Crop management is key to preventing starvation; all troops (including the hero) eat crops from the village's crop balance.
You can read about crop production and balance in our problem with crop article
When there is not enough crop, troops will start to starve
Starvation happens in four groups:
- Reinforcements from other players starve first
- The players own reinforcing troops
- Troops in their home village starve next
- Troops on the way, troops being forwarded, troops in traps starve last
Troops that are killed by starvation add the crop cost that it took to train the troop to the village which can be eaten by other troops - A legionnaire would add 30 crop on death, a Trebuchet would add 90 crop on death.
This is the simple answer but starvation is more complicated than that
If we have the situation with several players/villages reinforcing...The village that are reinforcing with the highest amount of troops will starve first, and in that group, the troop type with the highest amount will starve first.
For example:
Village A reinforces with 6k clubs, 3k horses, 1k catapults
Village B reinforces with 8k clubs, 1k horses
Village A has 10k troops; Village B has 9k troops. Village A will starve 1k clubs.
Then both have 9k reinforcements, and they will start to take turns in the starvation, and they will starve 2k clubs each
Village A now has 3k clubs, 3k horses, 1k catapults
Village B has 6k clubs, 1k horses
Village A will take turns starving clubs and horses; Village B will keep starving clubs.
And so on...
The same logic also applies to troops on the way, not only for reinforcements.
If you have two outgoing attacks, and it's their turn to starve, the same logic is applied to them to determine which unit of which attack starves first.
So, an outgoing attack and some troops of yours sitting in traps might take turns starving. If you have two outgoing attacks from the same village, both will be group 4, but the same logic as with "foreign reinforcements" is applied to determine which starves first.
Within each group, the troop row (a troop row being the row you see in rally point, so e.g. one particular reinforcement batch, one particular outgoing attack, etc.) with the most troops (by amount) starves first.
Within a troop row, the troop with the highest number of troops (by amount) starve first.
In case of a tie, they starve from left to right (e.g. phalanx before swordsmen).
Note: Oasis Starvation
Troops in an occupied oasis are counted in the (troops in their home village) starvation order for the owning village and not classed as reinforcing troops.
Starvation in the capital with evasion active
If you have troop evasion active and the hero is set to hide:
The troops evade leaving the village. However, the hero hides within the village, which means that the hero can be the only troop in the village and therefore starve first.
The hero’s 6 crop production is not reserved for the hero, it is added to the village pool which is why the hero can still die.