I'm looking for a game where managing food stockpiles is important to strategic or tactical success. Not roguelikes, because they usually focus on just one person. I know the bay12 community is the place to ask these random questions!
Examples:Lords of the Realm:An very old strategy war game where you planted wheat and herded cattle and sheep. Bad weather could ruin a wheat harvest and force your peasants to eat your seed crops, completely destroying your chances of surviving the next season. If you eat the seed crops, there's nothing to plant! Also, you could institute half or quarter rationing in lean times, decreasing your popularity (low popularity = rebellion) but saving your food. Milk from cattle was an reliable food source, and the cattle could butchered or sold at need. Sheep produced lucrative wool and could also be butchered or sold. Having a surplus of food meant you could have larger armies which could be used to conquer your CPU opponents.
King of Dragon Pass:A hybrid CYOA/strategy game where you manage a clan of tribal elders to eventually rule the land. Diplomacy, sacrifices to fantasy gods, respecting your ancestors, trading, cattle raids, skirmishing, and exploration were all important. But food is a major concern throughout the game. If you had no food, your clan would get sick first, they quickly start to die.
Your main food sources was planting wheat, barley, and rye. Wheat was most productive, but it was guaranteed to fail in bad weather (high risk/reward). Rye was the most reliable but least productive. About 30% of your cattle reserve was considered 'fit young oxen' where they were suitable for handling field plows. If you had insufficient oxen, you could not plow fields for planting, and you would be desperate to steal some from neighboring clans. Also, you had better not engage in offensive warfare during harvesting (Earth) season or your food crop would wither and die in your fields.
Hunters could get wild game from your wild forested land, but their contribution was less than that of a farmer. During a real battle though, they would fight as skirmishers and were more useful than the average levy. You could also trade for food, but it would never be a major source. Also, if you engaged in too much warfare (EVEN DEFENSIVE) you would have too few able-bodied adults to manage the field. You'd be left with just their children, and they were basically useless mouths to feed.
Third World Farmer: http://www.3rdworldfarmer.com/A quick flash game about the hardships as surviving as a poor rural farmer. Every season, disease, bad weather, or a rogue army can bring utter ruin. Success breeds success, but an bad harvest can kill you all the same.
What I'm not looking for:Europa Universalis Series: Abstracted resource management. Where province A has 8 units of supply and moving and army of more than 8 'units' leads to attrition. I like this game, but not for this.
Spore: It's just really boring, and the food management is abstracted in the tribal stage and gone entirely later.
RTS Series: Like Command and Conquer, Starcraft, etc. Resource management is only partially abstracted. I play these games, and I enjoy them, but more for the tactical emphasis than the resource management. Guarding and exploiting resources is the key to victory here, but it just feels different than the types of games I've listed above.
Harvest Moon Series: It's all about farming, but if you're a subpar farmer there's no real consequence. It's important to me that your life and death depends on farming, and this game is just too cutesy!
4X Games: Like Civilization and Master of Orion. Excellent games, just very abstracted food management.
Aurora: I tried very hard to like this even though its abstracted, but I cannot get past the interface.
Dwarf Fortress: I love DF, but food's just too easy to get. And the focus really isn't on the food anyway.
Roguelikes: Food is a important survival resource in many roguelikes. Unfortunately, roguelikes usually focus on just one person. Like Nethack, UnReal World, and Rogue Survivor - all excellent games, but lacking the strategic focus.
Europa The Guild: Food can be produced, but only as an means of making money (so you can bribe people, etc.)
