Why is milk and cheese production not enough?

[WaapS]

I think I have as many cows as my population. I have 7 milk and 3 cheese production buildings. Interestingly, cheese is not enough.
There is one cow per person :D But people consume cheese instead of milk, that's not the issue, but cheese is not enough and I think it's a bug

Instead of buying several acres of land, build any production building there, for example "Kinstone Abbey" sells cheese for 8 gold. If I do an external honey production and herb production, it makes sense to buy cheese for 8 gold.
I think this needs to be fixed.

[Cunabula]

What other refined foods do you produce/sell and what's your population? Cheese is definitely slow, and if you have the money for it from other trade it might be cheaper, better for space or more fun to just buy it in. Doesn't necessarily mean it's broken.

[Maehlice]

Cheese consumption does always feel rather high to me, but it's not unmanageable.

Villagers only need any 2 of the 3 refined foods, so you don't even have to offer cheese -- or even always consistently offer it. Season to taste and all that.

Consider this though: cow pasture can be painted anywhere there isn't another bulding-specific zone painted. So, the actual land usage of Milk & Cheese production is only whatever land the buildings and a House sit upon. Acres and acres not necessary.

I think it's more well-balanced than you think.

[Wantoomany]

You should not be providing cheese or bread to everyone, your serfs do not need to consume it and if allowed to will drain you dry.

Your serfs will take the nearest food available. Place market stalls selling meat in areas your serfs live. Then restrict your bread and cheese sales to only the areas your commoners and citizens live. Because your serfs will have easier access to meat, they will be much less encouraged to eat your other refined foods, putting less strain on them.

[Bored Peon]

I think part of the issue is pastures are too big and too many cows.
Someone points out a smaller field produces just as much as a full sized field.

I think it has to do with milking time? Workers can only milk them so fast and there is more cows than can be milked. Like basically by the time they done a few cows the first ones are ready again.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

Your serfs will take the nearest food available.

That is the key right there.

Yesterday I built a city market. I had tons of meat, like 1000 but they kept buying up all the cheese instead. I swapped the meat and cheese stalls and walla, cheese sales went down and meat went up.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Originally posted by Maehlice:

Cheese consumption does always feel rather high to me, but it's not unmanageable.

Villagers only need any 2 of the 3 refined foods, so you don't even have to offer cheese -- or even always consistently offer it. Season to taste and all that.

Consider this though: cow pasture can be painted anywhere there isn't another bulding-specific zone painted. So, the actual land usage of Milk & Cheese production is only whatever land the buildings and a House sit upon. Acres and acres not necessary.

I think it's more well-balanced than you think.

Also, if you have the tavern cook, they use a lot of cheese in their tavern meal production.

Citizens need all three refined food types, btw. Greedy bunch :-)

[Baron von Tansley]

Cheese/milk production needs another look by the Devs, it's really bad compared to meat and bread.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Cheesing the milk production (yep, pun intended) is a good way to save space. This may only be possible if you have large bodies of water or unreachable islands, though:

Build a dairy farm and paint a small field area around it. The rest of the field paint somewhere way off (preferably in the water). That way, all the cows are on the small area by the farm and will spawn there, reducing the way to walk for the farmer (and saving lots of time). You'll have a lot of cows on the small field, and much better milk production.

This works for sheep as well.

Even so, cheese is still notoriously difficult to produce enough of. For 750+ people in my last game, I had 8 fully staffed (cheesed) dairy farms, three dedicated granaries for transports to cheesemakers, and five fully staffed commoner cheesemaker buildings. With that, I managed to create a stable storage amount of around 350 cheese.

[Feral Grumpicorn]

Originally posted by Doc_Hotpants:

Build a dairy farm and paint a small field area around it. The rest of the field paint somewhere way off (preferably in the water). That way, all the cows are on the small area by the farm and will spawn there, reducing the way to walk for the farmer (and saving lots of time). You'll have a lot of cows on the small field, and much better milk production.

I struck out the unnecessary parts of your setup. In the current game version cows dont have downtime to "regrow" their milk. The suggested pasture size are just fixed numbers in the code and dont have any real connection with production. For milk you need a pasture with only three cows.

For sheep you need a few more, but at least under challenge rules the suggested pasture size is an overestimate.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Originally posted by Feral Grumpicorn:

Originally posted by Doc_Hotpants:

Build a dairy farm and paint a small field area around it. The rest of the field paint somewhere way off (preferably in the water). That way, all the cows are on the small area by the farm and will spawn there, reducing the way to walk for the farmer (and saving lots of time). You'll have a lot of cows on the small field, and much better milk production.

I struck out the unnecessary parts of your setup. In the current game version cows dont have downtime to "regrow" their milk. The suggested pasture size are just fixed numbers in the code and dont have any real connection with production. For milk you need a pasture with only three cows.

For sheep you need a few more, but at least under challenge rules the suggested pasture size is an overestimate.

I stand corrected. Maybe. ... Will definitely try whether that'll work. Thanks for the tip.

However, if you don't trust the three cow setup and fields the game calls too small, cheesing the fields the way I described mostly definitely focuses all of the cows in that small area and thereby saves time and a LOT of space. :-)

[NanoGrrl]

@Doc, that's hilarious...and useful! Thanks again.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Feral Grumpicorn:

For sheep you need a few more, but at least under challenge rules the suggested pasture size is an overestimate.

Some irony with that one. During early access you had to spawn sheep and cows with a button. After 4-5 sheep it would tell you not to abuse it, then at the 9th one it spawned a black sheep and gave an achievement.

So this whole pasture painting mechanic seems quite off for animals.

[Feral Grumpicorn]

Well, I still increase the size of my fields to just about "adequate" just so I feel I am not cheating. Having some big cow pastures is also nice to look at to a degree.

There is however a side effect that will need addressing if they ever decide to fix this. Since dairy farmers only ever have to go to the closest cow, they dont really have to walk much. If they worked like sheep they would be far less productive. So I dont get why you all are complaining. You already get too much milk!

[NanoGrrl]

Originally posted by Doc_Hotpants:

Cheesing the milk production (yep, pun intended) is a good way to save space. This may only be possible if you have large bodies of water or unreachable islands, though:

Build a dairy farm and paint a small field area around it. The rest of the field paint somewhere way off (preferably in the water). That way, all the cows are on the small area by the farm and will spawn there, reducing the way to walk for the farmer (and saving lots of time). You'll have a lot of cows on the small field, and much better milk production.

This works for sheep as well.

Even so, cheese is still notoriously difficult to produce enough of. For 750+ people in my last game, I had 8 fully staffed (cheesed) dairy farms, three dedicated granaries for transports to cheesemakers, and five fully staffed commoner cheesemaker buildings. With that, I managed to create a stable storage amount of around 350 cheese.

Jeez! Or should I say, "Cheez!" Well, that there cheese issue needs fixing. How about a Manchego cheese mod? (kidding, kidding)

[F A T B $ $ $ R T D]

refined food production is NEEEEVER enough
you always have to IMPORT them from outside