Noob: Failing at Food

Hi everyone. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with my food production. I'm about 2/3 done with this playthrough and I keep getting "city" is starving warnings. I think I have enough workers and I've built all available food enhancing buildings nonetheless I still don't have enough food for certain cities.

What can I do at this point in the game to create more food? I'm playing single player, settler and I'm new to the game. So there you have it. Any takers?

Each citizen consumes 2 food so some areas will never be good enough to settle.
You could ally with a maritime city state to get more food income.
And from what I remember from the BNW demo caravans can transport food from one city to another.
(Like in civ2 and the supply crawlers in Alpha Centauri)

You build farms for more food. Deer, wheat, and bananas give more food, so try to find those.

Also, later in the game, there are buildings that produce food. Some religious tenets also give out food, some wonders do, and some social policies may reduce the amount of food everyone eats. Maritime city states will also give your capital food when you're friends, and give all your cities food when allies.

Hope I helped!

The city can only work improvements for so many tiles.

Just building farm after farm after farm - does you no good.

Don't settle anywhere there isn't at least 2, preferably 3 food improvements, like wheat fish, etc.

Use caravans or cargo ships to send food to your own cities. That food does not get subtracted from the city you send it from so that's a real good deal.

You should pretty much always have as many caravan/cargo ships as you're allowed.

There are many ways to get more food: social policies, pantheons, technology and improvements. Once you have a city built in a suitable spot for food, then you could start building farms and obtaining the necessary pantheons that will give you more food per tile. For example, you could use a pantheon like goddess of hunting when there's camps around particularly deer which could give more food. You could also get a sun god pantheon if there are many banana or wheat tiles around. Landed elite social policy can bring you more food as well as internal trade routes when you have granaries built. Civil service and fertilization technologies also give that extra food per farm. Stay happy though, because then people start to starve during unhappiness.

TheBoulderite said:

You build farms for more food. Deer, wheat, and bananas give more food, so try to find those.

Also, later in the game, there are buildings that produce food. Some religious tenets also give out food, some wonders do, and some social policies may reduce the amount of food everyone eats. Maritime city states will also give your capital food when you're friends, and give all your cities food when allies.

Hope I helped!

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Boulderite, you did help indeed!

Sherlock said:

That food does not get subtracted from the city you send it from so that's a real good deal.

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Great tip! Yep, all my cities are always asking for food from my capital, which is Brazil, and I always thought that would contribute to Brazil's starvation.

reddishrecue said:

There are many ways to get more food: social policies, pantheons, technology and improvements. Once you have a city built in a suitable spot for food, then you could start building farms and obtaining the necessary pantheons that will give you more food per tile. For example, you could use a pantheon like goddess of hunting when there's camps around particularly deer which could give more food. You could also get a sun god pantheon if there are many banana or wheat tiles around. Landed elite social policy can bring you more food as well as internal trade routes when you have granaries built. Civil service and fertilization technologies also give that extra food per farm. Stay happy though, because then people start to starve during unhappiness.

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Lot's of good info here, reddishrecue. I'm particularly interested in learning more about the pantheon benefits.

Good stuff everyone, keep 'em coming.

Brazil also has an in built jungle start. While it is good for a science kick start, it is horrible for population growing. Just an FYI. Catch 22 really.

Also, since I seen no one mention it, micro manage your population. The AI gov is ok, but not great. Click and lock the tiles you want worked, this will solve almost all you issues.

Also, not sure what game level you play on, harder levels, happiness is not as easy to come by early game. There is nothing wrong with clicking the little box, Avoid Growth.

Just remember, food surplus cannot be transfer from one city to another. That means if you create a lot of farm in one city, it will speed up the population growth of that city, but it would not end starvation in another city.

Some mentioned trade route sending food from one city to another but that is not really the case. A domestic trade route produce food for the destination city if the origin city have a granary. This is regardless of whether there is food surplus in the origin city and no food is lost in the origin city. The amount of food produced depends on your era, and naval trade route gives double food.

Getting friendly level with Maritime Cities States gives you +2 food only in your Capital (Stacks with other Maritime City states). You need to be allies with them in order to get +1 food for every city states in addition to the +3 food in your capital.

And don't forget that there are buildings that not only produce food directly (Granary, Watermill, etc), but also enhance food production on bonus tiles (eg. Granary makes wheat, deer and banana resource +1 food, lighthouse makes all sea resource +1 food and +1 hammer, while fish gives 1 extra food). That's why you should choose city with nearby food resources as they can potentially creates a huge amount of food, not only offsetting the cost of citizen working on food-poor hexes (The main reason why city gives you the starving warning) , but also fuel rapid population growth.

For future games: Settle near Rivers and Farm on both sides and you will learn to love Civil Service.

Btw, you can post your Save Game here and let me take a look for other solutions if you like after I examine your situation.

Randall_Flagg said:

Click and lock the tiles you want worked, this will solve almost all you issues.

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What do you mean by locking the tiles you want worked?

Thanks

DarkestOnion said:

Btw, you can post your Save Game here and let me take a look for other solutions if you like after I examine your situation.

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Oh, totally awesome! I'm familiar with game files, ini, config etc, but can you tell me where the save files are? Thanks

Prozac1964 said:

What do you mean by locking the tiles you want worked?

Thanks

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You can click the citizen management tab open at the top right corner of the screen when you're in your cities' detailed view. Then it'll show which tiles each citizen is working - this is automatically picked for you by the AI. If they're starving, you can manually assign workers to different tiles - you can take workers off a gold tile like a silk or gold resource, and assign them to a food-producing tile like fish, wheat, bannanas, deer, etc.

Random note - if you happen to have a lot of fish, make sure you having fishing boats (easy to forget as your workboat dies when you use it once!) and build a lighthouse. That gets the fish to giving you 5 food, so 1 citizen is working enough food to support 2.5 citizens!

Arcaian said:

You can click the citizen management tab open at the top right corner of the screen when you're in your cities' detailed view. Then it'll show which tiles each citizen is working - this is automatically picked for you by the AI. If they're starving, you can manually assign workers to different tiles - you can take workers off a gold tile like a silk or gold resource, and assign them to a food-producing tile like fish, wheat, bannanas, deer, etc.

Random note - if you happen to have a lot of fish, make sure you having fishing boats (easy to forget as your workboat dies when you use it once!) and build a lighthouse. That gets the fish to giving you 5 food, so 1 citizen is working enough food to support 2.5 citizens!

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Thank you so much, great tip! I will get into my citizen management screen post haste and lock those tiles down.

Prozac1964 said:

Oh, totally awesome! I'm familiar with game files, ini, config etc, but can you tell me where the save files are? Thanks

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Should be in Documents>My Games>Sid Meier's Civilization 5>Saves>single

Found it, but I'm not sure I attached it correctly.
Awesome, thanks for taking a look.

Prozac1964 said:

Found it, but I'm not sure I attached it correctly.
Awesome, thanks for taking a look.

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You attached it correctly, I will get a look at it prolly tomorrow.

Upon examination of your situation, I offer the following pieces of advice...

1. Cities in Tundra will always struggle with Food, so try not to settle in or near Tundra.

2. Cities not on (or at least near) Rivers usually struggle with food.

3. Do not Settle or Conquer (and let stand) a City whose eventual 4 Hex Tile Border Circles will overlap with one of your current Cities. In the case of Conquered Cities, do not be afraid to Conquer, Raze, and then Re-Settle them more efficiently. Pro-tip on Razing Cities: While burning them down, starve them at the same time to get them removed much faster.

4. Only place Farms on the first circle of Grassland Hexes around a City, put Trading Posts in the second and third circles.

5. When playing Brazil (if you have Jungles) DO NOT CHOP THEM FOR FARMS, instead place Brazilwood Camps or Trading Posts (with nearby Universities) in them.

6. Always Build Farms on River Tiles where possible.

6. Adopt Food boosting Pantheons like Sun God and Goddess of the Hunt.

7. Adopt Food boosting Beliefs like Feed the World.

As a side note, your cities are probably much taller than you really need them to be. 20 Pop is all you really need.

DarkestOnion said:

As a side note, your cities are probably much taller than you really need them to be. 20 Pop is all you really need.

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That depends upon if he is self founding wide or only self founding a few.
If you self found only a few, you want the capital to grow a lot more than 20 as it's not really tall if all your cities are less than 20.