My residents eat way too much food and buy too much stuff!

[Kuplo]

Im not sure what it is that Im doing wrong but it seems to me that the residents of my city are hoarding food. Or perhaps Ive just not yet grasped how the game works which is more than likely.

It doesnt seem to matter how many farms (grain, vegetable, cattle etc) that I place on the map, my food market and or granary is constantly empty, and theres houses that dont get any. I do realize that it's probably a matter of balancing the amount of houses (and residents thereof) with the amount of farms that I place down, but it seems strange to me that an Insulae could have 580 food items in their house but a house just a couple blocks away has 0 and theres nothing in the food market for them to actually buy.

This also seems to happen to me with the other stuff that the plebes can buy such as pottery. In the games that I've played so far I've never been able to accomodate the plebes in the city with pottery, the pottery doesnt get made quick enough for how fast the people are using it up, almost all my Insulaes show 0 basic goods in them and yet I've got a huge amount of clay stored in the warehouse and 2, 3, 4 or 5 pottery factories just to try to keep some of them with basic goods, but they still almost all show 0 basic goods in their houses.

Perhaps someone can clue me into what needs to be done to make all my insulaes have a good chunk of desired items, because so far I've almost always run out of space to try and put down any more pottery factories to try and accomodate even a small city.

Also, I've got full staffing at all business's and actually have some unemployment going on so it's not like Im missing workers in the factories or something like that.

Thanks,

[Daego]

Maybe your problem isn't production but rather delivery. How close are your warehouses to your pottery factories? Remember, markets will pull from warehouses, and warehouses in turn pull from factories. You can cut down on a lot of transit time for your markets by putting the warehouses/granaries closer to your markets, particularly granaries. Farms take a while to produce food, and they do so in batches.

You can also insulate yourself against your higher homes being short good by creating a second market just for them. I usually make a market closer to the pleb houses that can only get one or two types of food (no meat). Same with a basic goods market. Build a second market near your high end homes and check the don't allow plebs box.

Also make sure you're not exporting too much of what your city needs!
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DODGE CALIBER SPECIFICATIONS (http://www.dodge-wiki.com/wiki/Dodge_Caliber)

[Kuplo]

In the most current game, I've got the warehouses right next door to the pottery factories but the granary is down near the farm so I need to move that up nearer to the houses which i was trying to avoid due to it being undesirable to have around the houses, or so I thought. But of course I can easily balance that out with just a couple gardens around it or maybe even just by putting down a plaza on the road that it's on.

I cut down the exporting of the pottery to about 4 but it seems Im still not getting near enough pottery being made to satisfy a small village.

I'll have a second look at the distance that people have to walk to get the goods and bring them back to the market to see if that might be whats causing this issue. Perhaps you right and the cart pushers can't get enough products fast enough from the warehouses to the markets before people use up whats there and already in their homes. I'll also have to disallow plebes from taking the meat perhaps since I usually allow everyone to take whatever they wish being the benevolent governor that I can be sometimes. I'll have to rethink being this way.

[ZiRo]

I noticed in the demo that houses take much more food than I'd like them to take. It's worth pointing out that the house in question doesn't actually have 580 food items - it's actually only taken about 5-10.

I think a household takes so much food so it has more time to do other things, such as bathing, buying other goods, going to the well, instead of having to go back for food all the time. This is great for one household but it stunts development of other houses.

For any of the TM crew who browse this thread, heres an equation.

Max Goods that can be bought = Goods in shop / Demand (the number of households that will be needing goods soon/now)

So now households will take a RELATIVE amount of goods from the shop - promoting equal handouts, a more true representation of how time would be spent if food levels were low in a city and preventing hoarding of goods.

Imagine: Little food to go around, so you can only have a little bit. So you need food again soon - you don't have time to go to the baths, you're more interested in food. Rather than one house buying all the food, being able to go to the baths, and the rest of the houses should be dying of stavation.

[ZiRo]

In the most current game, I've got the warehouses right next door to the pottery factories but the granary is down near the farm so I need to move that up nearer to the houses which i was trying to avoid due to it being undesirable to have around the houses, or so I thought. But of course I can easily balance that out with just a couple gardens around it or maybe even just by putting down a plaza on the road that it's on.

I cut down the exporting of the pottery to about 4 but it seems Im still not getting near enough pottery being made to satisfy a small village.

I'll have a second look at the distance that people have to walk to get the goods and bring them back to the market to see if that might be whats causing this issue. Perhaps you right and the cart pushers can't get enough products fast enough from the warehouses to the markets before people use up whats there and already in their homes. I'll also have to disallow plebes from taking the meat perhaps since I usually allow everyone to take whatever they wish being the benevolent governor that I can be sometimes. I'll have to rethink being this way.

I made a similar mistake - in the end I relised myself about the locations of warehouses and granaries. You have to bite the desirability bullet. The markets will benefit from a shorter distance to walk. Let the warehouses take up the travelling.

Also - find the balance in number of goods stocking warehouses - if you have one warehouse stocking 4 popular goods - the cart pusher might not be able to collect them fast enough to meet the markets wanting to pick them up. Where as 4 warehouses and their pushers would allow much more of the goods to be brought to the warehouses, thus more goods closer to your markets, therefore in your markets more often - and sold, and upgrading houses :)

[MarkDuffy]

Perhaps we all need a little more experience with the game?

Example: A Warehouse will spawn THREE cartpushers. A Grain Field will produce 5 Grain that becomes 500 units in a residence.

Maximize your Arable Land. Perhaps you need to delete some trees? ;)

Perhaps you need to fill up that Market if you want everyone to have food & goods, eh? Perhaps you need more Food Markets? :eek:

Happy Gaming All! :)

[Daego]

You can easily offset the desirablility hit for plebs with a few squares of plaza. In my current game I have a trade depot and granary about 2 "micrtiles" behind my Insulae... with plaza for roadway, they do just fine.

Also, make sure you're not bottlenecked in resouce gathering. Do your clay digging camps have too much clay? Are your pottery factories always full with clay? If you plan it right, usually 1 resource camp can fuel two factories of a given type. It is a careful balance of having enough resource on hand that your factories don't run out versus having too much resource where your plebs would be better employed at another factory.
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WASHINGTON DISPENSARIES (http://washington.dispensaries.org/)

[curtadams]

I haven't played IV yet, but with all the previous games housing wants a large store of supplies, particularly food. Your city isn't stable until they're all full, and it takes a LOT to fill up a large housing district. I think you used to need about 2 years worth of consumption. You have to overproduce everything to fill up those houses, and unless you can afford to overproduce a lot you have to build fairly slowly. Basically, they *do* hoard, and you have to allot for it.

[Grumpus]

Here's how I do pottery:

1 camp for each two factories as close to the pit as possible.

Place a dedicated clay warehouse close to the camps, and between them and the factories.

Pottery factories are in or near the city. They can be very far from the camps and still produce at the maximum rate because each factory has three carts, each of which can carry up to 5 units of clay at a time. A pottery factory can only produce about 22 clay per year so their carts need only make two round trips per year to keep them stocked.

[MarkDuffy]

*Suggestion for Grumpus' new Website*

"Which Way to the Market"

:D

[ZiRo]

Perhaps we all need a little more experience with the game?

Example: A Warehouse will spawn THREE cartpushers. A Grain Field will produce 5 Grain that becomes 500 units in a residence.

Maximize your Arable Land. Perhaps you need to delete some trees? ;)

Perhaps you need to fill up that Market if you want everyone to have food & goods, eh? Perhaps you need more Food Markets? :eek:

Happy Gaming All! :)

Point taken - I've only played the demo a few times and don't have full yet + the fact I don't count how many cart pushers come out of each warehouse :) Ok, adjust my comments so that a warehouse can cater for 3 cart pushers :) Thanks alot for the info about the cart pushers though :)

[ZiRo]

Here's how I do pottery:

1 camp for each two factories as close to the pit as possible.

Place a dedicated clay warehouse close to the camps, and between them and the factories.

Pottery factories are in or near the city. They can be very far from the camps and still produce at the maximum rate because each factory has three carts, each of which can carry up to 5 units of clay at a time. A pottery factory can only produce about 22 clay per year so their carts need only make two round trips per year to keep them stocked.

Just a point to make - this is an efficient model of industry - IF you have your factories near the pits, don't bother with clay dedicated warehouses- you dont need them, just let th factories collect from the pits. UNLESS you're trading raw clay. Same goes for other resources that are processed to produce goods...

I don't like producing things I don't need - i'm happy to let a clay pit stop production, if i've not got any use for it.... I'm happy to store over produced clay if i'm trading it aswell as using it..