@phatrey : After buying the research you should see a "Distr" column on the Build menu. It allows you to limit how many of your jobs for each type are in use. So you can say zero out woodcutters in order to get a boost to your army for wars. Or if you overbuild and don't need as many jobs.
Yea the food nerf definatly hit hard.
Maybe as a suggestion you can add food to the other countries and not just west That way you can get some population growth no matter which direction you go. My ability to raid west has sorta stalled out now that I no longer have an abundance of expendable population... and I haven't even really attacked the other countries since I don't need anything they have atm.
@junorus: I think the point of medicine is two fold.
First it is a source of income. Which always helps.
Second if you look at the population graphs without it your population starts decreasing at about age 45 losing a chunk of each age group each year until about 65 for the oldest age. Distributing the meds prevents the decline from kicking in until after your works actually stop being useful for work so you get a larger worker bracket.
For those saying the "Boss Slayer" achievment isn't counting... It does work, you just have to fight "Boss" not "Regional Boss". The difference is that the BOSS being counted is the Awful/Weak/Strong/etc tag, not the creatures title.
 "World Idle"){kind=icon}
 "Battle without End"){kind=icon}