Re: Starving Dragon Pass

From: outis02 <uly_at_...>
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:54:41 -0000

If I remember correctly, I agreed to the middle amount for spices; enough for own use or something like that.

I don't think you can actually adjust the ratio between farmers vs herders? I thought it's done automatically. That said, I was running a thrall-based economy, with thrall making up typically a quarter of the labour. With the death and disease caused by the starvation, I generally hovered just above labour shortage.

I had about 160 farmaland and 100 pasture and very little wildland--I had a small tula to begin with. I had several treasures that increased farm output, but the 160 farmland is about as much as I can manage with my pop. Since I had a thrall-based econ, I didn't want a lot of freeborn children. I even took the steps to sell/disable any treasure/blessing that would increase childbirth or children's health. Even then, I still almost 400 children, which is quite a heavy burden on my pop of around 1000.

My crop split is generally 50 barley and 25/25 for the rest. Does this constitute "neglecting" any crop?

And as I stated, the starvation was to be pandemic, most clans--inside or outside of my tribe--have food reserve of ~100 at most. The only exception is the duck clan, who seems to be untouched by this.

Looking at the save file, I can't find anything that would indicate a pan-DP draught or some such. Not knowing how the game works in the background, I have a few hypotheses:

1. There is a pre-scripted difficulty increase upon tribe making.
2. The spice requirement is having a huge impact on food output within my tribe. This could be tested if the repeal spice law event kicks in, but it had yet to come.
3. There may be a per-clan food cost within a tribe. The text in the cooks clan's tribal negotiation hints at this; something like a "tribal moot tax". Since I have such a big tribe, the cost increases exponentially, causing the food shortage.
4. Whatever the reason for my tribe's food shortage, the resulting demand for food trade may be spreading the shortage to all of DP. I find clans unwilling to trade for food if they have less than a few seasons' reserve, but perhaps the background AI-to-AI trade doesn't take this into account, and allows nearly every clan to trade to the point of starvation.

Can anyone confirm or debunk any of the above?

>
> how much herbs did you agree to grow, and did you use the 'have satisfied clans make concessions to dissatisfied clans' option in tribe making?  Basically wondering if everyone was growing a LOT of food?

> Did you look at how many farmers you had (versus herders) i.e. how much land you had cleared?  Did you run the Ernalda quests to increase crops (has a pretty big impact).

I've
>
> When you trade for anything a lot, it gets harder to get (I usually hit this with cows as the game goes, on, and treasures get moer expensive)
>
> Crops magic is less likely to be succesful if you neglect one of your three crops.
>
> --Bryan