Capitals do produce another base good. But this is an issue indeed. The whole trade good production in general is just strange imo. (Freemen not producing Grain, or Citizens not producing Cloth).

My issues with trade is some strange choices regarding surplus bonuses. Mainly that none of the food goods actually increase the amount of food you get in a province. Meaning it becomes very difficult to actually feed your cities despite the fact that you are importing nearly all your nation's food into your captial.

This is a big issue, when you consider that for example, Crete has all of 2 provinces with only 1 city. So Crete cant balance food production throughout it by managing where they send the many fish they get.

Yep it will change in the Egypt update. I'll copy what I wrote in the comments.

Food will change quite a bit with next update. Reverting the change so food items now produce food (kinda duh), and cities can be reverted. Will hopefully be a much better experience in the egypt update

Originally posted by Svanley:

Yep it will change in the Egypt update. I'll copy what I wrote in the comments.

Food will change quite a bit with next update. Reverting the change so food items now produce food (kinda duh), and cities can be reverted. Will hopefully be a much better experience in the egypt update

BTW, I tested a game where I made them have said food production, and found that it is viable to maintain Crete off of the food it has plus some imports from outside. This was with surpluses for everything but salt in food giving 10% local modifer to food production. I did however have to build up primarily food increasing settlement buildings however for the balance to work.

Trade for food is outright needed for large cities even with 10% boost from surplus. Large here being 50 to 85 pops mind you. Primarily the Capital, which was farmlands because this is the ideal location for a city. Most my cities were 15 to 25 pops, with about 6 above 30 or 40. One city had 13 pops.

My Capital actually has positive food. As for why, no clue. There is something going on with the math I cant figure out. I either get several times the actual food(this was if assuming each modifer is applied in sequence, not as one large modifer added together) or outright negative in the math(with the modifers added together). I wonder if freemen output effects food production and it neglects to inform you.

As far as I can tell, my capital province right now should actually be starving. Instead my capital is outright the majority of the food surplus in the capital. I will mention I have stuffed the region with like 9 fish(90%), 2 grain(20%), and 2 livestock(20%) with said modification on top of the capital being farmland(50% and a flat 1.5 for capital) and 2 inventions boosting food(10% combined), the food boosting idea(5%), and the T1 Decentralized Religion Idea that boosts food(5%) on top of encourage trade(8%), and my 24 freemen give 9.6 food and eat 4.8, the 14 tribes give and eat 1.4, 33 citizens eating 19.8 food, and 13 slaves eating 3.9 food.

Now, without the food, the city will starve at -7.72 food(as the region is only positive with the food from the capital). With the sheer boost from the food due to my modification it is 5.48 food produced. And yet, the math doesn't check out based on what it tells me. It should be negative at around 4 to 5 food. Not positive at 5.5

Hm thought you might have factored it in, it might be because the food production gets multiplied by modifiers while the consumption doesn't. So the 9.6 production from freemen gets more than doubled, but the consumtion stays at 4.8. Of note is that capital bonus doesn't get multiplied by modifiers either.

It is not so intuitive, but it does really improve the system greatly. Also in the Egypt update when food trade goods gives food it won't be effected by local modifiers either (which makes sense).
This whole system means that freemen living in deserts actually consume food, where as if they live in farmland they will produce a lot of it, especially with farm settlement building.

How your capital is positive is a bit weird indeed, but it might be because you don't have such a high citizen percentage? Also its probably also a case of all those stacking modifiers from food and inventions and otherwise adding up to pretty big numbers.

Originally posted by Svanley:

Hm thought you might have factored it in, it might be because the food production gets multiplied by modifiers while the consumption doesn't. So the 9.6 production from freemen gets more than doubled, but the consumtion stays at 4.8. Of note is that capital bonus doesn't get multiplied by modifiers either.

It is not so intuitive, but it does really improve the system greatly. Also in the Egypt update when food trade goods gives food it won't be effected by local modifiers either (which makes sense).
This whole system means that freemen living in deserts actually consume food, where as if they live in farmland they will produce a lot of it, especially with farm settlement building.

How your capital is positive is a bit weird indeed, but it might be because you don't have such a high citizen percentage? Also its probably also a case of all those stacking modifiers from food and inventions and otherwise adding up to pretty big numbers.

It is absolutely the food boosting it. I had basically out of the 20 trade slots my capital had like 11 or 12 for just purely food. No food bonuses, it starves the entire region.