Does food still play an important part in The Settlers: New Allies?

Do you remember the grain farms in Settlers II, needing heaps of space for the grain fields?

I remember I loved watching the farmer coming out of his farm, sowing one field and cutting down another.

The grain went to the miller, who shipped his flour to the bakery. Bread to the mines, gold ore and coal to the mint, a gold coin to a fortress.

Those were the days!

So how about The Settlers: New Allies? Do we still get to watch all these busybodies keeping our economy afloat? 

Types of food

As far as we know now, there will be three kinds of food:

• Fish, obviously from fisheries
• Berries, growing in the wild and ready to pick
• Bread, baked from milled wheat from your grain farms

Each type of food can be used for a specific kind of building. Berries for instance are only eaten by gold miners. 

Food as a requirement?

In the (g)olden days, food was a hard requirement for your economy to stay afloat. No food meant no working miners. Which in turn led to lazy blacksmiths and ore smelters.

In The Settlers: New Allies, this requirement has been dropped. Food no longer is seen as a hard requirement for your economy, but as a production boost.

Production Boost

The way that works, is that everyone just works without food. Going about their day, doing their job, producing whatever they're supposed to produce.

But, when you supply a production building with the required type of food, the production doubles. 

For mines, that means two ore instead of one in the same time.

For production buildings like a blacksmith or furnace, that means with 1 ore as input, you get 2 tools or iron ingots as output. In total, you can increase your production efficiency to 800%!

So how does that work?

8x efficiency!

Say you provide your iron ore and coal miners with food. That means instead of 1 iron ore and 1 coal, you get 2. It will cost you 2 food, one each per mine. 

Then those 2 iron ore and 2 coal are supplied to a furnace. In a normal efficiency, they would be turned into 2 iron ingots. 

But, provide food to the furnace and both of those iron ore and coal will be turned into 2 ingots, giving you 4 ingots. 

Each of those iron ingots can be turned into a weapon at the weapon smithy. But, provide the smith with food and he'll give you 2 weapons per ingot, so that is 8 weapons for 4 ingots. 

All in all: a production chain supplied by food can give you 8 weapons for 1 ore, and it will cost you only 4 food. Pretty neat!

Some other statements

If we read the TTS insight on food over at ubisoft.com, there are a few more take aways. 

For instance, not all buildings can be supplied with food to gain an efficiency bonus for your economy. Apparently because not all maps are created equally. Personally, I don't get why a lack of a certain type of food being available would make the developers decide that certain buildings can't be enhanced, but hey. 

Like in the old games, Soldiers don't consume food. This is a good thing if you ask me, as sustaining an army with food would be an incredible hassle. The only game I know that requires food for standing armies is Lords of the Realms II, and even there it's an option that can be disabled. 

For housing, the food bonus works differently. It doesn't double the output but halves the production time. Developers are still working on this part of the economy and their bonus.

Your Responses

Lastly, some people responded to the post over at the Ubisoft blog and honestly, the reactions aren't positive. On the forums, participation tends to be negative. 

Terms like faux, mistrust and mockery are being written. Even the response of Ubi-Barbalatu, however appreciated it was, didn't take away the doubts experienced and involved players have.

 There is no comparing this new Settlers to the old Settlers. A game that relied on food. That thrived with micromanagement. So what is The Settlers: New Allies then?

It remains to be seen...