Food and Public Order

[Doomsday]

Got a campaign going as the WRE, has been going well for some time, and I'm now in the process of specialising regions and provinces. I've known for a while that if a province has negative food production, theres a public order penalty. I checked yesterday, and saw that a province in Spain had -1 PO due to a food deficit, while a province in Britain had -4 PO due to a lack of food. The British Province had a far more serious lack, think it was something like -140 as opposed to -10, does anyone know how food directly affects PO? I wanted to construct a large military province, but in doing so, would have around -300 food, so if the public order penalty rises as less food is produced, I'm gonna be in trouble. Anyone know how this works?

[Doomsday]

Ok, the stats in my campaign are:
at -168 food, i've -4 PO hit
at -90 food to -130 food, i've -3 PO hit
at -70 food i've -2 PO hit
at -10 food to -45 food I've -1 PO hit
at 0 food to +310 food I've 0 PO hit or bonus.
It obviously fluctuates, although it'd be beneficial to know more about this.

[yupper]

Anyone know how this works?

It doesn't, not really. ATW isn't like R2TW. Keep in mind that provincial food shortage also means -25% tax penalty for the province, regardless of whether the entire empire has a food surplus. As time goes on (you didn't specify exactly how much time has passed when you said "...some time"), fertility will continue to drop, so your food buildings will produce less food. Building military provinces is still feasible, but not really worth the effort. The problem isn't food--just like R2TW, you are supposed to exempt the province from tax so it doesn't continue to drain from the empire-wide food supply. But with public (dis)order and squalor, you won't be able to put more than 2-3 military recruit and upgrade buildings in one city, because the more military recruit and upgrade buildings you have, the more public disorder/squalor/food drain you generate.

If you search around the forums you might find a few scattered attempts to build military provinces that sounds great on paper, but never struck me as worth the effort. I pretty much just make all provinces self-sufficient now in anticipation of late game climate change when fertility drops to the point that you basically need all the fishing ports and cattle farms you can muster (because when food supply drops, so will your income, And let's not forget corruption increases as the empire expands), and put a military recruitment building here and there (I think I have about 2 so far...). Its 405 AD and I am making almost 12k per turn as a result--and this is net income after fielding 5 full army stacks--no need for military provinces to produce troops with armor/morale/weapon upgrades, when I can field stacks and stacks of armies and recruit mercenaries at whim.

[Doomsday]

Think you're missing the point slightly. My campaign is at around 418 AD, making an income of 30,000. I've only been using the starting units and limitanii, so I appreciate that it's not necessary to build a military province, but I would like one.
It's a case of I've noticed that the public order penalty for negative food production increases as a province imports more and more food, and I'm interested in finding out exactly how that works. Is it like immigration where there's a max penalty (-9 as the WRE) and at what point it increases to the next level e.g after it reaches -25 food it incurs a -2 PO hit, at 50, its -3 etc. It'd be useful to know for anyone interested in creating industry/military/trade provinces.

[Doomsday]

Think the max public order penalty is -4 with a 25% penalty on income. That's from a region with -400 food