Interesting experiment

[coyotl]

Always having trouble keeping anywhere close to adequate food in my empires, I decided to conduct a wee experiment. Playing from civs that have access to valuable trade resources (gold, iron, marble), I researched silver early, built trade stations in a number of towns, and built absolutely no farms whatsoever. I exported valuable commodities and imported food (and bricks when needed).

An interesting thing happened. As harvests varied, my monthly food availability fluctuated wildly as usual. But how could this be? As I am producing no food, only importing it, drought should have no affect on how much I receive per month - unless drought increases the appetites of my population and hence their consumption. It would be reasonable if the price of my imports fluctuated to reflect the relative scarcity, but to have my per turn food balance go from a +20 to a -70 in a single turn is absurd.

It seems that the drought event somehow ties to something like the pre-trade food balance on the trade screen rather than to any calculation of food production within the empire. With no production, zero production times any multiplier should still result in zero.

Food is the only part of Spartan/GoT that seems 'out of balance' to me. This has been probably hashed over a million times in earlier posts, but I will most likely post some suggestions to the LegionII forum before long in hopes of seeing this improved in future games...

[IainMcNeil]

It certainly shouldn't be doing this. Can you check the stats on the Empire screen and add them up to see where the food is going. Are you moving armies around as they require double food if they are on the march outside of a city.

[coyotl]

Sorry I can't check that as I didn't save any of those games. As I was playing for experimentation purposes, I controlled as much as was possible. The times frames referred to were usually at a point where I had +or- 10 towns most developed to the 4th and some to the 5th level (large town/small city?). All troops were in town, no new troops recruited, possibility of a few new population additions due to normal increase rates. Absolutely nothing to merit the huge fluctuation in my food resources available.

Food has always been my bane when playing Spartan/GoT. I am always in shortage and usually must devote much of the early game to building and researching food and trade improvements in order to manage the chronic terrible shortages. I finally decided to try ignoring food and importing it all to see if it would work, and save me the devotion of resources to researching food at least since I had to research the trade in any case. Plus almost every town that can produce food in any measurable quantity can also produce other more valuable trade resources as well.

Is there a chance that a patch has not been applied properly? I noted another post that complains of incredibly docile AI opponents until the hard level. This matches my experience. Through normal, the AI's simply sit and wait to be overrun, but then on hard the AI's become ultra-aggressive and seem to have no restraints on their ability to recruit and maintain armies making the shift from normal to hard a huge change when you add the increased difficulties in resource acquisition/management.

[IainMcNeil]

The AI issue is just one of labelling. The game was designed to played on the middle seting. We used to call it normal, so all new players started there but with no experience of the game were losing badly. We relabelled it hard so new players would start at a lower setting. The AI on easy & normal is heavily restricted.

I've not seen this behaviour and suspect it is down to a factor you were not aware of. Which nation were you playing as? There are events that effect food. Could it be related to your nation bonus? Did you play with the feeding levels of your population? If you capture a city it would boost the food requirements. Maybe its this? Without some more info on the food issue I cant really help.

[coyotl]

This was done 3 times.

First time as Athens who start with silver and marble. Demolished the farm at Athens (better things to build in my capitol) and researched silver early. Conquered both the cycladeans (except Thera) to gain more trade resources.

Second time as Lydians(?) - whichever eastern group starts with the silver at Argiza. Conquered the Pergamenes and Magnesia and Sardis to gain control of their resources.

Third time as the Thracian Bessi(?), central south group, and conquered the Maroneans (just the main town), Abderites, Thassos (just the main town), and Bislatians - again for resources.

As I said, since I was running an experiment, when I got to where I thought I could be stable I ceased all activity. No new conquests, no change in the food sliders, nothing.

The only thing I'm not familiar with that you mentioned is the 'nation bonus'.

I'm not really looking for a solution, simply reporting on something I have observed. If this is not the intended function, I will try the experiments again and save games although this is not exactly a game in development. It's not a huge issue/problem but a symptom of a broader general diffculty with food that I would hope to see addressed better in future games. It is disconcerting to be 10 turns into a new game and already running a negative food balance so large that even if you use your entire available trade balance to buy food (presuming you could afford the silver) you still are running a deficit...

Spartan/GoT is truly my favourite game. But even a great game can be improved and I'm mostly looking to see improvements in LII, so point out pecadillios in the current offering.

[IainMcNeil]

Sure I understand. If you do save the game when this is happening send it over as you shouldn't run out of food unless you have a population explosion or recruit troops or move them around the map. Then we can have a look and find out what's going on

[Redpossum]

Is there a chance that a patch has not been applied properly? I noted another post that complains of incredibly docile AI opponents until the hard level. This matches my experience. Through normal, the AI's simply sit and wait to be overrun, but then on hard the AI's become ultra-aggressive and seem to have no restraints on their ability to recruit and maintain armies making the shift from normal to hard a huge change when you add the increased difficulties in resource acquisition/management.

Yeah, that was my post here. I also listed what I did about it. My fix worked really well, for me.

[vindtiger]

Something I usualy do in a campaign is conquer an island somewhere that produces food. Then I just build everything there I can that will give me food-(smallholding, weatfarm, irrigation, etc.)
The only downside to this is the pirate raiders, so I usualy build one other thing except farms on the island- a fort. And if I really have to, a shrine.

I have found this a handy way to produce heaps of food without taking up space in your important cities.