I took a go at Graveburg (Welcome to Graveburg) and, as Zantai says, “They said it shouldn’t be done, and they were right. But by the gods, we did it anyway.” Here is a town at T4 on that incredibly barren map:
The food production numbers are a little deceptive, because almost all meat is smoked, almost all milk is turned into cheese, and almost all fruit is put in a jar. Also, the town wouldn’t survive without importing around 1000 food or grain per year, because two thirds of that bread total is made from imported grain. I also have all three food relics (ascetic teeth, root of the first tree, antlers of the great spirit) active in the temple, which I’ve never done before. But, here is the general production graph, with three of the six (!) orchards that feed people in the background:
And finally, the crowning achievement, The Graveberg at Graveburg, a mountain fortress and necropolis with room for the village to die five times over without filling up:
The Graveberg keeps the village safe, and as you can just barely see in the distance, both sides have fortified the border. (and a quick edit: I think that’s mega mountain from the original post!)
I got lucky and only have about 50 dead, but ten of those are unfortunate soldiers who died of starvation when the mountain path to the fortress collapsed while we were trying to build a road to the gate.
I think regular villagers have also become a bit more durable than they were a year or two ago, TBH, because while I consistently avoided wolves, somehow boar aren’t killing my hunters despite putting zero effort into their survivability. That, or Vanquisher settings somehow aren’t making things more dangerous anymore. (Seriously, though, I feel like boar in my big Trailblazer city regularly kill hunters with +hp and +armor relics, but the boar here almost never pull it off, or sometimes they give up and run away when they’d be about to kill someone.)