Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but everytime I start the sandbox mode I run out of food. For example, starting as the Mediolanum Roman faction, there are two adjacent farms. I send two workers to capture these, and after doing so and recruiting only one legion unit I am at a negative food production. I have waited a whole year and the increased autumn food production did not compensate enough to even feed my one military unit.

Also, all the adjacent AI factions have their units with the no food symbol.

Based on the fairly limited information I have I would guess that you have failed to connect those farms to the city OR have failed to add workers to the farms.

To connect the farms to the city you simply select the farm then right click you town. This will create a trade connection and the food will move into the city.

Also, you may have forgotten to add workers. To do this you can use either the 'workers' unit recruited from your town in blocks of 20 or you can use slaves that are captured from routing enemy units. To start with I would suggest workers. Your farms should be able to hold 40 workers (I believe?) so you should recruit 4 units of workers and send 2 units into each farm.

Post back if this doesn't work.

Your farms should be able to hold 40 workers (I believe?) so you should recruit 4 units of workers and send 2 units into each farm.

It's 20 workers each with the current version.

Other than that, I'd listen to this guy's post. He seems to know more about this game than me.

But if you follow all his advice, and it still isn't fixed, I'd recommend restarting your campaign.

Slaves don't eat and farms, fisheries and cattle can all be scavenged from.

The AI seems to have an issue with food far more than a player does; the AI doesn't prioritize food stockpiles in frontline areas. A Pictone city in their far flung corner will have more food stockpiled than their capital city on my border.

If you like playing the sandbox, I recommend you set several factions to "Not playing" while they border both an aggressive and a defensive faction. Defensive factions seem to be more 'stable' while aggressor states seem unable to occupy a foreign city sufficiently if it doesn't have three food sources withim 25km.

I think the AI would benefit greatly from a reduced supply consumption trait applied across the entirety of them rather than just to the Suebi. The Suebi seem to be one of the few functional aggressive AI.

Thanks, it turns out I wasn't actually connecting them to the city.