Food runs out in a town: hunger first, deaths later, never negative stock

A food shortage should feel like a warning with time to react, not an instant massacre, and the numbers must never go below zero. This entry shows the three steps between a full granary and dying citizens, and why the clock must restart when food comes back.

Why this works

People forgive a shortage they were warned about and can still fix. A visible stretch of hunger before any harm gives the player time to act, and restarting the clock the moment everyone eats again rewards the fix at once.

When not to use it

Leave it out when famine is meant as a sudden disaster, such as a plague or a siege, or when your game has no citizens to feed. A long warning also softens a hard survival game too much. There, let stores run down faster and hurt sooner.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 3 common mistakes and the fix
• A diagram of every state
• 18 lines of example code with 3 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "Food runs out in a town: hunger first, deaths later, never negative stock" (read_entry famine-grace-period-and-starvation) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP