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The current situation in my PBEM game (v1.26m) is that recently conquered cities are experiencing severe population hunger. When retreating, my opponent used a scorched-earth strategy, dismantling everything possible, including private farms. Since these are large cities with populations between 90K and 125K, food demand has spiked significantly. However, due to the limited and expensive metal on the planet, rebuilding private farms has been a slow process.

To mitigate the issue, I have been purchasing food from traders, building public farms, enabling "Emergency Food" for all affected zones, and even blocking food transfers to SHQ so that food remains in the local Zone Inventory. Despite these measures, the problem persists.

My logistics network is fully operational, as shown in the attached screenshot, with no bottlenecks. There are sufficient food stocks in SHQ (5508 units of food) and within the affected zones, yet for some reason, deliveries remain insufficient, hunger continues to rise, and I am now losing population in two zones. I don't have problems supplying soldiers and workers.

If 1 food unit feeds 100 pop, then Ebbsfleet requires 920 food units while Neutron Omega needs 1134. However, the Zone Report shows actual consumption at 353 units for Ebbsfleet (Emergency Food Delivered = 0) and 812 units for Neutron Omega (Emergency Food Delivered = 388). This leaves a shortfall of about 900 food units, which should be available in SHQ stocks but is not being delivered, despite adequate logistics.

Does anyone know what might be causing this issue? What exactly is going wrong?

Screenshot (To get full resolution: Right-click on the image -> Open image in new tab)

I think you have a food shortage and your confusion comes from the fact that emergency food consumption does not show in the food stock tooltip.

This turn's consumption was equal to:
709 + 1183 + 950 + 1204 + 1250 + 388 = 5 684... This is equal to the start of turn stockpile.

I think focusing only on consumption is misleading. In the table, you can see the total food production and consumption for this turn (115) and the previous turn (114). Even if we ignore the food stocks in the zones, my production is 2–3K higher than consumption. And even if we subtract 1.1K for units, there is still a significant surplus.

Also, take a look at the food stockpiles in the zones. Ebbsfleet is the hardest hit by hunger, yet it still has 3,152 food units in storage! How is that possible? Do they have to send food to SHQ first, only for it to be returned via Emergency Food? That would be extremely unintuitive and inefficient.

It looks like evidence that emergency food does not draw from zone stockpiles.

Can we have the save, please?

Thrake wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 4:26 pm I think you have a food shortage and your confusion comes from the fact that emergency food consumption does not show in the food stock tooltip.

This turn's consumption was equal to:
709 + 1183 + 950 + 1204 + 1250 + 388 = 5 684... This is equal to the start of turn stockpile.

This is correct, the problem is that there's not enough food in the SHQ stocks to cover the full emergency food needs.

Emx77 wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 6:05 pm I think focusing only on consumption is misleading. In the table, you can see the total food production and consumption for this turn (115) and the previous turn (114). Even if we ignore the food stocks in the zones, my production is 2–3K higher than consumption. And even if we subtract 1.1K for units, there is still a significant surplus.

Food consumed by population is not included in MNG -> Zones or the zone stockpile tab of the bottom bar, they consume from their own separate food stock.

Emx77 wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 6:05 pm Also, take a look at the food stockpiles in the zones. Ebbsfleet is the hardest hit by hunger, yet it still has 3,152 food units in storage! How is that possible? Do they have to send food to SHQ first, only for it to be returned via Emergency Food? That would be extremely unintuitive and inefficient.

As far as I know, this is the case. Emergency food is taken from the SHQ stock, regime food stockpiles in zones can only feed workers (and units if zone supply is enabled).

Zone's inventory contains public food only so they do not use it directly, but they consume food from SHQ sent for free. If you block sending it back to SHQ it may cause problems.

In your SHQ you had after sending to zones 4975 minus food for units 1183 so you end up with 3792 which is exactly what was consumed via emergency and visible in the food report

In manual:
Emergency Food will be supplied from the SHQ inventory and without cost to your Logistical Network. No logistical cost because civilian vehicles and transport is presumed

I suggest to unblock traffic from zones to SHQ and it should be fine.

Your confusion comes from how production and consumption work in the game. At the beginning of the turn, there's a consumption phase — resources are pulled from the zone's stockpile to cover upkeep and production costs. If there aren't enough resources, the zone requests them from the SHQ. After that, the production phase happens, and newly produced resources go into the zone's stockpile, from where they're then transported to the SHQ.

In your case, during the consumption phase, there's not enough food in the SHQ, so some zones experience starvation. Then food production kicks in, and it's delivered to the SHQ — which leads to this weird situation where you're getting starvation, even though it looks like you have food.

As much as I love Shadow Empire, I have to admit it has a lot of unnecessarily convoluted mechanics.