I have an underground pond).

Then I made it so the colonists don't eat any berries or bread and eat only what the cooks produce. Waited like this for a while and it seemed to be working. Then I just kept adding whatever I was running out of. For instance, if I noticed my cooks weren't getting enough bread I'd add another grindstone. If they weren't getting enough water buckets I'd add another water gatherer. Not enough fish, add another fisherman... etc...

Now i'm at 5 berry farmers, 5 wheat farmers, 2 chicken farmers, 3 bee farmers, 2 barley farmers, 2 olive farmers, and 1 forester. I'm also at 3 grindstones, 2 ovens, 5 cooks, 1 workshop and 1 splitting stump. I'm at 6 fisherman and 5 water gatherers now too.

I've finally started to add basic crafting stuff (1 bronze anvil, 1 tailor and a few miners). I'm just gonna slowly keep adding this time, but I barely have enough food with only these few crafting stations.

Oh, and I'm not using happiness because balancing food seems hard enough without dealing with that... and I've temporarily disabled monster spawns until I get my food situation under control. Not sure how you could have happiness enabled and monster spawns and still have a happy and not starving colony... too much work for me to figure out for now.

[aRPeaR]

I'm playing with happiness on and normal night zombies. You don't want to see my list, which I'm currently checking off to get one colony to a 1000 colonists. Their will probably be some tweaking in the end
Current population: 905, which are divided as follows, 350 old world, 222 far east, 189 tropics and 144 the new world.

[Teamkiller]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Boners:

Oh, and I'm not using happiness because balancing food seems hard enough without dealing with that... and I've temporarily disabled monster spawns until I get my food situation under control. Not sure how you could have happiness enabled and monster spawns and still have a happy and not starving colony... too much work for me to figure out for now.

The same way you did it. It is called solving production bottlenecks. You just keep in mind two things. First thing is when you removing one bottleneck you always creating another one (or two) - you will always lack smth. Second, your current production rate is production rate of a bottleneck - you have no need to keep an eye for everything, only for some key items at the start of your production chains. You should never have spare ores or raw fish or wheat . If you have this, you production is not at maximum possible.

And small tip if screwd yourself a bit: you can kill you excess colonists!

[Hunter]

Originally posted by aRPeaR:

I'm playing with happiness on and normal night zombies. You don't want to see my list, which I'm currently checking off to get one colony to a 1000 colonists. Their will probably be some tweaking in the end
Current population: 905, which are divided as follows, 350 old world, 222 far east, 189 tropics and 144 the new world.

If you're playing without happiness, do you have to have the colony spread out across the various biomes? That sounds like some epic level management XD

[Auger]

Well doing a lot better on my second play through now. I'm up to 263 colonist and just unlocked the glider. I got my berry and bread production down to just about nothing and running full on most the better foods so my happiness is still above 0 . Which is the key if your using happiness.

I built a square castle that is 60 x 60 and made a front gate where I put 40 stone slingers. I then added another 5 on each corner. Pretty much nothing survives that, but I did lose one or 2 slingers occasional when a straggler was left so I added a few day time guards for them.

Im in the process of using diggers to open up an entire level underground so I can expand more down there since my usable space above is now gone.

I'm holding around 7000k food reserves with a daily use of 540k

[aRPeaR]

Originally posted by Hunter:

Originally posted by aRPeaR:

I'm playing with happiness on and normal night zombies. You don't want to see my list, which I'm currently checking off to get one colony to a 1000 colonists. Their will probably be some tweaking in the end
Current population: 905, which are divided as follows, 350 old world, 222 far east, 189 tropics and 144 the new world.

If you're playing without happiness, do you have to have the colony spread out across the various biomes? That sounds like some epic level management XD

For some of the science you might, but if you are happy with what you got, than no.
I don't know if playing without happiness changes the science research.
If you play without happiness, than you can play the different biomes as isolated colonies without trade to other colonies.

[KevVv]

Even with the happiness system on.
You can go -200 happiness and there will be no penalty other than the increase on food cost to recruit new colonists.
A huge flaw in my eyes... No penalty for negative happiness.