castledoom.com

[Brf]

I have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that cattle cause the "starving message".... I will duplicate what I what I posted on Cafe Tropico here.

[Brf]

OK!!!! ;D

Here we go.....

I made up a tiny random island using "Create Empty".... and made the bare minimum Palace, Dock, Construction Office, Teamster, and Corn Farm for food. Then I added in the Beef Ranch to test with and a Clinic as an afterthought.

I set it Immigrants Out, so I had only 14 people. Enough that I could keep track of...



and here is the initial food page before I started:



I noticed right away that something was weird. My food page was predicting 4-meals on the average.... almost 3-times what I usually see:



The actual number at the end of the year was a little lower:



Early in 1952 (!) I got the "Your people starve" message. This is despite having only 15 people (one baby) and a load of corn taken down to the dock. Here is my food page then:



Here you can see all the food-satisfaction arrows are green. All of them.... count them.....



Just to double-check, I clicked on all 15 people and all 4 cattle.... this little guy (who is half-green) was the worst one:




I attach my beginning map for anyone to test:

[Brf]

Retest #1 is done. I removed the ranch (with cattle) with Rapido.

The starting meals estimate was a more reasonable 2.5, rather than 4.4, and dropped quickly to 1.5. There were zero meals skipped in the 5 years I ran the test.

[Brf]

Retest #2 is done.

I used Rapido to remove the ranch and Editor "U" and put the two cattle back on the map.

As you can see here.... the two cattle brought back up the estimated meals number:


One month later, the cattle disappeared and the number went back down to a more reasonable number:



Once the cattle disappeared, the average meals dropped to 1.5 within two years... and the meals-skipped stayed at zero....


My conjecture is that the Designers lied. The cattle as still affecting the "meals eaten" and "meals skipped" number.

[Brf]

OK..... the proof is in the pudding. Here is a map where I threw on a bunch of cattle:




As you can see the "meals per person" has gone sky-high..... Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that cattle affect that number.,

[JuntaJoe]

I always suspected this as had many others.


I always felt the problem was that movement degraded grass quality and grass output is critical to feeding cattle. So just the mere movement of the cattle destroyed their food source. Add in cyclical weather changes that affect soil quality and the slightest drought exacerbated an already shaky situation.

I also used the editor midgame to re-"green" the ranches and found it to reduce those warnings.


So have you tested the same concept with goat ranches?

[Brf]

No. I havent tried goats....

The reason cattle cause such a problem is they eat so many times per year. From my tests, people were only eating 1.5 times per year, but those 16 cattle took the number up to 336.....That means each cow eats like 19 times per year...... No wonder they have such a big effect on "Meals Skipped".