Food

Food in Stronghold is represented by the "food materials" (meat, cheese, apples, and bread) that, in conjunction with the granary, can be used to increase the popularity and honour of the player, or to prevent the negative effects of the lack of food rations.
The popularity in almost all stronghold games, except Stronghold 3 en Crusader 2 is organized the following way:
If you do not give the population any food, the popularity becomes: "- 8" ; Half rations: "-4" ; full rations is neutral, no changes ; Extra rations: +4; double rations: +8.
> In Stronghold 1, Crusader and Crusader Extreme you can also get an extra popularity bonus of +1 for 2 types of food, +2 for 3 types of food with a maximum of 4, giving +3.
Note that the standard rationing of, based on the number of peasants you have impacts what food you need to collect for your people and the surplus you may have to sell your food. Not rationing your food means you earn a lot of money by collecting your food, with a heavy popularity penalty. Half and extra rations respectively decreases and augments the food intake by 50 %. Doubling the rations really doubles what the peasants eat.
So be really, really careful with that. In case something happens: an attack or whatever, you may not rectify your mistake concerning the population it's food intake and miss so much popularity you'll lose:
- Valuable new peasants.
- Money from your (working) peasants.
- Time to grow your community.
===Types of food===
The quality of the given types of food varies a lot in the games...
*Meat 
*- Produced by Hunter's Posts, this food type relies on the presence of deer packs., which makes it very unreliable. Stronghold Legends adds a Chicken Farm and removes the Hunter's Post.
*- Meat is a very unreliable type of food in Stronghold 1, Crusader (extreme) while it's really one of the best types in Stronghold legends.
*Cheese - Produced by Dairy Farms, the income of this food type is badly affected by the making of leather armour as the cows are slaughtered by the tanner in order to skin them for the making of the armour.
*Apples - Very effective income in the beginning, but later on the large size of the Apple Farms limits the number of farms that can be placed.
*Bread - Produced by Bakeries that need to be supplied with flour from the Mills that, in turn needs wheat from the Wheat Farms. This "food chain" takes a lot of time to start, but is easily the most effective one afterwards. In Stronghold Legends, the food process really takes too long to start and the income depends on too much changes: wheat> flour > Bread making it a waste of time and money to build the necessary food-chain buildings to keep it in check. The bread food chain is very vulnerable to fire, making the use of it only suitable for Stronghold 1, Crusader (and extreme) due to the fear factor that changes the bread producing's efficiency up to 300% !!! The cost?! An army with a low morale and a negative fear factor of 5. Dose your negative fear factor to suitable (example: -1) levels and you'll still keep a massive advantage of 133%.
One food aspect that can partially be covered as well is Ale. Ale, just like food is a way to give a massive popularity to peasants (up to +8) and loads of tax money at the cost of temporarily idle peasants in the workforce. Consider starting buying or producing this as early as possible to enjoy a massive advantage from early on in the game. 
Varia:
In Stronghold 1 and Crusaders (Extreme), it is always interesting to mix a wheat food chain with a cheese food chain in the long run. By starting with apples and then steadily changing your diet to wheat ... You keep a massive momentum of food production in the short and long run, as well as ... Giving yourself the ability to throw disease with trebuchets, which is very handy and less handy (I buy them) a free way to make leather shields.
The very latter is the same for stronghold Legends, except that the best food mix is cheese + meat/ chicken farm to cover almost the same advantages: a fairly big food production (compared to Stronghold 1, Crusader Extreme) a diverse usage.
Bread Production - Stronghold Legends -
Pre-requisite:
# Build at least 8 chicken farms to feed your first few people. Build more to get more wood and ...
#Build a market. Sell the excess chicken automatically. From 40 and on, you have enough. #you earn cash
# Let the market buy 3 iron bars automatically and ...
# Build 4 armourer's workshops. They will make the armour, which will be sold automatically once you have more than 5 of them. #you earn cash
# The armour you sell automatically can be used to buy flour.
#Build 8 bakeries to feed 128. Build more to have bread in excess. #you earn cash
#The bread you have too much can be sold.
Furthermore, the gold you have is great to feed your 128 citizen, while at the same time make the price of swordsmen and knights dirt cheap in the long run. 
Pro's: 
# uses a little amount of space
# easy to provide a lot of food, money and protection for your peasants
# your economy is extremely + maximally efficient and very adaptable: the more iron farms/ bakeries you have, the better it becomes.
#that economy is a lot cheaper to build out in the beginning if you do not build a market and buy/ sell from the stockpile yourself. But due to the market greatly automatizing the system, you earn more cash in the long run because the market instantly sells your goods = quick reaction time.
Cons: 
# the original economy which got presented is not noob friendly, however: a noob friendly economy is to build a lot of chicken farms/ bakeries instead ( tradeoff: a bit less effective).
# large cost up-front. 600 wood in total to feed 128 people. This means: 200 wood + 8 times 50 wood for bakeries.
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