Hi!
I have kind of suggested this idea in brief before (#15 in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=527545). But here I want to elaborate on possible implementation.
The idea
The idea is as follows (I will provide example for food, but the same can apply to production and maybe commerce though the later is more questionable)...
You have a highly agricultural City A producing lots of (perhaps even growing too quickly, leading to ). You also have City B with very small food yields (perhaps due to terrain or other reasons, mostly terrain of course). It only would make sense in real life to send some of the surplus from A to B.
How can it be implemented?
I think as 2 or 3 sliders in the city screen (2 if only food and production are implemented, and 3 if commerce is also implemented). The default value would be 0 - meaning no food is being sent or requested. A negative value can mean food being sent, and a positive one - food being requested (or vise-versa - whichever makes more sense).
Now, the values themselves can represent the actual "food points/grain bags" or "hammers" - not the raw ones, but the "computed final" ones, i.e. after all modifiers. However there is a caveat, that while City A can certainly send these "processed" (i.e. "food points" with modifiers applied) food to City B, City B should not be able to process these any further. So, basically these received "food points" cannot have any extra modifiers applied (otherwise this can lead too inflating food supply indefinitely by sending it from city to city), and are basically added to the city's food output after all modifiers have been applied.
So, for example, City A has a surplus of +10 food points, and City B is requesting food (slider value +5). If City A decides to send some of its surplus, then obviously it will have less food for itself, so that if it is sending out 7 food points (slider value -7), then it will have the remaining surplus of only 3 food points (10-7), hence slower growth rate for it.
How does the game decide which city it sends what amount of food to the other city? Possibly simply by distance. There can also be additional civic or other modifiers for this whole business, so that the bigger the distance the less food/hammers are available at the destination and/or it costs some money per turn.
This is just the basic idea on implementation. Of course it requires more thought and polishing. But I think it will for sure add more realism and depth to the game play, making it more balanced.
I have kind of suggested this idea in brief before (#15 in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=527545). But here I want to elaborate on possible implementation.
The idea
The idea is as follows (I will provide example for food, but the same can apply to production and maybe commerce though the later is more questionable)...
You have a highly agricultural City A producing lots of (perhaps even growing too quickly, leading to ). You also have City B with very small food yields (perhaps due to terrain or other reasons, mostly terrain of course). It only would make sense in real life to send some of the surplus from A to B.
How can it be implemented?
I think as 2 or 3 sliders in the city screen (2 if only food and production are implemented, and 3 if commerce is also implemented). The default value would be 0 - meaning no food is being sent or requested. A negative value can mean food being sent, and a positive one - food being requested (or vise-versa - whichever makes more sense).
Now, the values themselves can represent the actual "food points/grain bags" or "hammers" - not the raw ones, but the "computed final" ones, i.e. after all modifiers. However there is a caveat, that while City A can certainly send these "processed" (i.e. "food points" with modifiers applied) food to City B, City B should not be able to process these any further. So, basically these received "food points" cannot have any extra modifiers applied (otherwise this can lead too inflating food supply indefinitely by sending it from city to city), and are basically added to the city's food output after all modifiers have been applied.
So, for example, City A has a surplus of +10 food points, and City B is requesting food (slider value +5). If City A decides to send some of its surplus, then obviously it will have less food for itself, so that if it is sending out 7 food points (slider value -7), then it will have the remaining surplus of only 3 food points (10-7), hence slower growth rate for it.
How does the game decide which city it sends what amount of food to the other city? Possibly simply by distance. There can also be additional civic or other modifiers for this whole business, so that the bigger the distance the less food/hammers are available at the destination and/or it costs some money per turn.
This is just the basic idea on implementation. Of course it requires more thought and polishing. But I think it will for sure add more realism and depth to the game play, making it more balanced.