Advice for IRT food, and just general late game construction handicaps.

**Ascer** · February 15, 2015, 11:19 AM

Hi there mates, just need a few suggestions in regards to my current campaign.

Rome (Julia), Turn 609, VH/H, 45 Provinces, 14 Regions, Empire Maintanence -93.5%

I'm having trouble fully building up my provinces. Every single non-capitol province has a Tier 4 Farm, and if possible a Tier 3 Fishing Port; each capitol province has the Tier 4 cultural building that gives food and a Tier 4 Fishing port if possible, however i'm still bottle necking my ability to fully build up every region. The other food producing buildings just don't give enough food, and the temples that I have to build (using mostly Nymphaem's because of the best food for happiness ratio) to offset their squalor just aren't worth it.

If I tried the import food edict, I'd have to demolish my fishing ports to create the ones that utilize that, which considering the Importing food only gives a few units each as apposed to the tons that the fishing ports bring in, seems counter intuitive.

I've tried building tons on single admiral fleets in order to get the trait that gives food, but it's only a tiny amount.

My dignitaries are are all spec'd to generate research bonuses, so even if I wanted them to do something I'd have to kill them and train up new ones.

So, besides tips on the above, my other questions would be:

1. Does Campaign difficulty effect food production or usage? Searched the forums, however the feature here leaves much to be desired, with mostly just posts asking about recommended difficulty, or specifically about the bonuses that the AI gets at different levels, not how it effects the player.

2. Is DeI designed so that you're not supposed to try and build everything up, leaving some regions with lower tier buidlings to prevent their negative effects, and instead focus more on select Regions for certain tasks? (Please oh please make this not so, those little yellow upgrade chevrons are like a quest uncompleted, its such a simple thing, but I really hate the idea of having to leave provinces full of non-upgraded building chains)

P.S.

I'm not going to modify any files, so don't offer me that advice, I'd like to be able to solve this within the confines of the Mod itself.

**Augustusng** · February 15, 2015, 12:02 PM

1. Maybe, I'm not sure about this, but I don't think so.

2. Not as far as I can tell. I always upgrade everything when I can. If I'm running into food problems, I usually just find the province with the worst food shortage and exempt them from taxation (also makes them self-sufficient with food).

**Chereye** · February 15, 2015, 12:04 PM

Make 1 farm in each minor settlement and you will have more than enough food. Fishing ports suck since after the 2nd tier they start giving you more public disorder than what you'd gain in food and takes over 300 turns or so to make back your initial investment. There are so many buildings like this one where the trade-offs arn't in your favor even tho you're spending alot to make those trade-offs happen which is laughable. You'd want to go for trading ports instead as thats your best bet in making money off your Providences. Aim to get only your main building (the one you start off with) in each of your settlements to to tier4.

Is DeI designed so that you're not supposed to try and build everything up, leaving some regions with lower tier buidlings to prevent their negative effects

It certainly seems that way. Dont know why people dont complain about it either since their are so many buildings that you dont want to build because of their negative effects that come along with them. I mean who cares about being limited to 4 slots in minor settlements when there are only 3 viable buildings that you can build? Ridiculous. DeI's empire building side of the game is the worst (I think) out of all the mods.

**rjacko10** · February 15, 2015, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by Chereye

DeI's empire building side of the game is the worst (I think) out of all the mods.

I think the building chains do need some love. There are a lot of questionable penalties out there which just make a lot of buildings worthless. I think the import/export food edicts need to be rethought too... I can't see why I would ever use them, the penalties are far too high and the positives are modest at best.

**Ascer** · February 15, 2015, 08:36 PM

Thanks for the responses guys.

Augustusng, are you saying that exempting a province from tax also means that regardless of what their buildings need for food (say I need 40 food in a province to make it stable), that they won't suffer any negative impact for not fulfilling that need?

Chereye, appreciate the response, but it is clearly stated in my OP (from my point of view anyway), that all my settlements that are not capitols of a region already have a farm in them. Are you perhaps saying that that I should just build a Farm, and not the different named upgraded version of this (as in stay with the Tier 1 or 2 building that is simply called a Farm). I also agree that the fishing ports are pretty poor, however without them I can't think of anyway to get any other food from a non capitol settlement besides adding another farm and having to change it too a cattle ranch (which provides only a modicum or food, and not enough to offset it's squalor at higher Tiers).

I agree with you 100% on the fact that many buildings are simply useless for things like happiness. When I first started playing, I tried to offset squalor with buildings that provided sanitation (i.e. baths, latrines etc), however they never give more than 5-6 happiness at even Tier 4, where as the one temple chain (the one stated above), gives a potential of around 14 or 16 I think. This makes simply any building besides the Forum upgraded into the Gladiator school chain, completely useless for happiness purposes. It appears like you said that to have a fully upgraded Region, you simply must ignore a significant portion of the buildings because they would cause too much unhappiness, or suck too much food. I can't honestly say whether this is a problem or not (perhaps my style of play is just not very realistic with this mod), but it does seem a bit odd.

rjack10, I hear you on the edicts as well, besides Bread & Circus's, Tax Harvesting, and to a lesser extent the one for slaves, the others just seam so dang useless.

Anyway, thanks for the replies, keep em coming

**Augustusng** · February 15, 2015, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by Ascer

Augustusng, are you saying that exempting a province from tax also means that regardless of what their buildings need for food (say I need 40 food in a province to make it stable), that they won't suffer any negative impact for not fulfilling that need?

Yes, exactly. I do agree with some of the other stuff people are saying. Some of the building effects could use reworking, as well as those edicts.

**ashmizen** · February 16, 2015, 08:53 PM

DEI is realistic and amazing in all respects except the buildings - they are still the crappy, simplistic min-max building system that is completely unrealistic.

In real life, all of these building improvements are directly better - it's just a question of is it worth the investment. That's how previous Total Wars mostly worked too.

Rome II gives all buildings pros + cons, which is very odd, and unrealistic. If a building is free, it's always better.

**geala** · February 17, 2015, 06:37 AM

If the buildings had no negatives it would be just too easy to build all. You have to try to get to a certain balance of order, food and wealth. Since I recognized (lately) that your food is judged for the whole empire and not the provinces

, building is much easier already. I always have enough food by building farms, food temples and inns. I concur with the critique about some buildings being just too useless compared to the negatives they bring and that most of the edicts are too bad to use.

**thomas_r** · February 17, 2015, 01:13 PM

In my case i am for a little rework of the food and public order penalties of the buildings...
I really want to develop my cities but i simply cant because of these penalties ... its way too much. Having a tier 4 temple that cost 8 food is high. Its even worse for a capital tier 4 (-12 food and -10 public order im not sure thought). I really hope that the modder will think about that.

**teelaurila** · February 17, 2015, 01:27 PM

Have you tried to go all the way to Circus Maximus and/or Pantheon for Order? I haven't even got so far yet in my game, but by the reading of them, that looks like my late game strategy (If a Pantheon gives +2 PO to all provinces, with your 14 provinces that's +28 PO that you can turn to food production)

I get why higher level "buildings" have PO and Food costs. They also represent more population living in the region, not just a literally bigger building. The dynamics of population is much simplified from Rome 1.