A Couple of Questions

[slcowden]

I am definitely appreciating the complexity of this game. I have a couple of questions for anyone who has already figured these things out.

1. What is the best way to expand farms? Currently I set food crop reserves to 1 and once I have one apple, carrot etc. in stock I build another field. This is however getting tedious and I could set the reserve at like 5 or 10 or something but setting the number too high will deprive the population of food.

2. How do you manage population growth? It seems to me that population grows way faster than production. I can never produce enough food to feed everyone. Only in my solo games can I provide enough meat but when it comes to fish, and agricultural food I am always chasing this and never getting caught up. I have a lot of excess population and the only thing to do with them is put them in the army (which really isn't an option after you enact fair trade. I could build more industry but its difficult to provide all the raw materials the industries need. The farthest I've gotten is mid to late stone age so maybe the solution is in the later techs?

3. In solo games does the server run while I am not in game? I go to check on my multi-player city and then go back to my solo game and eveything is messed up. Example: I enacted barter and go overwhelmed by all the changes to I quit the game to find out what I needed to do, checked on my multiplayer then went back to my solo game to find I have 4500c in debt. When I quit I had like 200 coins or something.

4. In solo games do you ever get attacked by barbarians? Should I be worrying about walls and military (beyond a small force to hunt and carry things between towns?

Anyone who takes the time to answer any of these questions I -thank you in advance.

[Caveira]

1- Sadly that's the only way to do it in early game

2- You can try to found a new city or just put people in small armies of 10 so you can explore the map.After fair trade is enabled the population will grow alot, letting some die is not that bad.

4- Yes, you do get attacked, in fact, the barbarians are broken in SP, they have overwhelming numbers and at some point it will be impossible to deal with them unless you clear the nearby barbarian cities.

[slcowden]

Thanks for your help, mate.

[Llamedos]

population growth is directly tied to vital needs, Food and water. Effectively the more food you provide and he more types of food you provide the larger your population will grow to. So if you dont want your population to grow stop increasing the food supply and it will stabilize.

[Acularius]

1 - Sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and stockpile the food.
If you plan it right, the amount of new farms you place down will produce enough/or more food than what you will now be putting back into the stockpile after depleting it.
Usually I stockpile it to a storage that I have guarded, with high priority for the good. Ground storage being like 16 units)

2 - Food works to a point, but as population grows both health and fertility drop. So eventually you will come to a rough equilibrium. Getting everyone into a house helps as its a huge jump in health quality between a 'shack' and even the basic level 1 house. More food variety helps with health bonuses up to 4, after which you receive diminishing return for the health bonus.

There are periods where you will have a lot of free workforce and periods where a new tech will put them to work leaving you wondering where it all went.

3 - So long as the server is running, it will carry on. Regardless if you are actually 'online'.

4 - Provided they are in range (5 tiles? - I'll go with 5) Barbarians will attack one. I would advise having defences even if you haven't been attacked as its good practice if you ever decide to join an online game.
If you can keep crushing the barbarian encampments, make them self-sustain and release them as rebels, you might be able to keep the barbarian horse outside of the range needed to attack.
If not, then eventually they will overrun you.

[slcowden]

Thanks for the reply Acularius.

Yeah, I was trying to play this game like any other city builder and provide all the food my people needed and this was causing the problem. When I figured out that I don't really need to give the people everything they asked for I am having a much easier time now.

I did get to the point where population growth is not really growing (around 1100) and I am providing more than enough meat, wheat, apples, and carrots.

Then I started to import fish and this caused the population to grow past 1300. So its starting to make sense now.

I am surrounded by only temperate territories and have some nordic ones far to the north, so I don't have a lot of food choices. I have been looking for grapes for like ever. Do you have any tips on how to located specific resources because it is too time consuming to "scan" every territory and I started to forget which ones I have already searched. Like do they appear in forest, planes, flat, hills? Or do they only exist naturally in Mediterranean regions but can be grown in continental regions?

Also do you know what the trigger is for the idea for saws and stone blocks? My pigs don't have any idea how to make these things they only know that they need it for some of the more advanced buildings?

Thanks for you help.

[slcowden]

One more question.

Like I said earlier I am currently producing more than enough of all food types (except apples because I am making some cider with them), but none of it is being stocked in the storage (beyond 20 units I set as minimum quantities for farm seeds). I am producing 20 meat and consuming 15 meat. Population is 100% satisfied and I have a dedicated granary just for meat, but none of the excess production is being stored. I DO NOT have "do not stock" option enabled on the "store in restricted" stocking option enabled, but still no meat is stored. Is this a bug or is there a mechanic at play which prevents producers from making more than they can sell?

[Llamedos]

Its probably being sold.

[slcowden]

Originally posted by Llamedos:

Its probably being sold.

Ok, thank you. It seems that so long as you have capacity in market stalls you will sell your entire stock of a product regardless of whether you are producing above demand or population needs are already at 100%. I guess if you want to have extra in storage you will have to reduce retail capacity.