[2022] Ancient Cooking

Since the tavern update, there's been a bit of an odd dynamic for Ancients.

They only start with 1 Cooking tome, so you have to choose between being able to cook or building a tavern. You have to build a tavern or Ancients get too sad and leave. However, having a tavern doesn't generate Cooking tomes. To write a cooking tome in the library, you need 25 meals, but since I can't cook I can't write a new tome in the library. If I go with the cooking route to start, I have immediately start farming. Most of the time there's not enough natural vegetation to grow and roast 25 meals, and boiling vegetation requires a bronze cauldron, so I have to rush Industry to get to bronze before everyone leaves. Ancients don't eat, but Imps do, as do humans if they want to join the settlement. Plus this also prevents me from spec'ing into alcohol or alchemy. I think I could just buy enough meals from the trader (or a cooking tome if they have one), but the trader hasn't come around the past few games I've run even after I set up a market. Additionally, it seems like I have to have 50 meals in the settlement's inventory to write a cooking tome, because if I have 26 and start a cooking tome the 25 meals get taken, then the game registers I only have 1 meal instead of the 25 needed and the book sits there unwritten because it doesn't think I have all the necessary components.

Sorry for the long post, I hope it makes sense!