Food Consumption & Villagers

Shoujin

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Jul 5, 2012
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Hi all,

I've been a lurker on this board, but now that I have a question, I've found the need to join up.

I recently managed to take over the first Japanese land through plopping down a bunch of villas all over the island, and it's started to backfire - I've got roughly 700 villagers and the food drains at almost 15 units per second. Plus, the default army takes up 3,750 food. Don't know how that applies, but needless to say, I've got more food going out then I do going in, and Lionhead wasn't exactly smart in telling people "This is how much your people eat".

I'm playing a good god this play-through and not exactly interested in turning my land into pothole city - that's what the other profile was there for. LOL

:help If anyone knows how to modify both the army food consumption AND the villager food consumption, it would help greatly to fix this annoying problem.  :suspect
 
Okay, so I found the answer here:  :blush

http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.gamer.com.tw%2FC.php%3Fpage%3D1%26bsn%3D01433%26snA%3D247

Which ultimately was pulled from here:  :shocked

http://www.bwfiles.com/archives/ModdingWiki/wiki.planetblackandwhite.gamespy.com/PBnWModdingWIKI/index.php/BalancingConstants_Villagers_GameBalanceVillager.html

How is it that this data wasn't showing?!  :angry

Anyway, if anyone else is interested in lowering the amount of food... Just alter Column 19 to lower food consumption for all your people. Once the values for the men were changed, the amount of food the army was eating took a steep dive from 3,750 to 300 units. Now if I figure out the time measurement for food consumption, my game will be kosher.

Edit: Column 20 seems to affect the rate which specific people eat. The higher the number, the faster food drains (1.0 seems to be 1 unit per second, oddly). I don't intend to fiddle with this anymore, so good luck to those of you who still play B&W2 and want to build massive, glorious capitals of goodness. As for you evil gods - enjoy the lower food costs?
 
Welcome to the forums Shoujin.

As for that link you found, that's an archive of Planet B&W - another B&W site that decided to close up years ago.  However, Kays was allowed to archive the site before they disappeared.  Obviously a link was posted somewhere at some point (otherwise Google wouldn't have found it).  Where that link has gone to now, I can't say.  Can't seem to find it myself.

As there's was so much data on that other site, I imagine it was too big a project to go integrating all the info there entirely with kayssplace, but we should still be able to link to the archive so people can access it.  I'll see if I can have a snoop around and do something about this.
 
The trick is to build many granaries, obviously, but also build them near accommodation (balance the unhappiness out with temples, taverns) and this will increase both the productivity of your field and your granary. Temples also increase the productivity if you place them near industrial sites. Then place your storehouse right outside your granary for a food makin' machine :D I've build crazily massive cities that whatever the circumstances over-fill my storehouses, it's all about nominating farming districts in fertile areas and doing the above.

But this is a good idea too :)
 
SkelApe said:
The trick is to build many granaries, obviously, but also build them near accommodation (balance the unhappiness out with temples, taverns) and this will increase both the productivity of your field and your granary.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the first Japanese land has a way of giving you a pitiful handful of ore and saying "Enjoy!" - Granaries are pretty much what I use, but that only gets you so far, I find. Having reduced the amount of food people eat has pretty much opened up the game to a more realistic level for me. Cause, a food drain of 50 food per second with only 700 people? I'm sorry, but how are my people not fat and rolling around?  :laugh2

At least good gods can use this to build up their follower base and evil gods can build those massive armies they want without the massive drain on food. *shakes fist* Molyneux!
 
I know this will be too late for this play through but this land has more ore than you can use ( as a Good God).
3 Mines and  2 ore deposits from memory. Also no need for walls or  troops so disband them ASAP.

....
As to your food problem. Try this Good God strategy.

Before you start building.
1. Locate the best growing areas. Press the "F" key.
2. Locate the most impressive building areas. Hover over the land with a building in your hand to see the best Bonus areas. Usually the higher ground.

Now with an idea of where the best town and farmland areas are.
1. Make a road to join the 2  areas.
2. Place and build a store on the  town side edge of the fertile area. Etend the road if needed.
3. Pace 3-4 MINIMUM sized and  touching fields on the farm side along the road.
4. Place a Granary next to the last field. For 100+% production bonus.
5. Add more minimum sized fields as close to the Granary as you can when required. It will end up looking like a flower with the Granary at the centre.

One of these  will feed about 1500 villagers or  1000 and 250 troops with ease.
 
Gremxula said:
I know this will be too late for this play through but this land has more ore than you can use ( as a Good God).
3 Mines and  2 ore deposits from memory. Also no need for walls or  troops so disband them ASAP.

....
As to your food problem. Try this Good God strategy.

Before you start building.
1. Locate the best growing areas. Press the "F" key.
2. Locate the most impressive building areas. Hover over the land with a building in your hand to see the best Bonus areas. Usually the higher ground.

Now with an idea of where the best town and farmland areas are.
1. Make a road to join the 2  areas.
2. Place and build a store on the  town side edge of the fertile area. Etend the road if needed.
3. Pace 3-4 MINIMUM sized and  touching fields on the farm side along the road.
4. Place a Granary next to the last field. For 100+% production bonus.
5. Add more minimum sized fields as close to the Granary as you can when required. It will end up looking like a flower with the Granary at the centre.

One of these  will feed about 1500 villagers or  1000 and 250 troops with ease.
Click to expand...

I always have a granary surrounded by fields, that's a given. Unfortunately, 3 of these "flower fields" couldn't sustain an entire map's worth of people (which was only 700 people displaced over the entire map) as the food was draining faster then my people could get in. And yes, I even used Disciple farmers.

Still, I personally think that the food consumption rate was way too weird. 50 units of food for one person per minute(exaggerating here, I think)? And a day isn't even a minute in the game? How are the Greeks not rolling around like bowling balls? And why can't you use them to break down walls? LOL
 
This sounds odd to me too.
Is the game Patched to 1.2 ?
Any Crack or Trainer ? as I seem to remember problems from years ago with these.
 
I make one big field and a bunch of smaller ones around, about three granaries in between however many storehouses you need, and a few farmers don't hurt.  :)
 
Each to their own.
But if you understand about buildings influence rings and how they work, then large fields and  multiple Granaries is not the best way to go.
Large fields reduce the number of fields and so the production bonus.
Granaries are industrial units the more you have the more your  villagers  need Taverns etc. to  balance this out.
Granaries that are  too close  will get production bonus from one or the other but not both so the overlap is wasted.

The optimum seems  to be  about 5-8 min sized fields with the  Granary in the centre of a most fertile area    and a store on  the town edge of the area.
I usually  make a second store next to my main impressive building area, and transfer goods  if  needed.

 
Gremxula said:
This sounds odd to me too.
Is the game Patched to 1.2 ?
Any Crack or Trainer ? as I seem to remember problems from years ago with these.
Click to expand...

Game is Patched, Retail bought and trainers are a last resort nowadays for me.

No, this problem seems to have to deal with expanding much too far from your main area. Though I am curious as to if you keep moving your storehouse further from your town center as you expand, Grem.
 
I mostly build up not out  :laugh2


smalltown1.jpg



Skyscrapers can be happy places to live if you provide enough leisure buildings.

smalltown2.jpg


A couple of old views from 2006 or7 playing as a good god.

Note
Small fertile area supporting a large population.
No walls or troops needed.

 
That's probably the difference. When I built out, there was more land to cover and not enough food for all to prevent the amount of people over an entire island. Probably didn't help that it was all one bubble, too.  :happytears:
 
Well that's the answer then too much villager time wasted travelling and not working.
The main reason for the second store I mentioned above is to save villager time moving goods from production areas  to the town where they are used.
As a god 20,000 grain moved by hand  saves 80 villagers the time for the 2 way trip and the can produce more with that time. It also makes life easier in the town to have the goods local for faster building etc.
 
That's just lazy design from Lionhead. Either that, or they REALLY didn't want B&W 2 to be like B&W 1.

But even with secondary (and tertiary) storehouses available, the grain ran down far too quickly.

It seems more like an issue of the more land you physically own in your bubble, the worse your food consumption will be. I refused to conquer the enemy and instead just built outwards into the land until almost every inch was Greek (except where the enemy was hiding behind their gates)  :laugh2

Then the food bug showed up and it all went to pot.

If you didn't mod your food already, Grem, see if you can conquer Japan 1 and spread out instead of up - see if you can replicate the issue.
 
I don't seem to get any problems with food with a patched but no mods of any kind.
Here's a couple of screenshots of the village I built on the FLAT to see if I got the same problems. As you can see the grain stores are full and the people are happy there is even spare room in town for the final migration.
The only building I built and demolished was an armoury that was needed to disband the archers  to get 50 extra workers early on.
The fields are all minimum size and the buildings are arranged to make good use of the space but this type of building can not make the best use of impressive areas.

Image size 1680x1050

jap1.jpg


Closer view of the fields and stores.


jap2.jpg


 
You're still thinking WAAYYYYY too small, Grem. At that size, of course it's manageable, but this is how I was thinking...

This way...
BWScreen0006.png

The problem started cropping up after I managed to build out this far.

BWScreen0005.png


I started with this, but it was fine by itself.
BWScreen0001.png


Makes more sense now?
 
I copied your town style and did some tests some of the results surprised me.

VILLAGER
Villagers tend to spread themselves out and occupy all available habitable buildings. Not just Housing.
They all seem to  use the main store for preference not the nearest for gathered crops,wood or ore.
Villagers will always complete a journey once started even if the destination no longer exists.
It takes a villager up to  10y to complete a round trip from your further housing to the main town area.
In a normal set up a villager can make between 1-3 trips per year.

OTHER

OK  so housing don't work so I tried civic buildings but by the time I had built up to the Jap stronghold. My villagers had spread themselves past the second village so that won't work.

I haven't had the time yet to fully test but it looks like  embellishments(but not Meadows) and possibly wonders would be the way to gain influence  area you want without winning the land.  This is a game restart for me to test as you need a wonder before you win the land you need not to have  spent tribute on other things.

Area doesn't seem to be a problem either I have used wonders in the past to get huge influence rings for earthquake protection.


My Conclusion
Building in that way too much  creates the problem.
Your so called bug with the food is NOT food related but distance/time related. Villagers just can't gather enough resources to make the town viable. In the worst case a villager may only make 5 field to store trips in his entire working life instead of the 120 'ish in a compact build as in both our main areas around the Town Centre.
You can only push the game so far ignoring the basic intentions of the programmers before something breaks.  The other Villages in the game  are there for a good reason if you wan't to cover the entire land with your influence.

One thing I found out is that the creature pen is also a house for 15 villagers  :D
 
I knew it~!

Thanks Grem - that makes it more clear. Again, Lionhead pioneers more lazy design concepts.  :laugh2

Either way, if you want to build out, reducing food requirements for the villagers does solve the issue of distance/time significantly. Possibly because villagers don't have to fill their "internal" food supply as often.

By the way, how what's real:in-game year ratio?
 
I would not call it lazy design.... this has been  a core feature  of many games and is what most players expect.
B&W2 is the exception that broke that  rule.


Pass
There are 3  different ways  of measuring time as far as I can see ....Player days..Creature  or Villager years ....and none seem to match!  Not that it seemed  worth spending time on.
 
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