Select Language:
Types of Food Production
There are four main types of food you can produce: apples, bread, cheese, and meat. Each has different costs, setup times, and benefits. Knowing which food to build first helps keep your granary stocked and your popularity high.
Apples
Apple orchards are the fastest and cheapest way to get food early in the game. Each orchard requires just one building and one worker, making them perfect for boosting your food supply at the start. Place them on grassy terrain and build large patches close to your granary for easy delivery.
Once your economy becomes stable, consider switching some orchards to bread production for better efficiency. Keep in mind that orchards take up land and are only suitable on grassy areas, which might limit placement depending on your map.
Bread
Bread offers the highest food yield per land area once you invest in wheat farms, a mill, and bakeries working together. For optimal setup:
- Three wheat farms
- One mill
- Eight bakeries
This system can support up to 80 peasants. Place wheat farms on grassy terrain with enough space, position the mill close to your stockpile to reduce worker travel, and locate bakeries between the stockpile and granary for smooth food flow.
Cheese
Cheese is made on dairy farms and adds variety to your food supply, which can boost popularity. Dairy farms should be built on grass, near your granary, and close to tanners if you’re using the cows for leather armor. While slower than apple orchards or bread, cheese provides useful variety, especially on maps with limited grassy land.
Meat
Hunter’s posts produce meat by sending workers to hunt nearby deer. They are inexpensive and can be placed almost anywhere. However, they depend on deer populations, which do not respawn. If deer are absent or hunted out, meat production stops entirely. Scout early to find good deer herds for temporary food sources and diversification.
Hops Farm and Brewery
Although not a direct food source, ale is important for maintaining high popularity, especially when avoiding taxes. To produce ale, you need hops farms, breweries, and inns. Place hops farms on grassy terrain near your stockpile, build breweries close for quick hops processing, and locate inns near housing to boost popularity. A good starting ratio is two hops farms, one brewery, and one inn. Expand as your population grows.
How to Streamline Food Production
Efficient food production requires strategic placement and scaling. At the start, focus on apple orchards on open grassland near your granary. Once your economy stabilizes, shift toward bread production by building wheat farms on fertile land, placing the mill near your stockpile, and setting bakeries between the stockpile and granary.
Only add cheese or meat if you need variety or have cows and deer readily available. Scaling up bread production helps support larger populations, and with proper planning, you can feed many people and even operate without taxes or rations, especially if you utilize ale or religious bonuses.
Add us on ChatGPT
Add us on Perplexity
