Food Guide
Food is a critical resource that keeps your population fed and happy, and your armies healthy and marching. A deficit of food will cause public order issues across your commanderies as your people rise up in rebellion, and hinder supplies to your armies, negatively impacting them in a number of ways. You can scrutinise your faction-wide food levels by mousing over the food icon at the top left of the main campaign screen.
Other Total War Three Kingdoms Guides:
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Factions
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Armies
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Siege
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Characters
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Administrators
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Guide to Relations
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Buildings Guide
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Food Guide
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Diplomacy Guide
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Commandery Guide
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Unit Abilities and Types
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Spies & Espionage Guide
- Total War Three Kingdoms: Public Order Guide
To produce food you need to own specific counties such as livestock farms, farmlands and fishing ports. You cannot simply build primary food production buildings such as farms in any settlement, though certain agricultural administration buildings can be built in commandery capitals (such as the land surveying office chain) to improve your food income.
You can set up food trade agreements with other factions via diplomacy, under the trade and marriage options, in order to improve your stores or sell your surplus. When you select a faction to potentially trade with, their food stocks are displayed just below the warlord’s portrait, so you can target the best factions to set to set up a deal with.
Reserves
As food is produced, your commanderies lay down reserves. Reserves are very important for keeping your population content when food production is low (when your population outgrows your food production, for example). A commandery’s reserves also contribute to military supplies when an army is stationed there.
Your reserves capacity can be increased in a commandery by building key buildings (such as the grain farming garrison building chain), or by the presence of certain characters in the commandery such as administrators or assignees.
Military Supplies
An army requires military supplies to function optimally. Its supply levels are indicated by the military supplies bar in the army panel. When an army has higher supplies, it gains morale and replenishment bonuses. When an army’s supplies fall, it begins to suffer increasingly punitive attrition and morale penalties.
When an army is in a friendly or allied commandery, it gathers supplies. The rate at which it gathers is principally determined by the reserves in the commandery itself, which in turn is dictated by food levels across your empire. Negative reserves means fewer supplies. There are other factors which can contribute to supplies, such as the number of characters in the army, certain ancillary effects and so forth.
When an army crosses into enemy territory, it begins to consume its supplies turn by turn. Long periods of time spent in enemy territory without resupply, such as during an extended siege, can cripple an army, so it is a critical factor to monitor.