Bushels

Bushels, often referred to as 'food', are Earth: Empire's main source of acquiring liquid assets (stocking). Bushels are a very important source of income for the farmer strategy and are a turn by turn expenditure for other strategies.

Overview

All military units and population consume a fixed amount of bushels per turn. Food is affected by decay: any food left on hand while running a turn will be reduced by 0.1%. Countries often put food on the market to avoid this decay. In addition, bushels are worth a small amount of networth. Exactly 1000 bushels is equal to one dollar in networth.

Without bushels, a country that is consuming more food than it is producing will not survive for long. Each turn without remedying a food shortage will result in 2.5% of military units deserting your army, interrupted multi-turn operations, namely exploring, building, and cashing, and cause a 2.5% drop in your country's PCI. Attacking and spying operations are not interrupted by food shortages. It is best to calculate just how much food there is on hand, and how much is being consumed per turn, before running any batch of turns. The advisor page can help keep track of this information.

If food shortages persist for too many turns, it is possible for the country to be destroyed as a PCI death.

Food Production

Farms and empty acres produce bushels. The exact formula for bushel production is:

round((farms*5.3 + empty_acres*0.4)*govt_food_bonus*agri_tech)

where

farms is the number of farms

empty_acres is the number of empty acres

govt_food_bonus = 1.15 for the fascism government and 1.00 for all other governments

agri_tech is the amount of agricultural tech, expressed as a decimal (1.00 - 2.30)

Food Consumption

Old formula

In the old version of this formula, troops, jets, and turrets all consume 0.00042 bushels each. Tanks consume 0.0012 bushels, spies consume 0.00180 bushels, and civilians eat 0.02756 bushels. As of March 16th, this formula is still used in the FFA and EC servers, but it will be phased out when those servers reset.

New Formula

At the beginning of March, food consumption was increased for all units. Troops, jets, and turrets all consume 0.001 bushels each. Tanks consume 0.003 bushels, spies consume 0.005 bushels, and civilians eat 0.03 bushels. As of March 16th, this formula is in effect in the express, team, and primary servers.

Stockpiling Food

Food can be placed on the public market either to be sold or to be protected from enemy attacks and decay. The minimum price for food is $25. Any food priced at $24 or below will be automatically purchased. The maximum price for food is three times the seller's private market purchasing price for food.

The private market base purchasing price for food is $360. The private market base selling price for food is $32.

For more information, see the main article about stockpiling.

Vulnerability to attacking

Food is the most vulnerable resource to attacking and spy ops. Small amounts of food are taken by successful standard strikes and planned strikes. Guerilla strikes destroy large amounts of food. In alliance wars, countries with large food stockpiles at home are often targeted by guerilla strikes. Finally, the raid food stores spy operation can destroy significant quantities of food.

Players often stockpile their food on the market to avoid losing bushels to these attacks.

Random Events

Food production is affected by two random events. If a country produces at least one bushel per turn, there is a 0.1% chance that food production will be tripled for a turn and the text "A food boom occurred!" will be displayed. There is also a 0.1% chance that food production will be reduced by 2/3 for a turn. If this event happens, the text "A drought occurred severely impacting food production!" will be displayed. Note that it is possible to run out of food even with non-negative food production if a drought occurs at the wrong time.