How to get food as Skaven?

[Dionysus 🐭]

Title

[TVMAN]

Raiding, battles, undercities, pasture resource locations

[Kaaz]

Originally posted by TVMAN:

Raiding, battles, undercities, pasture resource locations

also research, food commandment and another resource building i cant remember the name of.

[Trickst3r83]

Kill some humans

Eat their flesh

Profit

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

For me, it just came from experience, of being two steps ahead, so like, not taking over too many settlements when I was already low food, but sacking, and stuff like that. So if you start with the mentality, of having some areas around to easily sack, rather than take them, get the food up as first priority, rather than taking of settlements, or extra armies and so forth.

Once it is up, increase your settlement building for higher capacity and so on, and it is a matter of repeat, repeat.

And when you confederate someone, etc. Make sure you have max food. The undercity stuff is all optional, and not really the main source or loss of, but something that you can toy with.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Kaaz:

and another resource building i cant remember the name of.

It's not a resource building. It's a building available in all major settlements. It's the arcane generators/warplightning capacitors/warpstone reactor building chain. The T4 and T5 ones (warplightning capacitors/warpstone reactor) both produce 1 food/turn.

So if you have a 3 settlement province, the food commandment along with that building will allow the province to pay for itself in terms of food.

[funkmonster7]

As the above poster said, being two steps ahead is the key. You want to have reliable ways to gather food every turn without being in the negative all the time, and then you want methods to help you boost food growth quickly over a few turns as a contingency plan.

Reliable methods: resource buildings such as pastures, exotic animals (a trade commodity), the final chain building (I forgot what it's called, at T5 it gives some food on top of +50% income on all buildings in your province, or something like that), food commandment.

Bonus methods: Raiding, sacking, winning battles, post-battle sacrifices, Under-Empires, Rite.

I noted the Rite as a bonus method because it lasts 5 turns (and following after that is a 10-turn cooldown) and you mostly use it to replenish food growth after you've used it up. Ideally you do want to spam that Rite as much as possible, but not for food growth except in the early game.

I personally prefer not to use Under-Empires for food because it's a waste. Under-Empires have far more useful buildings, albeit costing you more food and gold sometimes. So I prefer to keep Under-Empires at a minimum and only build them in places where I will not be conquering any time soon (such as Ulthuan, which the entire island has red climate for Skaven), and even then I keep food expenses at zero at least, and discovery as low as possible, then build whatever else boosts my power above ground. I don't really see Under-Empires as a legit 'empire' because they disappear once the city gets razed. If you plan your food management via these things, you can screw up your entire campaign just because your ally razed down Ulthuan, for example.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Bruce Magician:

I only bother with under-empires as clan sure, using the doom rite, because you get a unique building with it.

As clan eshin, I ignore it. Use the dominating scheme rite whenever it's off cool down, especially early game.
Attack enemies as much as possible. Don't always occupy enemy settlements. Each settlement drains 1 food per turn, which can cripple you at start if you over expand.
It's also good to have a couple of places to farm for food and gold, until you get yourself in a good position.
Use raiding stance if you can't outright beat a settlement, and just sit on the edge.

But yea, best advice, is stay 2 steps ahead. You don't NEED under empire.

If you make significant use of weapon teams as any Skaven faction, you should be making use of under-cities. There's an under-city building that gives +1 recruit rank per building faction-wide to weapon teams.

[Guts]

Same way you gain XP. Sack, sack, and sack again. Frankly it's about time someone at CA had the bright idea of making XP gains dynamic based on the force you fought instead of an auto resolve against a depleted garrison giving near maximum and a slugfest to the last man against three stacks the lowest.

But that's neither here nor there. Spam sack a city. Build undercities. Raid. You shouldn't have a problem generating food unless you're pumping it into a bunch of menace below which you shouldn't be doing. Generally you should not need to expand overly quickly because you have ambush and taking the ambush success chance blue line to maximum which you should always do makes defense a piece of cake. Basically free food when they try to retaliate.

[Savok]

Skaven corruption causing rebellions is actually a volunteer service for who gets eaten first.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Bruce Magician:

Is that the unique building from the clan skyre Warlock rite though?

No, it's a different one, Warpstone Refinery. Can be built by any faction (or at the very least can be built by Eshin, which I assume means it can also be built by the other 3 non-Skryre Skaven factions, as well).

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by Bruce Magician:

I only bother with under-empires as clan sure, using the doom rite, because you get a unique building with it.

As clan eshin, I ignore it. Use the dominating scheme rite whenever it's off cool down, especially early game.
Attack enemies as much as possible. Don't always occupy enemy settlements. Each settlement drains 1 food per turn, which can cripple you at start if you over expand.
It's also good to have a couple of places to farm for food and gold, until you get yourself in a good position.
Use raiding stance if you can't outright beat a settlement, and just sit on the edge.

But yea, best advice, is stay 2 steps ahead. You don't NEED under empire.

If you make significant use of weapon teams as any Skaven faction, you should be making use of under-cities. There's an under-city building that gives +1 recruit rank per building faction-wide to weapon teams.

What are weapon teams?

[Guts]

Originally posted by aaronth07:

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

If you make significant use of weapon teams as any Skaven faction, you should be making use of under-cities. There's an under-city building that gives +1 recruit rank per building faction-wide to weapon teams.

What are weapon teams?

They come with the prophet and warlock DLC. Strongest units in the skaven roster.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by White Wolf:

Originally posted by aaronth07:

What are weapon teams?

They come with the prophet and warlock DLC. Strongest units in the skaven roster.

The poisoned wind mortars and warp-grinders from the Shadow and the Blade DLC also count as weapon teams, as do the poisoned wind globadiers and death globe bombardiers that are available to Skaven with the base game.

[Savok]

They do, Ikit can upgrade them to even more OP states.