Got Food shortages? This may help!

[Grand_Armee]

I'm still learning this game, but for the first time this past weekend started a game with the only objective being to manipulate my economy the most effectively. I learned a few helpful things.

Like my previous post about dispersion to save money, dispersion also saves you food. Low readiness and dispersion allows your guys to forage. It's only in wartime when I concentrate my guys and build depots that I get food troubles.

Now...manipulating your economy on the development screen. This requires some hand-eye coordination;) You have to look at your slider bars while also looking at the amounts produced on the upper right hand of the screen. Moving your slider is the other action to take.

Each tick on the slider bar represents 5 points of your available resources. You've noticed that none of the province says it's best resource was food? Or wine? Labor?
Those designers are tricky. And your manual is very sketchy on soooooo many things.

I noticed that one province with small farm development would produce 24 food even though it's farm development was only 3 blocks, while another province with farm value of 4 only produced 1 food for every 3 ticks on the slider...and some even less per tick. It went the same with wool, wood, textiles, labor, luxuries, and iron.

So, I set my sliders up so that the only things I was building were producing at least 1 point for every tick. Eventually I had only 1/2 of my provinces making food, 1/4 making Iron, 1/7 making wood, and 1/3 making wool. Any excess I would usually set up making luxuries.

The province that was making 24 food with farms of three I set to develop farms. It's production jumped to 31 food with one investment of development. As your population grows, you'll need to develop farms to cope with the increase in bellies to fill...also, a food surplus is always a good thing. Many times your fellow powers will need grub when they'll accept nothing else from you.

YOur development slider always starts empty. When you take from your available highlighted area and put them in development, you increase the speed at which your changes are made.

At times, you'll need more of one thing than another...so you can just move your slider in one province to get extra. I find I am always in need of textiles since my favorite country has no corps at the start of the game. I pour on the textile production when needed, while letting everything else but food suffer.

I rarely have trouble with starving people, so rarely do I have trouble with insurrectionists. The only inssurectionists I've had to deal with since I started taking a firm hand with my economy were fomented by a British ambassador! Grrrrr!

The bane of my life is that I never have enough wine. Well, since I have learned that wine comes with agriculture, I have a lot less need for it even though my people seem to drink Europe dry.

So, my best advice is to disperse your guys and let them forage unless you're at war. Keep your most easily destroyed units like artillery in your army and corps far from the front, but surrounded by provinces holding troops better to flee if invaded. You can always throw up a depot where your guys are marching to join their corps.

Secondly, play with your sliders and watch what happens to the production totals on the upper right.

Trade like a banshee...it's a great way to make money...even if you are trading away money.