Easier and cheaper to reduce food consumption.
VIP brings some lowered food consumption.
75% food economy in item store.
Up to -20% in hero skills.
Make above > 100% and food rate goes to zero. == Unlimited troops, no cost.
Note: -75% food economy from store is 80,000 gold pieces per week. But does take this irritating complexity off the table for the duration.
Leaves skills, boosts, and jewel slots open for other more useful stuff than merely dealing with food consumption. i.e. No need for Master's Mark for increased food production rate if your food consumption rate is zero.
Sarah, this seems to be a common problem. I learned this on my first superpack purchase, having only played the game a few days at the time. Palace at L6 and I wound up with 150K Tier 6 troops, LOL My food consumption jumped to almost 1 mill/hour. No level of boosts, economies, hero settings at that early stage would solve that problem. I just dismissed all but 1K of each type (dumped 24K of each type). Seemed a shame but I simply was not anywhere close to being able to train those tiers.
Often no food is liveable.
Hold off cashing in quests when in this situation. Just before starting a training, or whatever, cash them in - start the training. Level goes back to zero soon, but that's ok. So don't cash in more than you need to.
Same principle, ask an Order mate to send you food, or cash in an item. (When you click upgrade, the red 'Apply' buttons.)
You can also yield food then immediately use it for your desired purpose. Food yields the fastest and in the largest quantities.
only problem with may have there is you cant hold any food because your troops will eat it all up other then that you dont have a problem, once food reatches 0 nothing will happen your troops will not die nor will they leave, so the only problem there is you cant hold any food
to resolve that go to studies and learn farming 1, 2 3 put it all to max it will solve that problem fast, the same with your hero skills when you lvl up you get x amount of gold and skill points use them for farming it helps alot aswell
another thing you can build mostly grain farms in your town put them all at 21 it will help aswell
as far as buying is concern not everyone can afford it 80k for 75% is for mostly very expenssive, most players use their gold for shields.
good luck with it