Always starving with raven

[Breeki Jack]

I'm testing each clan in this game and i can't manage to get sufficient food income with raven.

If i get hit by a blizzard all my population dies because i can't get enough food income. I'm trying to get stone upgrades on food production tiles, silos, but nothing seems to work.

What am i missing here?

[pedal_pusher]

I have only one word for you. Stockpile.

You dont need any infrastructure at all to survive a blizzard, in summer months even a villager will generally produce over twice what it eats and that's enough to start building a reserve. The key to surviving in winter or a blizzard is to already have harvested most food you need to survive it. The larger your settlement is the more you need to stockpile, but as a rough guide a reserve of around 500 food and the beginning of a winter blizzard should be good enough to see a clan of around 25 villagers though to the spring.

[Breeki Jack]

well the problem is that i can't stockpile food without dramatically slowing my economy down. If i don't allocate 70% of my workforce to food-gathering, i can't have a positive food income.

For instance in a game with 37 population i had like 3 soldiers, 2 healers, 1 miner, 3 woodcutters, 3 sailors, 2 merchants and 2 brewers, and 21 food gatherers (some of them in upgraded food production tiles with silos) : i stockpiled food during summer for a winter with a blizzard, but i got instantaneously wiped out (-15 pop, rest of them sick about to die)

Are you supposed to be constantly buying food from the marketplace with raven? When reaching 30 pop my economy seems to be grinding to a halt because 70% of your workforce gathering food means a lot of them just harvesting without specialization.

[pedal_pusher]

This is the late game economy that I normally aim for when I'm playing the raven clan:

Food: Ideally a pair of upgraded food tiles (both building and tool upgrades and a wood silo). If that's not available then an upgraded farm (again, building and tools) with a stone silo and upgraded healers hut on the same tile. Once you get the medicine lore, healers will produce food when not healing and unlike villagers they can benefit from the silo boost. If you can find spare iron for them then that will also boost their food production by an additional 15%.

Wood: One upgraded cutter running 3 all the time and one unupgraded running just when extra wood is needed.

Gold: 3 fully upgraded docks running all the time, unless I'm at war or a blizzard is coming. If I'm at war (ie: army is deployed), I'll bring all but one or two sailors in to forage/fight). Since you're making so much gold from this, use that to colinise extra tiles instead of food.

Happiness: Either 0 or 3 brewers. With the happiness boost from 3+ upgraded docks you can often do without a brewary. Generally you dont need much more than 30-34 villagers. The more villagers you have the more food they eat EACH. Going up to 37 villagers does have some advantages (generally more bodies for your warband), but it does also make you very vulnerable to blizzards unless you have hearthstone/freya's blessing.

Everyone else should be villagers unless they are scouting (and as raven you can generally get 90% of your scouting done with docks). With a setup like this you should make plenty of food, its very important to have a stockpile of food at all times with raven in case you need to go to war. Don't hold up any warband for defense unless you have no choice but to do so. Generally a warchief and towers should be easily able to deal with any naturally occuring threats. If you're going to make warband do so either because there's an army thats looking to overpower your towers, or because you think you can make a big enough army to smash another clan to bits.

[Breeki Jack]

I don't know i've been trying again : two upgraded farms, one fisherman hut, 30ish population. I stockpiled food all summer long because there was a blizzard coming, even got a marketplace to buy food.
Blizzard comes and my reserves just get eaten up instantaneously.

The ONLY time i've survived a blizzard with raven was triggering a feast just before the blizzard to prevent dropping under -20 food.
Now i'm not an expert at this game, but i have no problem surviving with wolf/goat/bear. All those get lore help or clan help to produce food. Now granted raven doesn't need as much food since it can expand with money, but at the end of the day blizzards and winters don't care about your money.

I read that you're supposed to go for the third lore path (the trade one), but frankly if i don't go for the first my happiness just stagnates (+1 hapiness for harbours vs +4-5 instaneous happiness from exploration).
Are you supposed to get Freya's blessing first to survive winters ?

[pedal_pusher]

Originally posted by Cheeki Breeki:

Blizzard comes and my reserves just get eaten up instantaneously.

The only reason this happened is because you didn't have enough reserves. Check out the northgard almanac, particularly the food consumption section: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=971470053

30 Villagers will eat 325 food each month, every month. So if you had a reserve of 975 food at the beginning of November it will be litterally impossible for you to run out of food (unless a new villager spawns in winter). You don't need to store that much because even though winter causes a ~30% penalty to villagers and farmers and blizzards cause a 50% penalty to all activities (apart from healing and scouting) you will still produce some food in winter. Also, your clan can generally starve for a week or so without getting sick.

You definitely don't need freya's, it's just nice to have late game when you are trying to sustain 15+ warbands.

[OnlyRex]

Seems like you either sustain warband or make some other critical error because wolf is harder then raven to survive blizzard...
What is the lore path you go for?

[tyke]

Originally posted by Cheeki Breeki:

like 3 soldiers, 2 healers, 1 miner, 3 woodcutters, 3 sailors, 2 merchants

Well there's your problem.

1. Most of all, you don't leave soldiers standing around when you're not using them. Early game you generally send them into enemy territory to die, late game you turn them back into villagers and heal if not using them.
Soldiers still eat food, but they're not doing anything productive.

2. Healers you don't really use early game. If you do use them early-ish game you then use them during winter.

3. Same with miners, woodcutters, sailors and merchants in early tio mid game - you use them during winter and to lesser extent during Summer where you need it.

During winter Wood CONSUMPTION increases, and Food gathering decreases (except fisherman):
You don't produce less wood in winter, your society just uses more.
You don't consume more food in winter, your society just produces less.

So eary-ish game you generally maximize villagers gathering food so that you have a good food income, then in winter you use your 2 Wood Cutter camps, or even 3, so that you have 4-6 Wood Cutters, and put the other vilagers to work on whatever else you can.

[thenightguy]

You guys are wack. The whole point of the Raven clan are the mercenary raids. You basically turtle up with towers on choke point entries and just accept you're not going to have as much territory as other clans. Hopefully you have at least 3 beaches, you should prioritize turtle defence and upgrading your mercenaries. Have your economy just enough to keep you going, you probably have to sit at pop cap for a while instead of building houses constantly and just expanding. Keep upgrading your 3 ports, and work on getting currency. Eventually you can just fuel your entire food empire by sending mercenary raids who give you 200 food each time, and you should have enough currency to just keep sending raid after raid. You can focus on clans farther away from you and then eventually you can focus on anyone closest to winning, and you'll win via trade or just by wiping out every clan by raiding their home tile and them not being able to stop raid after raid.

[Voldo]

losing all food is not the end of the game tho...even if you go heavy minus during winter, at spring you get production rolling again, main mechanic for raven is to gather money/steel and spam mercs and annihilate enemies from afar, you should pick other clan if surviving winter with food on plus side is so important.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by thenightguy:

You guys are wack. The whole point of the Raven clan are the mercenary raids. You basically turtle up with towers on choke point entries and just accept you're not going to have as much territory as other clans. Hopefully you have at least 3 beaches, you should prioritize turtle defence and upgrading your mercenaries. Have your economy just enough to keep you going, you probably have to sit at pop cap for a while instead of building houses constantly and just expanding. Keep upgrading your 3 ports, and work on getting currency. Eventually you can just fuel your entire food empire by sending mercenary raids who give you 200 food each time, and you should have enough currency to just keep sending raid after raid. You can focus on clans farther away from you and then eventually you can focus on anyone closest to winning, and you'll win via trade or just by wiping out every clan by raiding their home tile and them not being able to stop raid after raid.

You necro'd a FOUR year old thread.

[Miathan]

I haven't seen this level of threadomancy since before social media blew up

[SandScorpion]

This is what you get when a necro uses int as a dump stat.