The Power of Tradition Food Cargo Ships

This post helps show the power of food cargo ships sent to the capital in combination of Tradition. To prevent large duplication of existing tradition guides it assumes knowledge of them and will basically only touch where specific to food cargo routes.

This is also as a civ that has below average starting food (due to Forest bias) the Iroquois. Nor did I use religion to get any food boosts at all. (Tears of the Gods, Pagodas, Religious Community)

The basic strategy is mostly the same as standard tradition, except that you use the first 3 cargo routes as Food Cargo Ships. The timing for each cargo ship ideally is after the capital has the lighthouse but before its fishing work boats but the non-capital cities that are going to the origin must have a granary. (In addition, must be within range, in this particular case one of the cities didn't become in range until Optics, while the other 2 were from turn 1)

Attached are the screenshots of the beginning of the Midevil, Rean, Industrial, Modern, Atomic, and Information era. (Yes, size 37 at beginning of Information era, it was size 41 when I won)

In this case I went Freedom (via entering Modern era) and built Statute of Liberty and also completed Rationalism for additional bonuses from specialists, but during the Modern era I converted 1 of the food cargo ship routes to hammers.

For other landmasses, if you start coastal on Contenants and place your other 3 cities on the coast (NOT behind an iceberg), this works just as well as it does on the landmass I picked. But even if your capital is inland, you can still get your capital grown much faster than normal with 3 caravans (it's just not as much free food as cargo ships)

So is that on a setting where everybody gets their own island, or did you rush and conquer another Civilization?

Trackmaster said:

So is that on a setting where everybody gets their own island, or did you rush and conquer another Civilization?

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This specific map type (Large Islands) 95%+ of the time has every major Civ on their own landmass. Sometimes there will be a city state or two sharing your landmass but this wasn't the case for mine this time.

However about 50% of the time at least one pair of starting islands will be so close together that the coastal tiles between them or only one or two tiles somewhere on the map.

Having a natural wonder start on your landmass is unusual but this always happens to at least one of the players.

If you're wanting a start with both you and 1 AI start on the same landmass, your best bet is either standard Archipelago or Small Continents.

Deity challenge number 6 is a good example of cargos power.

I'm currently in the midst of playing all the civs one-by-one on Immortal, and I've been getting a few coastal Jungle starts with the last few (Songhai, Korea, Arabia). I play Standard or Large Maps with one of Fractal, Continents, or Continents-Plus. With Random Personalities, which I enjoy.

Cargo Ship Tradition is perfect for coastal Jungle starts. I happen to rarely use more than 2 food ships to the capital at once, namely because I use the other for CS Influence or Hammers/Food to a secondary city. But the cargo ships and aggressive Trading Posting of the Jungle is hugely effective for the gold and science. Making sure to have the 660 gold on hand to insta-buy a University is likewise important.

But yes, Pop 35+ while still in Atomic Era is the way to go, particularly if you go Freedom. One reason I find myself going Freedom so often is exactly the synergistic growth that Jon describes. Getting an immediate food bonus is especially effective with Tradition finisher, a We love the King Celebration, and a Religion Food modifier. Unlike hammer cargo ships (which sadly don't get the city % increase), Food ships do get the bonus. So 2 or 3 Cargo ships with +60% growth in the capital is... compelling . I've found that with Freedom, religion modifier, Tradition, and We Love the King, that two Cargo Ships are enough to get me 50 food in the Modern Era.

Good post, Jon.

I should add that I used to be a more avid Liberty player, but now, if I get a coastal capital, and enough surrounding coast city spots, I just have to go Tradition, no questions asked.

Later in the game I prefer to get Freedom and send trade ships to maritime CS. Gives about the same food and a lot of gold to boot. Not to mention the World congress votes among other things for getting the maritime to ally with you.

hm, I am wondering ... at this time (T276), you must have won already (or being close to that). What good is it showing some irrelevant population numbers when you are 50 turns away from winning the game ?

Same goes for researching Civil Service on T132 (for an obviously peaceful game), thats really hilarious. Food ships's purpose is to get big cities fast, because you get more science out of em. So whats the point of all that, when you spent 40-50 turns without univercity even in your capitol?

dragonxxx said:

hm, I am wondering ... at this time (T276), you must have won already (or being close to that). What good is it showing some irrelevant population numbers when you are 50 turns away from winning the game ?

Same goes for researching Civil Service on T132 (for an obviously peaceful game), thats really hilarious. Food ships's purpose is to get big cities fast, because you get more science out of em. So whats the point of all that, when you spent 40-50 turns without univercity even in your capitol?

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What's going on with science there is two mods, I didn't mention it on the main post since it had little bearing on the population growth.

#1 National College prereq tech pushed back from Philosophy to Education, but only requires that the city itself have a Library. With Civil Service a prereq to Education (but after Philosophy) this does greatly slow down everybody's science prior to reaching Education.

So basically, the only difference between this and base game is that in base game you'll get more science as a result of the population during the early to mid game in the base game.

#2 This included Buffed AI for BNW Version #18 Beta 10, which includes smart AI. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504220
(He's now on Beta 12)
It actually gives the AI increasing bonuses as eras past, so no, the game was NOT effectively over by the last screenshot, the AIs built 1 to 3 space ship parts each. (In fact the boosts in that version may have gotten somewhat too big in the information era as one of the AIs managed to get 10 copies of Future Tech, not that future tech 10 does much good.)

I suppose food cargoes are " nice " addition to a coastal city.

I maintain that coastal city is somewhat overrated.

Basically, you lose effective tiles when going coastal, in practice.The bargain is following: coastal city gives quick food boost at cargo ships, early growth, but loses long term food growth vs farmable tiles (also non-coastal cities can get smaller boost with food caravan)

In vanilla coastal cities were great because of coastal gold was still in the game. So coastal and ocean(?) were both, 2f 2g tiles. So at least you got some bang for your buck (reward for population unhappness) in that city, effective yield to be modified by market in this example.

The perfect coastal city has only narrow passage of coastal, filled with perhaps 1-3 sea resources, which give effective yields.How likely are these city locations likely to form in games?

Either such a city with filled sea resources on all sea tiles (effective yields) or such a narrow coastal, which only has 3 coastal tiles, filled with 3 sea resources, and otherwise filled with land (effective yields)

Regular coastal city is... meh... 50% of your coastal tile are worthless unimproved grassland tile (coastal with lighthouse), unable to be improved in any way. It's un-improved grassland that's out there (at coast and at ocean)

Same sitation made coastal cities somewhat worse than inland cities with full tile yields, full improved tiles, back in the older civ4. You have 25-50% garbage tiles in coastal city, in practical terms. In civ4 you had a national wonder Moai Statue which gave back, at least +1 hammer on all sea tiles, so they became 2food 1 hammer tile, Not exactly great, but neither too penalizing either. But it was only for one city, a national wonder.

If you're running 18 specialists in your capital, it takes a long while before you miss a few extra land tiles...

Basically, with Cargo Ships, it you've got mediocre land you can run 4 specialists super early (University and Writing Guild) and not sacrifice growth, particularly if the alternative is non-freshwater plains or ocean.

Laurwin said:

In vanilla coastal cities were great because of coastal gold was still in the game. So coastal and ocean(?) were both, 2f 2g tiles. So at least you got some bang for your buck (reward for population unhappness) in that city, effective yield to be modified by market in this example.

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No, this city would have been fairly weak in Vanilla or G&K. A 2 food tile only pays for itself so it wouldn't have been able to work all the 1f 4h tiles even without guild specialists being in the game.

The food cargo ships combined with NOT working the ocean tiles is what quickly allowed every land tile (including the massive number of 1f 4h) to be worked (along with every scientist & guild specialist) and post Freedom every other specialist slot.

Also in late game, just 1 external cargo ship route brings in more gold than what you'd get in Vanilla from working every sea tile.

On the less powerful caravan approach, I was actually considering modding the cargo ships down to caravan level only I found the field I wanted to change was set up as a C++ constant and not a database property.
If at the XML layer, if I cut cargo ships yield down to current caravans via modding the Era bonuses then it would nerf the caravan internal routes down to almost nothing.

truth is indeed, that you can run specialists or work lots of hammer yields at the same time when running food cargos.

I guess food cargo is like an external source of food, similar to hanging gardens food bonus, and watermill food bonus.

But I was confused by what you said about cargo trade being more lucrative in terms of gold, compared to earlier gold yields of coast tiles.

You are always capped on number of cargoes or caravans in the game, anyway(?). You only get like 10 max food cargoes in your empire in lategame, I don't know the exact mechanic to this, but of course petra and colossus both give you each an extra cargo ship and caravan.. So, you either run full food cargoes, hammer cargoes, or you run a mixture of trade routes and hammer/ food cargoes.

Once you take offline the food cargoes, youre not going to be growing those cities anymore, for sure. It's a case of having the cake and eating it too, which is frankly not happening with the food cargoes and gold trade routes.

That being said, I still like my huge late game hammercities. Those often tend to be more inland, but they can work tons of hammer yields for the purposes of quickly built space ship parts etc...

When I play bnw I often just use food cargoes and hammer cargoes as temporary growth boosters for new cities (I tend to build sometimes even mid-game new cities, if extra land is vacated of enemies). I was doing some math for the science penalty, and it doesn't seem all that penalizing to build such new cities in midgame. As long as you have some extra gold to rush buy libraries and aqueducts and universities. It's an investment for more late game science, and hammers , I think.

I confess that I don't often build up my capital to be as good as possible, with the cargoes, or caravans, which seems to be the most common strategy with them.

earlygame cargos and caravans I tend to use for city state trade routes because I'm a warmonger

Laurwin said:

truth is indeed, that you can run specialists or work lots of hammer yields at the same time when running food cargos.

I guess food cargo is like an external source of food, similar to hanging gardens food bonus, and watermill food bonus.

But I was confused by what you said about cargo trade being more lucrative in terms of gold, compared to earlier gold yields of coast tiles.

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In late game, my most valuable external cargo ship route is worth at least 30 gold per turn. (Usually more than that, but lets just use 30). It would take 15 vanilla ocean tiles to get that much gold.

Earlier on when cargo ship routes just have a harbor, they are worth around 20 gold per turn (usually a bit more, but let's say 20). 2 such routes would yield more than 40 gold, again much more than Vanilla's work 20 ocean tiles.

Each food cargo ship actually starts exactly equal to Hanging Garden in the ancient era (and costs less hammers). It's more than that as eras advance. (It adds one per era)