Food
 This article is about food resources. For the article about food-related buildings, see Food (buildings).
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Food is consumable resources that can be consumed by citizens. Some food can spoil, therefore it must be stored in a warehouse to greatly slow the spoiling process. There are many ways that food can be obtained. One way is for citizens to make it or find it themselves, which ranges from collecting it from wild plants to constructing buildings with the purpose of creating or farming food. For example, this could be a brewery making drinks, catching fish from a fishery or making a farm which can grow a variety of crops, provided that the seeds to these resources are already obtained beforehand. Another way of obtaining food is through trading. Lastly, animals can be hunted.
There are 10 food items in the game: fish, rations drinks, bread, eggs, grain, meat, mushrooms and vegetables. Each race in the game have unique preferences of food. Cretonians are vegetarians, as they prefer fruit, vegetables, bread and eggs. Dondorians are somewhat of the opposite, as they love meat, fish and mushrooms. Cantors prefers meat fish and eggs. Garthimis prefer meat and fish. Humans prefer bread, fish, mushrooms and eggs.
When starting a new game and choosing a location for your settlement, every location has a distinct climate: cold, temperate and warm. Some temperatures disallow certain farms to be made. For example, temperate and warm climates deny mushroom farms to be made, as the heat of the sun would damage them. Food will provide more happiness to citizens if they are eaten from a canteen or eatery, because food will be prepared into meals there.
The best way most foods can be enjoyed is if they are eaten from an eatery or canteen, because any food stored in those buildings can be made into meals. Both of those buildings provide more happiness to a citizen if food is eaten from there than if they ate food from anywhere else. Though a canteen provides this in a better, higher quality way. Taverns also work the same way, but only with drinks. The player can choose which foods are allowed at an eatery or canteen, though serving all of them is recommended, so that all possible preferences of citizens are being catered to. However, it's best to not serve a certain type of food if there's a low amount of it in your settlement, or it's best used elsewhere.
When hunting animals with the help of a hunter building, hunters will always be able to get meat from any animal they manage to kill. All animals provide meat, while most provide a secondary resource alongside that. Wild plants can also be harvested for food, but only during certain seasons. This is a good way to obtain seeds for certain farms, as farms cannot be made if the matching resources is not in a settlement's inventory in any way.
If citizens are hungry enough, they will eat food straight out of a stockpile on the ground or from a storage area.