A Pale Harvest
A Pale Harvest
Design Goal Abstract
Reduce the abundance of food in game and relate it to population density to better represent the cycles of famine and disease that disrupted governments in the time period, essentially modeling the Malthusian cycle of population growth in the “good times” leading to diminishing returns from agricultural land, and the opposite effect that could occur following population reductions.
Description of Changes
1. The food values of food goods have been rebalanced. Some, like wool, beeswax, and fur, have had their food values removed. The transport costs of some have been reduced to compensate. The new values better represent the labor productivity of the food goods combined with land productivity, which ties into the agricultural land system described below.
2.The fixed subsistence agriculture output of unemployed peasants has been bumped up to 1.0 food per month per 1k peasants.
3. Non-rural locations have the number of unemployed peasants that generate subsistence agriculture food reduced, based on development. The more developed a location, the more unemployed peasants are considered “within” the urban area, and thus don’t grow food. This helps ensure that most urban locations are food sinks.
4. All locations have an amount of “agricultural land” available, based on their real world physical area, their development, and their topography and vegetation. Subsistence agriculture, agricultural RGOs, and agricultural buildings use up land. The ratio of used land then is used to calculate a food productivity modifier (-75% to +50%), and a small amount of disease resistance and population growth, where more available land means more food, better disease resistance, and more population growth.
5. Different locations have different subsistence agricultural types, which require different amounts of agricultural land. There’s been a subsistence agriculture type map mode added to see this.
6. A maximum of 75% of an area’s agricultural land is available for subsistence farming, with the assumption that the upper classes always control at least 25%. In the future this may be tied to peasant enfranchisement or some similar mechanic.
7. Different agricultural RGOs have different agricultural land use amounts.
8. There are new buildings, “clearings” for wooded, forested, or jungle locations, which increase development growth (thus increasing agricultural land area), and “drainages”, which do the same for wetlands locations.
9. With this new agricultural land system being added, the population capacity mechanic has essentially been disabled, with the cap everywhere set very high, and the bonuses for having a low population removed.
10. A variable harvest system has been added, based on the one in the VH and Prosper or Perish mods. Thanks go to their creators.
11. Additional historically productive places in the world have been added. These include:
The Chinampas of the Mexican Basin
The Yangtze River Delta
The Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta
The Po Valley
Ukraine Chernozem
Lake Titicaca
12. The impact of food prices has been increased. Expensive food now reduces population growth to a greater degree, causes unrest, and reduces local disease resistance. To partially balance this out, when food is expensive, the population will eat less. Cheap food in a location increases population growth to a much greater degree, but pops will subsequently eat more of it.
13. The impact to population growth from food stored in provinces is reduced.
Disease resistance of rural locations has been increased, and disease resistance of urban locations has been decreased. Also the disease resistance provided by buildings has been reduced.
14. Starving provinces now have increased local unrest.
Food consumption of pops has been evened out, most pops consume 1 food unit per month per 1k, with burghers set to 1.5, and nobles set to 2.
15. In general, the food output modifiers from other sources have been removed or reduced.
16. Food prices have a greater impact on food goods prices.
17. More info located here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n_D73unrW6ENKR5HOXg783559B-sQfPKreb0nZ0tYkI/edit?usp=sharing
