Avoid Growth and Surplus Food?

Would it be possible, practical and balanced to include a feature in the game which would allow you to distribute food from your more food-rich cities to those with small populations, or to ones where you want a particuarly big city for some reason? That is, if a city is still working food tiles after you apply Avoid Growth and has not reached its maximum size, could this surplus be spread around your empire? The most obvious use for this that I can see would be to make viable cities in otherwise inhospitable climates (ie, desert or artic), but I spose it could be used for beefing up core cities as well. It could even have diplomacy implications, where the surplus food could be traded between civs.

As for implementation, I envisage either a late game tech like refrigeration granting this ability, or for it to have tiered introduction (ie, techs later and later in the tech tree allow for a greater amount of food to be sent to cities).

there have been a lot of posts bout this and actualy in civ2 you could do this .I completly agree we should be able to transfer and trade not only food but production as well.
currently in the game food is represented by slices and loafs of bread production by hammer and anvil.resorces such as grain and coal that are collected in you city zone have bonuses in that respect since resorces such as dye and silk are translated to gold wich goes into a general slush for the whole empire we dont need to talk about that ,so my thinking is that all resorces should have a shield amont attached to them and each shield represents either one slice of bread or one hammer in resprct to the resorce
exe.city A has corn in its city zone ,that corn has a shield on it that reads 10 that means that there are 10 shields of corn in that square when you pull up the city screan it shows 2 loafes of bread(10 slices of bread) in that square .in the same screan there should be a export icon click it and you should get a export screen this is where you decide how many of what shields go where.production should work the same.As far as exporting goods to other civs, this should be handled in a city that has been orginized as an export city, warehouses,granery,multiple ports for improvements all of these should allow x amount of shield export or import from or to other civs.

Now that the SDK is out, it surely wouldn't be too hard to create a system for trading food (bread) and hammers-both between cities and between nations. Obviously such a system would need to be balanced in order to prevent people from placing cities in ridiculously marginal places, but that should be achievable too IMO.

Aussie_Lurker.

If it could be done in my opinion it would open new borders for CIV franchise.
A market system would be really a great addon and would make the game more interesting in a lot of ways.

ok ausie you lost me what is SDK

SDK=Software Development Kit. The full source code released recently by Firaxis. Basically allows someone with C++ skills to rewrite the entire game if they wanted!!

Aussie_Lurker.

way cool...OK i need to think this through on how to convey what ive been thinking. i'll be back

Beat ya to it, Pablo. I have already placed an SDK Mod request in the Creation and Customization forum-asking if someone can mod the game such that we can move food and hammers between cities. Hope you don't mind me stealing your thunder?

Aussie_Lurker.

notatall only one request did you get the whole shield thing?cause if you did i want to restructure the roads and well a few other things.I did a string awhile back but i'll do it again.

roads -would like to see only able to move ten shields per turn through each stage of road you should be able to build multiple roads on top of each other.
improvements-(ports for coastal cities markets for land locked)again only able to import\export 10 shields per turn for every stage of improvement should be able to build multiple of both.
population shields-each population point should equate to 10 shields in the export window
armory improvements-these should take in 2 hammers each turn and turn them into 2 weapon shields per turn again should be able to build multiple,and as techs open up should be able to build different types IE weapon armory, small arms armory, heavy arms armory ,aircraft factory, tank factoryand coastal cities should have the same breakdown for navy some improvements may also need spacific resorces such as iron oil and so on

millitary bases-these will function similer to cities exept that they dont grow and they produce only units and they produce as many units that you have shields per turn exe army base A recieves 5 weapon shields,4horse shieldsand 6population shields a cav unit cost 1 horse shield,one weaponshield and 2 population shields a mace man cost 2 weapon shield and 2 population shield you should be able to build 2 maceman and one cav in a turn.
the bases should represent all fields of the military,navy, armyand airforce
I wuold also like to add supply play in the game.