Food Issues on the 100 player map

Azkazan wrote:

Regarding food deficit and negative moral. A small deficit in production doesn't hurt your moral, but a bigger one will.

You can't always prevent a big negative food production. If you take over a large oponent who barely manages to put up any resistance you will find the next morening/evening that you food production may have dropped like -50 food an hour compared to when you last checked. If you were -40 food/hour before the war (you prepared with a big army, so you decided to go a little in food production deficit), it means you will be -90 food/hour half a day later (you barely had any casualties, but you conquered a lot of land that don't grow anough food to feed itself). Than it will have effect on you moral. The moral in your food producing provinces will drop, meaning more food defecit and it all starts snowballing untill you lose/sell some troops quickly. Continuing your conquest is not an option because you will be in more deficit.

Bytro labs has to fix the economy system and they will only do if they understand it's broken. So far we can only assume they don't understand it and therefor we need this discussion to progress further than the basic things (build infrastructure, stop making infantery. All that is not the problem/solution) and also keep it based on true facts (not personal Salbalkus) about the game. Hopefully more people will read all above posts, understand them and make hopefully the same conclusion as me and Noblepeasant. If they do it would help if they respond.

Salbalkus please read the text in my spoiler (some posts up) and it mathematicly explains the food problem for the 22-player map which is also/even more relevant for the 100-player maps.

Honestly, this conversation is going to get nowhere. Depending on how you look at Bytro's design work, they are either not very good at game design and therefore unlikely to develop a better solution than we have now, or they don't really give a shit about the quality of the game, so long as it still makes them money. Take your pick, before this post gets deleted. Their community management is excellent, but the fact that the designers will see these issues doesn't really change their ability to fix them. There are larger problems in the game that will continue persist, simply due to the concept in the game itself (see my post here for an example).

This browser game is actually quite relaxed compared to stuff like tribal wars or grepolis. It doesn't come down to silly timing, getting up at night, but it's all about playing smart. Having planes in save positions if you are offline. Having provinces as buffer zone for invading forces. Having to know what your neighbours are doing. Intercepting their mesages/checking what they are building.

All it needs is a better balancing for the economy and some units also needs some tweaking. A better economy system will make the 100-player map probably a very pleasant map to play on. Now it gets harder and harder the more you conquer.

eehhh I mean that there is a much bigger lack of rare materials in this game compared to other maps

also food is a big problem too,

anyway

I have experienced several times morale loss because of food shortages. Not only food shortages, but oil shortages as well.

Food consumption is a game mechanic that is not well balanced. It needs adjustment. Out of the box solution. A slider that can be adjusted...lower manpower production to lower food consumption.

Rare metals are balanced. Most people just spend rare metals researching things that have little impact on the game. If you are wise in how you use them, you will find you are rarely lacking in rares.

The lack of rares forces you to make meaningful decisions instead of researching "everything". I actually like this mechanic.

noblepeasant wrote:

Rare metals are balanced. Most people just spend rare metals researching things that have little impact on the game. If you are wise in how you use them, you will find you are rarely lacking in rares.

The lack of rares forces you to make meaningful decisions instead of researching "everything". I actually like this mechanic.

but now i produce like 8k a day, the only problem is that my food production is not that great, i already shut down all barracks

i spend 9k a day in my army and 30k in citizens, that leaves me with 40 per hour in grain production, the distance to Communist China gives me a penalty of -30 to Kazajistan

the only problem is increasing the morale in the new conquered provinces

and about morale issues caused by grain, there are true, in my game an ally is suffering lack of grain, his morale is at 60% average

I will be a bit honest here, and say that a lot of things are still filled with a lot of bugs.

The game was released and let out of open beta before it was properly polished and fixed up, and to be quite honest, I would consider the game in a Beta-ish stage right now.

Things are being tweaked constantly behind the scenes on a daily basis without any public announcements.

The supply system has been publicly changed about two to three times now. A few times behind the scenes. The manpower/food system, the entire resources of the provinces, morale distance, and quite a few other things have been changed quite a few times.

Furthermore, it is without a doubt that the World Map is for lack of a better term, broken right now. When the world map was first released for Supremacy 1914, it was broken back then as well (And still sort of is).

Bytro attempted to remedy some of it by extending research times, and a few other things, but it wasn't enough. The problem is really the underlying system. If you want this to change, then you need to make a lot of posts in the Suggestions forum, and in the General forum, discussing this issue, possible changes, and concrete ideas in a civilized manner.

Simply having to build high level fortresses in all your provinces is hardly a fix for this problem. Furthermore, with how the supply/consumption system is, or really morale, or everything...It is a bit ridiculous.

The system the game originally had in it's first two months seemed to work a lot better before they changed it....

Moving on, these issues will most likely be addressed sometime soon. Bytro is currently focusing on SP1914 again and redoing it's entire system. They just redid a good bit of the combat system, and some things on the supply system. Then they will focus over here again with a lot of bug fixes in a short amount of time.

Possible fixes are enroute. They do take notice. You simply need to be specific on what the issues are, so that they know what the problems are, and wait for them to release the patches.

Ok, here are my (explained) suggestions for better food balance on all maps.

I will not repeat everything that's been said above... Now we know that the food consumption of the civillians is out of controll we will need to restrict it to an acceptable level. Balancing it will mean imbalances will appear on the military aspect of food consumption which we will have to foresee and twitch at the same time as well.

Basicly there are 3 things that eat your food.

- Civillians (they eat a lot and %-wise it keeps rising the more territory you take. This is the problem we ahve to tackle)

- Military: Upkeep of your units + upgrades (= active barracks)

- Construction, research, production. This are 1 time expenses and are irrelevant.

We'll need to balance the civillian and military consumption.

For civillian balance I propose a total civillian food consumption in the whole map (map can be 100-player map, 22-player map, 10-player map, 4 player map) equall to the total food production in those maps, but we will consider all food producing provinces as non-core (=75% production penalty) with 50% moral.

I choose these numbers so that if you conquer a country (country and province arn't the same, very important here) you will not loose a lot of netto food production (currently you do). A conquered province has likely 25% moral and it will take some days before it is 50%. This implies that the agressor will have to keep the food producing provinces in posession for some days before it will start to deliver a small net worth of food. A small net worth is fine, it's a reward for expanding and it will allow you to expand your army with a few extra units ( My gess is like 5 units if we will also apply my suggested military balances).

Anyway, a result is now that the food usages of the civillians has dropped massively, but it is balanced imo. This however will result in a massive amount of food beoming available for the military aspect of this game. Therefor the upkeep costs of units and buildings will have to rise. I think the current army sizes are fine and that we should try keep that the way it's now.

The amount of food becoming available for the military (we will be regarding all the food availablefrom all provinces on the whole map) will be equall to "current food upkeep for civillians - food upkeep for civillians after applying above change. This will be "X" amount of food.

The total food available for military after changing the civillian upkeep costs will be equall to "the current available food and the X amount of food that will be added after balance changes. Meaning that % wise there will be an increase of new availble amount of food/old amount of availbe food * 100%. We will use the result of this to change the upkeep costs of units and buildings with the same amount. For example, if the amount of food available for military increases with 450%, we should increase the food upkeep costs of units and buildings with the same amount in order to keep the army sizes in check.

This may take some calculation work for a certain Bytro lab employer, but IMO it yields a good result for food balance between the civillians and the army.

P.S. If Bytro would be at it, they may also want to look at the food production imbalances between countries. Germany for example has only 2 grain symbols on 2 land provinces on the 100-player map. Romania has 4 symbols, 3 on land, 1 on a sea bordering province (= harbor for another 30% production boost). This means Romania will have more than double the food production as germany and therefor will have the ability to maintain twice the army size (if you apply above mentioned changes, in the current state the army size difference is even bigger). An extra production of goods or iron for Germany doesn't compensate this.

Its actually kind of ridiculous. ALL provinces should produce food, and penalties should be applied to ones damaged by battle or conquered , but it shouldnt be this hard to feed the troops..

Look at Canada - in 1942 having the largest food surplus of them all , but in this game? Cant support 10 infantry divisions lol.. everyones starving.

Im playing a game where Ive taken over the northern us and Im STILL in negative production. That should change a bit.

Allow for battle and clandestine destruction to disrupt production , but otherwise food should be plentiful , and production easily restored.

maybe we need to lower the infantry consumption?

is a problem, Im negative on many maps

Bystander wrote:

Allow for battle and clandestine destruction to disrupt production , but otherwise food should be plentiful , and production easily restored.

i haven't played the 100map long enough yet, but for now I am at 100+ provs and still have plenty of food and the potential to increase its production.

and what is wrong with fighting low moral with investments in fortresses? The USSR was so big and (not just) because of that ridden with corruption, low moral, etc that lowered output.

for now i find it all realistic enough. however, maybe the coming weeks will change my views

How about an option to lower or raise rations for civilians?

I quit at 600 VP because of an abusive gold user.

At the time, my civilians were consuming somewhere in the neighborhood of 34k food per day. My military (largest in the world other than the abusive gold dude) only consumed 10k. My provinces combined produced 35k food. (I had ICs on core food provinces with maxed infrastructure, and was in the process of maxing infrastucture on food provinces across all of north america.

That means in north america alone, i was running a 9k PER DAY food deficit. Since the majority of your food comes from your core (1/3 to 1/2), as you grow in provinces towards 3000 VP, your food per day deficit will be in the tens of thousands. And there is no way around that.

Civilian food consumption needs reduced somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70% in order to make victory in the realm of possibility.

noblepeasant wrote:

I quit at 600 VP because of an abusive gold user.

Now at 140 provs and have 3rd largest army on 100map....and not a trace of moral issues nor food problems yet, while 90% of my grain provs are not even developed beyond lvl1 roads (and not even all of them)

On another (22player) map I have 248 provinces from North Africa to the North Pole and going into Florida, without a trace of a food issue and (after having moved my capital) only fortresses built in North Africa, again getting all my provs up to 99 or 100%

Ok, well, if they did fix the bug, I think it would be a good idea to fix food consumption as well. Perhaps Bytro could just make the non-core penalty apply to consumption as well as production?

_Pontus_ wrote:

noblepeasant wrote:

I quit at 600 VP because of an abusive gold user.

With 600VP in the pocket and so many more provinces and thus a well developped economy, you should be able to beat any goldspammer on your own

Now at 140 provs and have 3rd largest army on 100map....and not a trace of moral issues nor food problems yet, while 90% of my grain provs are not even developed beyond lvl1 roads (and not even all of them)

On another (22player) map I have 248 provinces from North Africa to the North Pole and going into Florida, without a trace of a food issue and (after having moved my capital) only fortresses built in North Africa, again getting all my provs up to 99 or 100%

In 6 days he went from inactive to 14% of the worlds military might (while i was previously in first place at 8% with a comfortable margin). Each province he took he simply purchased level 5 forts + all other buildings. He purchased every single research upgrade available. And he was actively deleting air bases out from underneath me.

He used gold to reveal troop locations, and started posting this information in the newspaper.

I had 8 subs in the water between alaska and russia. When it became obvious he was massing troops to invade, i started sinking convoys. In response, he build a level 5 IC, a level 3 air base, a level 3 fort, naval base, 25 naval bombers, and about 20 ships to kill my subs.

When he saw that I had an airforce, he rushed 35 fighters and 30ish AAs, all max research level in addition to the rest of his army.

While i controlled basically all of north america, fringe provinces (alaska) were simply lined with air bases to allow connectivity for my airforce to bomb landing zones. I denied the first round of landings.... So he started deleted airbases out form underneath me.. my 55 TACS and 35 INTs are now worthless.. it's an 8-9 hour march backwards to the next air base.... which he then deletes.

Now his landing in alaska is uncontested, and he can continue to spam forts and units. Continued gold use like this will defeat any non-gold user's army regardless of the size.

noblepeasant wrote:

_Pontus_ wrote:

noblepeasant wrote:

I quit at 600 VP because of an abusive gold user.

With 600VP in the pocket and so many more provinces and thus a well developped economy, you should be able to beat any goldspammer on your own Now at 140 provs and have 3rd largest army on 100map....and not a trace of moral issues nor food problems yet, while 90% of my grain provs are not even developed beyond lvl1 roads (and not even all of them)

On another (22player) map I have 248 provinces from North Africa to the North Pole and going into Florida, without a trace of a food issue and (after having moved my capital) only fortresses built in North Africa, again getting all my provs up to 99 or 100%

I dont think you understand what I mean by an abusive gold user.

In 6 days he went from inactive to 14% of the worlds military might (while i was previously in first place at 8% with a comfortable margin). Each province he took he simply purchased level 5 forts + all other buildings. He purchased every single research upgrade available. And he was actively deleting air bases out from underneath me.

He used gold to reveal troop locations, and started posting this information in the newspaper.

I had 8 subs in the water between alaska and russia. When it became obvious he was massing troops to invade, i started sinking convoys. In response, he build a level 5 IC, a level 3 air base, a level 3 fort, naval base, 25 naval bombers, and about 20 ships to kill my subs.

When he saw that I had an airforce, he rushed 35 fighters and 30ish AAs, all max research level in addition to the rest of his army.

While i controlled basically all of north america, fringe provinces (alaska) were simply lined with air bases to allow connectivity for my airforce to bomb landing zones. I denied the first round of landings.... So he started deleted airbases out form underneath me.. my 55 TACS and 35 INTs are now worthless.. it's an 8-9 hour march backwards to the next air base.... which he then deletes.

Now his landing in alaska is uncontested, and he can continue to spam forts and units. Continued gold use like this will defeat any non-gold user's army regardless of the size.

I am sorry for you man, that sucks.

Is it possible that the gold abuser is the reason for your food shortages being crippling?

You mentioned having a comfortable lead in military strength. Might normal conditions have allowed for a better expansion?

xswazse12 wrote:

Might normal conditions have allowed for a better expansion?