Moving production and food.

[Ajuga]

International Trade Routes: Build your cities into hubs of international trade by land and sea, creating great wealth and prosperity for your people, while also spreading religion, cultural influence, and science. The number of trade routes increases through the advancement of economics and technologies, the creation of wonders, and the unique abilities of your civilization. Will you connect to a closer city for a lower payoff and a safer route, choose a longer route with more risk for the bigger payoff, or perhaps point your trade route inward, sending vitally important food and production to the far corners of your own empire?

Source: http://www.civilization5.com/bravenewworld/

This sounds really interesting, how do you think this will work in finer detail?
It would be really nice if you could have one city huge in production but lacking food, basically just sacrificing one city and send all it's excess food to that production city and make it even stronger.

I do worry that the AI wont be able to properly use this mechanic though.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

You dedicate one of your sparse ITR (international trade routes) to do the caravaning of food/production
between two of your cities. It comes at the expense of gold you could have earned by going foreign.

 

[Remmert]

It make it a lot easier to settle a city into plain dessert next to an oil recourse you just might need. You send some food and production from the major cities to your dessert city to make something out of it, and the dessert city provides oil you need.
I think its interessting.

 

[JimmyAAA]

This reminds me of the trade wagons from Colonization. Hopefully it won't be as complicated. In the original, I think I spent more time on trade routes than anything.

 

[seasnake]

This reminds me of the trade wagons from Colonization. Hopefully it won't be as complicated. In the original, I think I spent more time on trade routes than anything.

i think that is exactly how it is going to work.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

This is an ability I've wanted since Civ 1. We'll see how it works though.

 

[Helmling]

This is an ability I've wanted since Civ 1. We'll see how it works though.

We did have this ability in Civ 2.

 

[aluelkdf]

I don't know how much sense sharing production makes. Sharing food is okay, it's easy to just load a bunch of wheat onto a train and transport it wherever. But how do you do that with production?

Production is is tied to infrastructure, which is a permanent aspect of a city. You can't just load a factory onto a train and disperse it to 10 other cities. And even if that were possible, the overall production would go down becasue all the aspects of that factory need to be working together to be productive, if you split it up into 10 different locations spread over 1,000 miles, the factory loses that productive capacity.

There's a reason why some cities in real life have become production powerhouses, and that's because production is tied to the infrastructure and employment capacity of a specific region. This stuff can't just be spread about willy nilly.

 

[Helmling]

I don't know how much sense sharing production makes. Sharing food is okay, it's easy to just load a bunch of wheat onto a train and transport it wherever. But how do you do that with production?

Production is is tied to infrastructure, which is a permanent aspect of a city. You can't just load a factory onto a train and disperse it to 10 other cities. And even if that were possible, the overall production would go down becasue all the aspects of that factory need to be working together to be productive, if you split it up into 10 different locations spread over 1,000 miles, the factory loses that productive capacity.

There's a reason why some cities in real life have become production powerhouses, and that's because production is tied to the infrastructure and employment capacity of a specific region. This stuff can't just be spread about willy nilly.

Nah, think about it. This is a real-world dynamic that needs to be in the game. Making cities provincial centers of production (food or otherwise) makes sense for the early game, but once trade kicks in, it's absurd. In an industrial society, production doesn't have to be local at all. The steel girders that go into building, say, a bridge in New York aren't produced locally and New York's local industrial infrastructure isn't relevant in what kind of, again as an example, wonders could be produced in the city.

This is a feature I welcome back to the Civ franchise with open arms.

 

[Rhavanna]

I really like this idea, and I hope they really go far with it!

Transporting food makes a ton of sense, and is something I've always wished I could do back in Civ4 and now in 5. Look at the states. I doubt there's any major city on the east coast of the US which grows even a fraction of the food it needs to feed all their inhabitants. Most of what we get at the grocery store is shipped in from out west. Farms delivering food to the cities.

Could be nice to set up farming cities in areas with nothing but grasslands/flood plains, and simply have them ship food to large production cities. I like the idea!

Would be nice to also see resources and such at least somewhat dependent on trade routes. That's one of many things I miss from civ 4. I found a random city across the ocean next to some iron, and poof, that iron is available in my capital immediately. I much preferred needing to hook it up, get an ocean trade route working, etc etc. Felt a lot more realistic. Or simply not having access to resources in one city in your other ones until they're connected!

 

[JFD]

I don't know how much sense sharing production makes. Sharing food is okay, it's easy to just load a bunch of wheat onto a train and transport it wherever. But how do you do that with production?

Production is is tied to infrastructure, which is a permanent aspect of a city. You can't just load a factory onto a train and disperse it to 10 other cities. And even if that were possible, the overall production would go down becasue all the aspects of that factory need to be working together to be productive, if you split it up into 10 different locations spread over 1,000 miles, the factory loses that productive capacity.

I liken production to a combination of labour and capital, which allows for the distribution of production to unproductive cities.

 

[Deggial]

What "saves" this concept in my regards is, that the total number of trade-routes is limited somehow! Think of it: with unlimited trade-route-freedom, game balance would go down the hill very soon. But with a finite number, you have do decide about your priorities. Very nice!

However, even with a fixed number of trade-routes, some questions arises:
a) Will there be more than one trade-route possible per city?
b) Can established trade-routes be canceled or re-directed?

ad a) I don't think so!
ad b) I assume so and I can imagine two different possibilities in the handling:
- Simply redirect a trade-route in the city screen (which is where they will be displayed, if I didn't misread the information so far.) to a new target. This solution would be a little bit too "cheap" in my regards and unpleasing increase the amount of micro-management.
- To replace an existing trade-route, you will have to invest production into another trading-unit. With this game mechanic, you might think twice whether or not to change your trading partners frequently.

---

Edit: thinking about a) twice: well, probably there will be more than only one possible trade rout per city. Otherwise, tall empires would be disadvantaged.

 

[Browd]

I liken production to a combination of labour and capital, which allows for the distribution of production to unproductive cities.

Or you can think of it as distributed production of component parts. While one city builds some parts and assembles the main "thing" being built (whatever it is), the city providing production support is supplying key components.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I don't know how much sense sharing production makes. Sharing food is okay, it's easy to just load a bunch of wheat onto a train and transport it wherever. But how do you do that with production?

Production is is tied to infrastructure, which is a permanent aspect of a city. You can't just load a factory onto a train and disperse it to 10 other cities. And even if that were possible, the overall production would go down becasue all the aspects of that factory need to be working together to be productive, if you split it up into 10 different locations spread over 1,000 miles, the factory loses that productive capacity.

There's a reason why some cities in real life have become production powerhouses, and that's because production is tied to the infrastructure and employment capacity of a specific region. This stuff can't just be spread about willy nilly.

You can't load a factory on a train, but you can produce machine parts in one city and ship them to another where they are assembled. Supply chains ae a big part of globalisations. There's a reason why a car factory doesn't produce all the electronics, tires and windows that are part of a complete car. I expect that you would lose some part of the production in the process (one city loses 10 and another gains 5 for example). It would still be far more effective than to produce wealth in the high production city to buy buildings elsewhere, and I'd be surprised if there aren't policies, techs and/or (national) wonders that improve this ratio. That's what the bonus from a railroad connection represents in vanilla.

 

[mjs0]

There are so many interesting ideas in this expansion but I think this is one of the most tantalizing...and has tremendous potential for opening up new strategies.

If a city is dependent on imported food I would imagine it will be very vulnerable to having those supply lines cut in times of conflict. I think that will lead to some very interesting decisions and possibilities.

Hmmm...I wonder if it will be possible to suspend trade caravans when a route passes through a war zone, and restart once the conflict is resolved.

 

[micbucci]

I remember this ability was in Civ II, maybe they'll change the camels to wagons or just keep their specific caravan types relevant for there civilization. I'm glad to see it's coming back and I can't wait to see how this works with Civ V.

 

[aluelkdf]

Nah, think about it. This is a real-world dynamic that needs to be in the game. Making cities provincial centers of production (food or otherwise) makes sense for the early game, but once trade kicks in, it's absurd. In an industrial society, production doesn't have to be local at all. The steel girders that go into building, say, a bridge in New York aren't produced locally and New York's local industrial infrastructure isn't relevant in what kind of, again as an example, wonders could be produced in the city.

This is a feature I welcome back to the Civ franchise with open arms.

Yes, but the factory that makes the steel girders needs to be localized. The machinery and the employees are in one place. And then the finished product is shipped someplace else.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

since religions/culture/tech spreads with trade i can see alot of runaways decleare alot of passive wars. just to slow down tech spreading and to avoid enemy influence from trade.

war is how we stop religios missionaries in g&K. a missonary of another religion in my land in g&K = war.

also war can be used to get a culture victory by killing the player focuseing on culture.
You get the public works they buildt.

Also fast units will be used actively in war to raid caravans. Bombers will stop all trade with there huge range. so not much trade in the modern era. At least not in border cities, or if your contained. trade by sea in war will most probably not be possible. as the tradeships will be actively hunted down with great effciency. If the bonus from killing trade is moderate we might see some civs focuseing on hit and run attacks on those caravans. Afterall the only penalty for not paying the military is lower science.

 

[Helmling]

Yes, but the factory that makes the steel girders needs to be localized. The machinery and the employees are in one place. And then the finished product is shipped someplace else.

Which is why it should be possible to divert production from one location to another. I'm thinking primarily for wonder production here (that's how I always used it in Civ2).

 

[SamBC]

Yeah, from the scale of Civ, girders aren't a "finished product", they're part-processed materials. Meaning that shipping them somewhere represents work towards that buildings. Same can be said for units - making weapons and other inanimate components, even doing some recruitment and shipping them to boot in the other city.