Granary; What exactly does it do?

[Rumpleman]

Ok first off, excuse me for my newbiness.

The game gives the discription of:

Granary
Stores 50% of food after growth
+1 health from Corn, Rice, Wheat


The health part I understand. But the storing of 50% food has me confused. Can anyone explain this with alittle more detail?



Thanks in advance.
Rumple

[UnOrthOdOx]

Basically, it cuts the food required to grow to the next size in half, as only 1/2 of the box is consumed when you grow.

[Quillan]

A city uses a certain amount of food per point of population. Anything over what it eats is stockpiled. When the stockpile reaches a certain point, the city grows by a point. When the city grows, the stockpile is emptied, and the process starts over. With a granary, the stockpile isn't emptied; it drops down to half instead. In effect, the time required to grow is halved, but it has another minor effect. Sometimes a city will be on the border of sustenance, producing only 1 extra food per turn. When it grows, it is short by 1 food per turn. With a granary, it will take it a while to starve down to the point where population reduces. Without a granary, it will happen immediately.

[Rumpleman]

Excellent. I understand!

I wish the explainations on some of the discriptions were alittle more clear. But both of you cleared that one up.

Thank you.

R

[Urban Ranger]

Granary is mandatory for every city

[JackRudd]

This, incidentally, is the way granaries have worked since at least Civ 2.

[bongo]

They worked that way in civ1 as well

[couerdelion]

I’d just add a few points of detail.

1) Generally, the granary stores half the food that had been required to grow from the previous level. Since the next growth is higher, the effect is slightly less than doubling the rate of growth of a city.
2) I believe you have to have a granary for it to store food. If your granary is finished just before it grows it does not keep half of the accumulated food but only half of what was produced while the granary was in place. This was a trick that worked in Civ3