Ara: History Untold – How to grow your food production

Building more farms is not the only answer

Oxide Games / Microsoft

Any strategy game player knows that population growth is an incredibly important aspect for the success of their empire – more population means more production and more production means more of everything. While the correlation between production and population is a little different in Ara: History Untold than other turn-based strategy games, you’ll still want your population to grow as much as possible, earning you Prestige and getting you closer to victory.

Table of Contents

1. Ara: History Untold – How to upgrade farms
2. Ara: History Untold – How to boost food yields
3. Ara: History Untold – All goods providing food

The obvious answer for how to grow your food production is to build more farms in regions that have especially fertile soil – that’s the ones sporting four green apples. However, the further you progress through time, the more valuable building space will get – and filling every possible area around your cities with farms leaves little room for the rest of your economy.

This is why it’s important to explore other avenues of increasing food production in Ara: History Untold – you can find our tips for maximizing population growth below.

Ara: History Untold – How to upgrade farms

The first way to grow your food production without building additional farms is to upgrade your existing ones. Farms can be upgraded two times over the course of a game: First to Irrigated Farms and then to Industrial Farms.

Irrigated Farms are unlocked by researching Irrigation, Heavy Plows, or Windmills and require Wood as well as Metal Tools to be built.

Industrial Farms are unlocked by researching Synthetic Fertilizers and require Metal Tools to be built.

You can upgrade buildings in Ara: History Untold in the overview of the building itself after clicking on it, or by using the city’s “Improvements” list in the top right corner of the city view (switch from “Zones” to “Improvements” in the drop-down menu). Any buildings with a green, upwards arrow can be upgraded at that moment.

Upgrading many buildings quickly is best managed through the "Improvements" overview. / Oxide Games / Microsoft

These advanced farms will greatly increase their base food production and provide additional ways to further maximize yields by boosting the amount of Specialists and Supplies you can assign to them – and we’ll cover those next.

Ara: History Untold – How to boost food yields

Outside of upgrades, you have three additional avenues of boosting the food yields of a farm:

• Specialists
• Supplies
• Buildings

Whenever cities reach a certain population milestone, they will generate Specialists you can assign to empty Specialist slots on improvements. Assigning Specialists to work on a farm is going to increase its base food yield as well as its total production output. Additional Specialist slots are unlocked by upgrading farms, allowing you to stack those juicy modifiers.

The same is true for Supplies. Supplies are goods like Plows, Fertilizer, or Tractors that you can produce in other improvements. You can assign them to be consumed by your farms, adding a variety of production multipliers to further boost their food yields – this is why it’s more effective to build, say, a Crafting Guild instead of another Irrigated Farm, as the Guild can supply several farms with Supplies, providing an overall net gain of food compared to one additional farm.

Note the breakdown of where the farm's production is coming from, as well as the slots for Supplies and Specialists on the right side. / Oxide Games / Microsoft

Finally, there are some buildings that can improve a region’s food output:

• Granary: +50% of Region Food Yield to all Harvest Production in the Region
• Grocer: +100% of Region Food Yield to all Harvest Production in the Region
• Mill: +1 Food from all Farms and their upgrades in the entire city
• Windmill: +1 Food from all Farms and their upgrades in the entire city
• Water Well: +10ß% Harvest Production to Farms and their upgrades in the Region

Planning ahead can pay dividends: Place a single Granary or Grocer inside a food-rich zone with a couple of farms and you’ll greatly increase their productivity. Mills and Windmills, on the other hand, affect every farm in your city, regardless of their placement.

It’s also worth noting that farms built on resources like Rice or Corn can be switched to general food production, in case you have no need for the special resource. Simply choose whichever yield you want at the moment from among the farm's Harvest Options. For more information on this, check out the Ara: History Untold crafting system explainer.

Ara: History Untold – All goods providing food

There is one final way to increase the food available to a city for its population growth – the use of certain goods as amenities. You can find all goods that provide food or growth when used as an amenity in Ara: History Untold below:

Good	Effects	Crafted in
Beer	+5 Happiness, +25 Food, -1 Knowledge	Brewery, Distillery, Monastery
Bread	+10 Health, +10 Food	Bakery
Canned Foods	+5 Health, +100 Growth, +100 Food	Grocer
Cured Meats	+10 Food, +5 Prosperity, +5 Happiness	Butcher Shop
Dried Food Goods	+50 Food	Grocer, Monastery, Windmill
Feast	+25 Growth, +5 Food, +10 Happiness	City Hall, Gathering Hall, Great Hearth, Town Center
Festival	+50 Growth, +5 Food, +10 Happiness	City Hall, Gathering Hall, Great Hearth, Town Center
Gourmet Meals	+15 Health, +15 Food, +30 Growth, +15 Happiness	Hotel, Inn, Pub
Grain Store	+30 Growth, +30 Food	Granary, Mill, Windmill
Pastries	+15 Happiness, -5 Health, +15 Food, +10 Prosperity	Bakery
Preserved Food	+50 Food, +40 Growth	Bakery, Grocer
Salted Fish	+10 Food, +10 Health	Butcher Shop

That's all you need to know to keep your cities fed and maximize their growth – a crucial step towards building a civilization that will endure the passage of time. For more on the game, read our Ara: History Untold developer interview and find all civilizations and leaders in Ara.