Food

A positive food surplus stimulates growth, meaning more buildings can be constructed in settlements, and increases the recuperation of armies.

Food operates on a faction wide level. It does not matter how great the food deficit is in a province if it is being compensated by a healthy bonus in another province. Since some minor settlements are grain towns and others industrial towns, it makes sense to specialise some provinces into either wealth or food rather than having each one self sufficient. This is what happened in reality, with the “client state” of Egypt having a great food surplus used by the city of Rome.

I believe any food surplus above 20 is wasted as the maximum benefit in terms of growth and unit replenishment is achieved at this level; this is +5 growth in each province and +20% unit replenishment. If you are in late game, growth is not that important, and unit replenishment’s importance depends on how actively you are fighting. In certain circumstances dropping down to about 10 is fine, allowing flexibility in case a building with -10 food penalty suddenly gets completed, but don’t let it go negative as the ensuing food attrition damages all your armies as much as do some actual battles.

Another point about food is that the capital settlements of Rome factions can only generate food through the delicatessen line, and you can only have one of each type of city centre building per settlement. Other factions can have agriculture buildings generating food in their capital settlements. Therefore if food is a global issue for you, you might want to keep certain foreign culture buildings in capitals that you recently took over.

When a province is made tax exempt, as well as negating any wealth income, the food contribution to the faction wide food surplus is set to 0. Basically, the province becomes food self-sufficient, however much or little food that might be. There is no positive or negative contribution to the faction-wide food surplus. A slight variation on this rule is that certain food bonuses still apply. So the Roman faction +1 food bonus from each province means that the food contribution of tax exempt provinces is 1 not 0 food, and when the province has the Bread and Games edict it rises according to the particular bonus level for that province e.g. to 5 food.