8 Growth

Growth is a mechanism whereby tiles in your city fill up first with crops, and then trees, both excellent sources of food. It is affected by your growth modifier, somewhat analogous to production modifier, which affects plant rather than mineral production.

Every four hours (on average), your land will try to grow plants based on your growth modifier. If successful, a random tile in your city is selected. The selected tile will either be empty, or have crops on it. If no such tiles are available, growth will fail outright. If the randomly selected tile is empty, crops will appear there. If the selected tile already contains crops, a tree will be placed there. Hence, in order to grow trees, you must have already grown some crops.

Requisites for growth	Impetus	Result
Empty city tile + Positive growth modifier	~ time passes ~	Crops tile
Crops tile + Positive growth modifier	~ time passes ~	Tree building

Trees are special buildings that can be scrapped for food, see Appendix B for their other attributes.

8.1 Crops

Crops are special tiles which can be harvested the same way as rubble. Each tile of crops yields one food, no bonus to anarchy governments.

Crops cannot be built upon. A crops tile is the only place a tree will grow, if the tile is chosen randomly during the 4 hour growth cycle. See Growth Modifier for details.

The crops of idle players can be harvested by active players, see Idle Players for more details.

8.2 Growth Modifier

Growth modifier or GM, like its cousin production modifier, is an amalgamation of several factors. A complete list follows.

Factor	Growth modifier change
Undeveloped city area	+ (Undeveloped* area / 10 [rounded down]) GM
Sun	+10 GM
Rain (no dome)	+10 GM
Syndicalism	+5 GM
Bauxite base resource (cereal crops)	+5 GM
Sea of Rust tiles with outpost, no rainy or stormy weather	+1 GM / lighthouse
Green or neutral industry	+1 GM / green neighbour
Neutral industry	-1 GM / laissez-faire neighbour
Pollution (laissez-faire industries ignore their first 5 pollution)	-1 GM / pollution (halved by dome, round down)
Fallout	-2 GM / fallout (halved by dome, round down)
Sand base resource in dry weather (aridity)	-5 GM
Uranium ore base resource (radioactivity)	-10 GM

* Undeveloped tiles include crops and rubble, any tile which does not contain part of a building. The total area of your maximum (not current) city size is considered: 10 x 10 = 100

Like PM, GM is cap is determined by industry.

Industry	Upper GM Cap	Lower GM Cap
Green	30	-30
Neutral	20	-20
Laissez-faire	10	-10

Note that GM cap is halved by the super technoshield, see Technocracy for more details.

Every unit of positive GM gives a +10% chance of growth every 4 hours. For example, given available tiles in your city, with a GM of 20 you would grow two crops or trees every four hours. Each unit of GM also gives a +10% chance of any farmed greenhouse food producing an additional food (the same way PM affects mining).

8.2.1 Desolation

If GM reaches the lower industry cap, a period of desolation will begin, analogous to the strikes of production modifier. It has several effects:

First crops, then trees, wither and die. One every two hour.
+2 PM / feed becomes -2 PM / hunger as the people starve.
The people get hungry twice as quickly.

When the black horseman rides, everyone experiences desolation. Farming, protected by the glass of the greenhouse, is unaffected by desolation. In conjunction with strikes, desolation will cause riots. See Riots for more information.

8.3 Hunger

Being stuck inside a giant tin can except when you venture into the apocalyptic wasteland beyond for a hard day's work is not the most enticing of prospects. The people of battle mines put up with it stoically though, as long as they get a bite to eat now and again.

Food being scarce, your people scrounge barely enough to survive. As a result they are usually pretty hungry. This is represented by the hunger value in the upper hud, a value of five indicates empty bellies. When the people are fed, this value goes down by one for each food consumed. When it reaches zero, the people are full and can't eat anymore.

Some actions, like changing governments or being bribed, require feeding the people. If the people are full (hunger at zero) such actions become impossible until they digest enough. The people can be fed directly from the player profile, see Feed the People for details.

Normally, every unit of hunger reduced by feeding the people gives +2 PM. Under extreme environmental conditions however, your empire may experience desolation. If this happens, the +2 PM / feed becomes -2 PM / hunger, and digestion goes twice as quickly.

Unlike most attributes, hunger is invisible to other players. If they try and fail to feed your people however (as in revolt and bribery), they will be notified why.

8.3.1 Feed the People

On your player profile, for a mere one food, you can feed those ever-hungry people directly. Their thanks is unbounded: Hunger is reduced by three points for a direct feeding, as opposed to rushing or bribery which only reduce hunger one per food. Additionally, feeding the people will make your underlings immediately ready for another beating.

The people can still be fed if their hunger is below three, which reduces hunger to zero. They cannot be fed if hunger is already zero. The monarchy government handles things differently, see Monarchy for details.

8.3.2 Digestion

As soon as the people's hunger has been even partly satisfied, their bellies begin to process the input (much like the factories and refineries they stoically operate) and hunger inexorably returns to its maximum value. This is known as digestion.

The citizens' latrines are located somewhere in the city, far away from the battle mine itself. Normally invisible to you, the ruler, eventually this makeshift dumping ground will fill up and the people are forced to find a new depository. The old latrines will show up on your map in the form of a rubble pile containing one non-local refined material.

Digestion occurs once per hour. It takes about 10 digestions to fill up a latrine, but the number varies with the outbreaks of stomach bugs and flatulence that plague the populace.

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