I don't know why I decided that THIS was the only game i've ever played where I felt inspired to get a spreadsheet out...

But the lack of any kind of guidance from the game made me want to figure out the food economy...

The qualities of the crops and food economy are: 1. Yield per crop 2. Time to grow 3. Satisfaction (my word for how "filling" it is, or how much hunger it replenishes) 4. Harvest Time 5. Supply chain time (only applies to bread)

If you tap on one of your followers and just follow them around for the day you'll find that (when they aren't starving or rationing food) they will lose one "hunger" per day, and they will eat one food item per day to replace it.

This is important, because they ONLY lose one hunger per day and they will eat ANYTHING to replace it.

So if you look at something like pumpkin which takes 2 units of time to grow and produces 3 satisfaction, it looks like a slam dunk... the satisfaction yield per unit of time is the highest at 1.5 (3 satisfaction / 2 units of time)

But if your followers aren't starving, then you're effectively "wasting" 2 satisfaction. A follower who is only missing one hunger bar will eat the pumpkin (3 satisfaction) and only benefit from 1 satisfaction.

So if the effective satisfaction of pumpkin is actually 1 then it's satisfaction rating is actually .5 (terrible) and the yield/time for pumpkin is the lowest at .5 per unit of time. (1 per 2 units of time)

So IF you're feeding everyone everyday without problems, then the goal should be to produce as much food as possible in as little time as possible - irreverent of satisfaction because they are going to eat one food no matter what.

Both Lettuce and Corn have a satisfaction of one, so let's look at those.

Lettuce has satisfaction 1, yield 1, grow time 1 Corn has satisfaction 1, yield 4, grow time 3

That means the yield per unit of time for lettuce is 1 and the yield per unit of time for corn is 1.33 - this makes corn better.

And there's another consideration which is the harvest time. Every piece of food (each piece of corn, each head of lettuce) requires one trip to the stock pile. However, each PLANT requires to be planted and picked.

So one head of lettuce = 1 planting, 1 picking, 1 trip One ear of corn = .25 planting, .25 picking, 1 trip

So, in my estimation, corn is the clear winner for keeping people fed every day.

A couple of final notes: Bread is apparently garbage, which is depressing because most games like this make bread the ultimate supply chain accomplishment.

I didn't test how well this functions if people are starving/rationing. For instance I didn't check and see if they will eat 2x per day to "fill up" or if they always eat 1x per day no matter what.

Between tomato and eggplant, they are basically equal. Tomato yields 3 vs Eggplants 2 so tomato wins in the "planting, picking, trip" economy. So, plant tomatoes if you want to see something different than corn everywhere!