Defending basics 3/4: feeding the troops

Feeding the anvil...

so... the nightmare, the walk in hell... the grant for survival of anvil - feeding it. 
The keeping troops feed is biggest challenge in any anvil. lets see how to do it.

before doing anything relax. Don't look at crop count decreasing like seconds. calm head is needed. If you are plus user, under village overview you will see how much time until crop reaches 0 you have. If starvation is already happening, don't panic either. Brown matter has hit the fan, no need to make it worse ;) take a deep breath and remember what is written here.

there are 2 dangers in any anvil crop management.
Starvation. 
Once the crop hits 0, troops start slowly to die. Any troop died produces some crop (don't ask how, I wont go in to cannibalistic aspect). Starving troops is waste & unefficient way to loose them so starvation should be avoided by any costs.

the key to ensure that troops do not starve is managing cropflow. the key to success isnt rally in 1 h all crop you can. The key is to ensure constant supply of crop.
(read more after jump)

The crop sources to anvil:
Own crop: crop produced in village where the anvil is, the crop produced in other villages & shipped to anvil village. Main tool to operate with when managing cropflow.

Crop from people having troops in anvil: people having troops in other players villages should feed them. full stop. unless there is another deal with the anvil holder, you have to feed your troops.

crop from alliance mates: often when anvil is set, due to crop stock suplies of people providing defense troops, travel times etc, additional crop is asked to alliance mates not having troops in village.

crop from NPC: for gold users it is real relief. The NPC allows convert other resources to vital crop. You can ship in other res from other cities if you do not have troops & NPC it to crop.
To do it most efficiently, NPC when granary is almost empty & click on crop icon in NPC table, it will give max crop outcome possible.

crop from markethiding & marketriding: look below in tips & tricks section

Owerflow 
Less damaging than starvation but is terrible waste of precious resources. Happens when incoming crop supplies is bigger than granary capacity.

how to deal with it: 

• order some building that takes crop. If later situation gets desperate, building can be canceled, giving back some of resources used to order building. Not pretty effective, but handy to know in case of desperate need. 
• send crop to own villages. Send some part of crop to close own village so it later can be sent back to anvil. Check if other village has place for it ;) 
• Do markethiding. 

Tips & tricks 
Markethiding 
Use of trade system to hide some resources if you need to store slightly more crop than you have storage place. When you see overflow approaching, use anvils villages merchants to set up trades offering crop. Set the limits so people are not able/likely to take it.

Usually I:
- set crop:other resources at ratio 1:2 so it is less appealing
- set it as alliance only trade
- set time limit to 1 h

Setting up those trades removes crop offered from granary and once you need it, just go to marketplace>offers & cancel the offer by pressing red cross. Crop will immediately return to granary and will be used to feed troops.


Marketriding 
Using marketplace offers to cover small holes in supply of crop that you see coming. Technically, you calculate around what time anvil will run out of crop, then browse marketplace looking for people offering crop with travel time that makes crop arrive exactly when needed, so fighting starvation, but preventing overflow.