granary is merely a large structure that centrally stores the output of all of your food farms and fishing boats for later distribution. Did I really say “merely”? I certainly don't mean to belittle the importance of granaries! Without at least one, no one can eat. Your enemies know this as well as you do. Invaders often try to destroy granaries if they get past your city defenses. Rioters might do the same, especially if they're rioting because of lack of food.

A warehouse is a large structure that stores any goods at all: food, raw materials or manufactured goods. All imports are delivered to a warehouse (see Trade on page 129 for more information), and all goods produced by workshops are automatically taken to a warehouse. The citizens working at warehouses are usually quite intelligent, and will realize when a workshop needs materials which are being stored at the warehouse; they will automatically send their cart with the materials to the workshop.

Warehouses and granaries are quite similar, in that they are both used to store produce. Granaries only store food, though they will store any type of food, not just wheat. Market traders seeking food for their customers can only get it from granaries, never from warehouses. If you have no food in a granary, markets cannot distribute food to your city's people.

Farms and fishing wharves always try to take their food to a granary, even if this means a longer journey than to a warehouse.

Merchants from foreign provinces visit your city's warehouses to see if there are any goods there which they can buy. They normally assume that anything stored at a warehouse is for sale. This lets you select a level of food storage with which you are comfortable, just by building as many granaries as you feel your city needs. If a granary becomes less than half full, a warehouse holding food automatically sends a cart of food back to the granary .

One granary holds enough food to feed 2,400 people for one month. So a city with a population of 3,000 people would need four granaries to store enough food to last everyone for three months, with a little left over.