How exactly does Food work?

[Djemynai]

Hello,

yesterday I experimented a little more with the game (using Tech for now for practice), and I'm a bit confused about food.

In the upper left, it says a/b(c), in my case it was 770/770(+22) or something like that. So my questions in particular are these:

1. What does the number in brackets signify? When is it negative, when positive?
2. I think when the food is maxed out, my units starve (die at once). But is this caused by a and b being equal, or is it caused by the number in the brackets being positive?
3. I thought I needed to produce cows to increase my food. But I think I tried producing cows, and it didn't change the food count anymore. What happened? And are cows the only way to help with food (apart from pigs, I mean)?

Thank you.

[tomreyn]

I'm assuming we're talking a faction which requires food (not all of them do). Most if not all of your units require food, some require more than one unit per game cycle.

A: Food units you have stored
B: Maximum food units you can store
C: Food units you will need in the next game cycle  -  food units you will produce during the next game cycle

When you are running low on stored food (more precisely: when, unless you make changes, you will run out of food within the next few game cycles) the food indicator will change color towards red and start blinking. Once your stored food reaches 0, you are unable to create more food consuming units and your existing units will starve, loosing 200 HP per game cycle while your stored food remains at 0.

[Djemynai]

Okay, it took me a while to understand what you meant. But testing this in-game (and watching my units starve again), I now understand it well.

A cow produces 10 food every cycle.

The number on the left of a/b is how much food I have in reserve, and this food will only be touched (reduced/"eaten") when the value (c) is negative. Negative c means that the units are eating more food than I am producing each cycle. Value b is simply the amount of reserve food I could be having, so now I know it's not necessary to have a full stock of food. It only needs to not be empty and the food intake mustn't exceed the produced food (unless there is some saved up food for emergency situations). Okay!

This clears up a lot of the confusion I've had, thank you.

[ctz]

loosing 200 HP per game cycle

For a 600 HP worker, this is correct.  In the general case, units lose floor((Max pre-level HP)/3) per food cycle.

Thus workers (600 HP, 200 HP/cycle) and unleveled guards (900 HP, 300 HP/cycle) die in 3 cycles, and swordmen (700 HP, 233 HP/cycle) die in 4 cycles.  Elite guards (1350 HP, 300 HP/cycle) die in 5 cycles.

[tomreyn]

Thanks for correcting me there, ctz.