Resource

Resources are materials that are produced and consumed in order to operate and grow your empire. Most resources, such as gold and food, are produced in resource buildings, like farms and mines, using workers or slaves. Recruits generate automatically in cities. Most resources accumulate and can be stored in camps or cities before being consumed locally. The exception is gold, which is accessible globally and tracked as ongoing income vs expenses. Any net income or deficit will not accumulate locally. All resources are transported automatically between camps, cities and resource buildings via supply lines. Combat units may also carry food with them to supply them in the field.

Moving Resource
Generally, food and wood are moved automatically to where they are required for consumption, construction or storage. However, there are times when you may wish to move resources to a specific location to complete an objective or because you're worried the enemy may interrupt your supply lines.

Sending Resources
To move resources directly from one camp or city to another, select one of the cities and then hold the right-mouse button down of the other city and select 'Send Wood' or 'Send Food'. The two buildings must be in the same territory or or their territories must be connected via one or more supply lines. This will open a window where you can adjust the slider to determine how many resources you wish to transfer. Once you click 'OK' a progress bar will appear above both buildings and the resources will begin to transfer.

Stockpiling
You can also direct where resources go using the stockpiling buttons in the trade tab. When a building is set to stockpile it will try to pull resources from nearby territories in order to reach a specific level i.e. 50% or 100% of its capacity. Stockpiling can be a good way of moving resources from many separate places or to ensure resources remain in a building after transferring them there manually. Warning: Telling a building to stockpile can prevent other units or buildings from receiving the food they need.

Resource buildings
Resource buildings are standalone structures on the map that produce wood, food or gold when you move workers or slaves into them and connect them to a camp, city, or bridge with a supply line or territory. Empty resource buildings can be captured by any unit, but occupied buildings can only be captured by combat units. Capturing an occupied resource building takes notably longer, and once completed, half the occupants are killed and all workers are converted to slaves.

Resource production in a building is proportional to the number of workers / slaves inside and may also be dependant on the season. Resources are distributed to buildings within the connected territory or along uninterrupted supply lines to the nearest city or camp that has space available. If there is no space available, the resources are lost. If an enemy unit is near a resource building any production will be halted. Units can block supply lines by moving near them. Resource buildings can also be scavenged to supply food to the unit or razed to temporarily reduce their production.

At the start of the game, the majority of resources are generated at independent resource buildings such as farms, mines and fisheries. These resource buildings must be captured, occupied with workers or slaves, and connected by supply lines to cities or forts in order to produce resources. Resource buildings can be raided to temporarily reduce their productivity. Empty farms and other resource buildings can be captured and occupied immediately by workers or slaves, but you'll need combat units to capture enemy buildings that already have workers in them.

Strategy

 * Since one can only have one of these in a resource node, the choice depends on how many workers you have/are willing to train. Living Quarters is clearly better if you have tons of slaves. fully staffed it doubles the output of a Farm. Resource Production is great if you are low on manpower and don't have abundant slaves. but need an extra resource boost. It's only +50% so it's not as significant, but you don't need extra slaves.


 * Resource Production decreases the time it takes to repair a damaged structure, allowing for 100% faster recovery. Living Quarters, on the other hand, increases the repair time, thus it takes 100% longer to recover from a raid or scavenge.