Food Bonuses!!!!!!!

As you all know in CIV IV that some places where we build we will expect low amount of food production.. example, desert.
The game ideas of limited food that does not increase with buildings in CIV IV is not good.
I like to see a system where the new CIV IV updates will allow for buildings to provide a +2 to food with the current bonus to health.
With a creation of a grainary, this means that food storage and distribution is more organze and they can hold more food and control amount as well as store up for future needs.
It only makes sense that city buildings that are in the control of food should give a +2 to food.
This means with the advant of the grainary, grocer, supermarkets each one is allowing food to be organize and a transportation system to be put into place that would allow for the flow of food from region to region to be maintained.
Perhaps with the advant of refrigration, harbours should be able to give a +2 to food for the city also. This takes into account that that refrigration allows for less chance of food spoilage.
I also believe that supermarkets should also give a +25% to the wealth of the city, since people do spend money in order to eat, and a supermarket has as much wealth potental as a market.
Any thoughts?

I believe that food should be able to be sent from city to city in any empire and possibly from civ to civ this would be much more realistic, for example we get food from china and cities such as new york can not support a massive population without food from say texas

True, but I like to believe that with the creation of buildings that are used to store, reglate, avoid from spoilage and the logistics of road; there should be no concern to waste a merchant to go to a place to add to the food.
The city improvements such as grainary and especially with refrigeration allows for food that would of been wasted due to lack of climate control to get to the dinner plate. Giving food bonues to supermarkets and groceries when a CIV has discovered electricity is not a unrealistic.
New York, with its urban spraw goes with its food logistics system, and other places such as Phoenix are more affected by its terrain for expansion, not by a lack of a logistical food system.
Perhaps with the farming of distance resources from a city such as bananas, sugar,. spices, fish deer having those resources under your control or trade deal should give a +1 per each food resource to food bonuses for all your cities in your civ; Since you have trade routes that will allow for the movement of food around your empire.

Thinking about future food requirements does make city placement decisions important. Wars for food-rich areas become important, with the loser getting stuck with desert and tundra.

It is somewhat unusual that there aren't buildings to boost food production since so many others boost shields and gold.

But I think that the most important factor in food production being the land itself does makes sense.

I never said anything about putting a merchant to work, just a trade system (think civ 3 esque)

yes, to a point especially when there is not routes to import food to a city, the land hampered growth.
With trade routes and harvesting of resources, there should be no reason to explain that food in your civ should face starvation. People in NewYork have access to the same kinds of food in the supermarket as do people in arid areas such as Phoenix.
Growth in Phoenix is not affect by food supply, but by terrain.
that is a good idea where perhaps you could build a truck to move food resources around by truck, by having roads connecting out of the city to others and food buildings such as a supermarket, harbour (when you have refrigeration), airport, grocery, railroads, roads combine together to have a food distribution system in the city.
Just my idea that food buildings should give a +2 to food since it regulates food and with electricity, avoids it from spoilage.

So I would give a grainary a +2 to food for the city (it does not require refrigeration due to it purpose of holding dry goods.

Harbour, grocery and supermarket should then give +2 food each when refrigeration is discovered.

For a city to be able to get any food bonuses, it must also have trade routes connecting to other cities in the Civ

Even the idea of a civ owning a resource such as wheat, rice, bananas with a trade route should allow a +1 to food since it has trade routes to get the resources.

A rather "radical" solution to this would be to have a gradual pooling of resources from the city level to the national level. For example, in the early game, it would be just as it is now, cities collect and use their own resources. With the discovery of Nationalism (?), it would switch to a regional system, where 2 or 3 cities pool their resources, and all cities can draw equally from that pool (some priorities would need to be set, of course). Then with the discovery of Refrigeration (?), all resources would be pooled at the national level, with all cities drawing equallly from the pool (again, with certain customizable priorities set).

The reason I say "resourses" rather than "food" is that the same argument for why food should be shared, can also be made for hammers.

True dat alms66, hammesrs should be shared, that might be why Nasa has the apolo program in the middle of swamp

alms66 said:

A rather "radical" solution to this would be to have a gradual pooling of resources from the city level to the national level. For example, in the early game, it would be just as it is now, cities collect and use their own resources. With the discovery of Nationalism (?), it would switch to a regional system, where 2 or 3 cities pool their resources, and all cities can draw equally from that pool (some priorities would need to be set, of course). Then with the discovery of Refrigeration (?), all resources would be pooled at the national level, with all cities drawing equallly from the pool (again, with certain customizable priorities set).

The reason I say "resourses" rather than "food" is that the same argument for why food should be shared, can also be made for hammers.

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That hurts city specialization a bit. I'd prefer a simpler method: Just let food be transferrable from city to city. Obviously, this should only apply to excess food: Cities aren't going to export themselves into starvation.

I wouldn't support a similar system for production, however. That allows too many exploits, like having every city in your empire contributing production to the next Wonder, which is both unrealistic and unbalancing (because it gives yet another advantage to large empires).

simple devide up raw product (mined minarels and harvested wood type and other products) and final production into what the land puts out and what the work force can use in a single turn basically mineing towns and factory towns. (many mineing towns sprung up when a high value metal/product of limited stock was found however it was rare for them to refine the product on site and normally was sent to a city with high infastructer for that kind of work)

however it is done to keep certain things from getting odd there would need to be some kind of veary high cost (at the start but lowered with tech orginizational skills and other types of things) of trasnporting products from one city to another.

Steve the Noble said:

Thinking about future food requirements does make city placement decisions important. Wars for food-rich areas become important, with the loser getting stuck with desert and tundra.

It is somewhat unusual that there aren't buildings to boost food production since so many others boost shields and gold.

But I think that the most important factor in food production being the land itself does makes sense.

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It is of course natural that starting location affects food production (like near poles the food production is lower). But why it seems that usually my starting location has to be near tundra ? At least in my most recent games with islands maps the starting location was every time in an island partly covered by tundra. I would have understood that, if I had played the more difficult levels, but these games were at noble level. Does the game tend to put human player near tundra and give the starting locations near equator to AI, or have I just had unusally bad luck ?

It is also little dissapointing that there is no way to boost the food production of a city. Perhaps there could be some city improvement providing food - like greenhouse for example. Maybe that kind of building should have some negative impact to compensate the benefit so that it would not be sensible to build it in every city. It could for example cost some money to maintain (negative bonus to gold).

Mewtarthio said:

That hurts city specialization a bit.

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Perhaps. Personally, I don't care because I dislike the concept of city specialization in civ. I mean, point to a science city on the map, a cultural city... a food city? That's right, they don't exist, because all cities produce all of that stuff. True, some have higher amounts of certain things than others, but this was already reflected in civ before civ4 based on terrain, tile improvements and infrastructure. With civ4, Firaxis exaggerated this so much that along with Great People and other such elements, it produces a "gamey" feeling that I strongly dislike in my Civ.
The way you have to play civ4 now, you might as well just name your cities "Science", "Food", "Unit Factory", etc...

It will probably be easier and instead of micro manage everything is for the CIV IV creators to allow for some buildings to be able to give a food bonus to the city... It is not that they are able to make the food, they are able to refrigerate (supermarkets, grocier, market) store (grainarys) and regulate food beter since with these buildings, food distribution is organize and that food with refrigation will not spoil.
We could look at the famine in Egypt in the Bible were they used grainaries to store food to prepare for 7 years of famine. If they did not have the CIV ability of pottery they could not store the food as effectively and would cause mass starvation.
So food related buildings and routes allow for food to move from place to place and not spoil as quickly.