Empire-wide agriculture

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Pooh

Chieftain
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Dec 29, 2005
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Here's a thought (apologies if this has already been discussed, but as a sometime forum lurker, I've yet to see it brought up):

Why is it that each city in civ is responsible for its own food production for the entire duration of its history? The fact that food production is not distributed empire-wide is something that has often sat ill with me. Notwithstanding that in Civ II you could send one-time shipments of food to starving cities, there's never been any allowance made that I know of for a breadbasket city to feed an industrial one, for example. Arguably, the specialized food production cities of Civ IV could have been much more meaningful if their food production could have been somehow distributed. Combined, for example, with the placement of strategically important resources located in marginal locations and you end up with a completely new level of strategy and integration to think about. Ability to distribute food would be tech dependent - i.e. completely efficient distribution of food would not be possible until refrigeration, for example.

Unfortunately, I don't have an elegant game mechanic to propose to address this issue - and implementation would be key since you would need to find a new way to determine city population growth rates. So I'm throwing this out there to see what the rest of the community thinks.
 
I think cities that have an abundance of food resources end up becoming better specialist cities (i.e., turning citizens into specialists), which makes them GP or Science, etc. Specialist cities. Food is just a means to a better end. But I do agree that it would be nice if we could of had the option of trading food with another city, like in Civ2. Perhaps game balance prevented them from implementing that, which is good since game balance takes precedent over any one feature.

For Civ5, perhaps any empire-wide resources can be re-allocated, which would add another layer of decision making, provided there are "costs" or penalities involved. Every decision, whether resource allocation or otherwise, should be a series of cost/benefit decisions.
 
Here's the thing-based on everything I've heard to date, trade routes no longer generate Commerce, because the Commerce Yield has been removed from the game. This would seem to mean that now trade routes will be able to freely generate other yields & commerces. What I hope is that trade routes will generate yields & commerces based on the city from whence they originate. So if, for example, the city of London (high production, low food) has a trade route with Liverpool (low production, high food), then London will get a small amount of bonus food from the trade route. I was thinking a simple formula like 1/10th of the difference in food surpluses between the two cities. So, for example again, if Liverpool has a food surplus of 20, & London has a food surplus of 2, then London should gain +2 food per turn from the trade route.

Anyway, I've yet to see any screen-shots with trade routes visible in them, so still have no idea how trade works this time around!

Aussie.
 
I've only ever read most of the discussions about localized food production and transportation throughout history. Most of the these discussions do come to a few basic conclusions; 1-food distribution is something extremely modern (last ~150 years) 2-The mechanics that could be used to food distribution model require to much micromanagement or are completely useless.
 
AriochIV said:
I don't see any ways to do this that don't involve either grossly oversimplifying the food mechanic, or requiring extreme levels of micromanagement.
Click to expand...
It does has the look of micromanagement of how food is distributed within the empire's cities, but it would as least make sense that having the ability to manage food distribution between cities can provide a certain realism - that is when a city's surplus of food is not wasted and can be given to another city that has no abundance of food.

I think there ought to be an option of whether you want an automated or manual control of your food distribution within your empire as well as maybe a better system of importing and exporting food with other nations.
 
As said, the Civ models works well for 97% of human history, for the other 3% (211 yrs out of 7050) it doesn't seem worth it to introduce the kind of micromanagement or extreme simplicity that would be required to get it to work right in the game.

Although, I guess in Civ those 211 years are about half the game!
 
Actually, if you have a proper read of history , the widespread trade in food between empires-& within empires-has actually been going on for Millenia. When the Roman Empire collapsed, though, wide-ranging trade in food fell apart & was replaced with a much smaller scale system (like the one represented in Civ). As I said above, the simplest system would be to have trade routes provide bonus yields & commerces-as well as cash. So a trade route should be able to supply bonus hammers, food, culture & science-not merely gold. This should happen automatically based on a relatively simple formula (like the one I provided above).

Aussie.
 
largedarryl said:
I've only ever read most of the discussions about localized food production and transportation throughout history. Most of the these discussions do come to a few basic conclusions; 1-food distribution is something extremely modern (last ~150 years) 2-The mechanics that could be used to food distribution model require to much micromanagement or are completely useless.
Click to expand...

My instinct is that food distribution has been around longer than that - the question is the scale and efficiency of the distribution. Different technologies improve the shelf-life of food enabling it to be shipped better. The game could easily simulate this by, say, having a food cost ratio that improves as techs are developed. For example, food distribution would become enabled by an early government tech representative of a civ's development into a chiefdom or state (from a collection of culturally related villages, for example). At this point, distributing food to starving cities would involve a high rate of spoilage (e.g. 5 to 1). As tech improves, this ratio approaches 1-1 with modern refrigeration.

With respect to implementation - I've thought of an approach that may not be too micro-manage-y or dumbed down. In the city screen, display a counter indicating civ-wide surplus food production. A city in need of extra food could draw from this surplus and the required output would be drawn on a pro-rated scale from surplus cities. Civ IV had a mechanic to tell the city governor to stop growing the city - this could be used in agricultural centres once they've managed to farm all of the available tiles to ensure that their food production gets used up first.

I really do think this would add an interesting dimension to the game. Food aid could become a meaningful part of diplomacy. Supply lines - often talked about in combat threads - would become meaningful in respect of cities under siege. So long as trade routes are open a city could continue to feed itself, despite the pillaging of its farms. Settling marginal areas would become a viable strategy if those areas carried sufficient strategic advantages (i.e. access to rare, but important resources; staging grounds military units; ... I've run out of other plausible ideas, but you get the gist).
 
The survival of Rome and later on Constantinople was very much depended on long distance food distribution. The emperors always had to make sure grain was brought from places as far as Carthage in North Africa and Egypt. Some cities, especially in the drier parts of the Middle East wouldnt have gotten so important and populous weren't it for their trade routes which also supplied them with food, take Damascus for instance.
That said, I indeed hope for some kind of food distribution in Civ5. But I don't think it should be up to the micromanagement of the player to arrange for correct distribution but a mechanic like the trade route yields would be best. Like trade routes in Civ4 their benefit should increase over time thereby making peaceful trade relations more important.
 
North Africa is often referred to as Rome's "bread basket" just as today the center of the US is often referred to as our "bread basket" - so yeah, food trading needs to be in and pretty much right from the start.
 
I remember that a random event from IV could let you give food to another civ in exchange for brownie points. I would enjoy very much seeing that as a full-fledged game mechanic.
 
One of the things i wish was in the Civ line that Alpha centauri introduced was the 'supply crawler' system.

I hope we get some kind of system that allows us to boost cities with 'yield' from afar. Perhaps a system of 'trade routes' that lets you open up the city menu, set a traderoute destination (capital?), and lets you choose how much of the excess that the city produces you want to ship to that other city... be it Food or Hammers/production. Perhaps modify (reduce) the amount depending on distance (further away, less of the food/hamemrs arrive).

This would let you set up 'outpost' villages who might have crap tiles nearby but a valuable resource that produces lots of food/hammers that, under certain circumstances, could be valuable/profitable to send its 'excess' to a certain 'main' city. Of course the downside would be extra maintence cost or whatever they are introducing in this incarnation of civ.

It wouldn't be a lot of micromanagement either - just allow each city to only supply 1 other city, select either food or production, and voila. Small window in the city menu would do the trick.


In this way we wouldn't only have 'super cities' everywhere that all grow huge and provide for themselves, we'd also have smaller villages out in the world that's purpose is not to grow huge and independent, but only support another city. And its loss during war wouldn't be as bad.
 
I don't think there should be a very elaborate system for food trading. A simple food caravan unit would be more than enough, simple and and straightforward. It would cost food of course, and it would add something like 1 pop to small cities.

Or, in a more complicated fashion, the same way a city 'builds' culture/commerce/research they can build food, which evenly (modifable?) distirbutes to all of your other cities. City specialisation is something that I always wanted to see in Civ, a breadbasket city supporting a stalinist tundra workshop city. The workshop city makes the gold that in turn buys the buildings for the food city.
 
Here's how you'd do large scale food production. In the city screen, there'd be a little question:

"What do you want to do with excess food production: Grow City or Export"


For cities with export added, that'd be it. For cities set to use excess food to grow, you'd have the option of enabling another flag that would, on mouseover, say "Import Food".

The game would handle the rest. City AI would stop exporting food automatically (without disabling the flag) if local production fell below local consumption. And as soon as local demand is being met again, it starts mailing off food again!

Wow dat was p simple ya? But dere more!



Let's say you wanted to do international food trade! Well, with the system already described there's already room for a mismatch to occur -- like, say, if your cities can't consume all the food that's being produced, or if all your cities are set to export and none are set to grow. So it stockpiles up just like gold would, complete with a little thingy at the top left indicating the size of your empire wide food stockpile (picture it like: 284G, 221F). And when you want to trade it with another empire, you just set up a food per turn trade, just like you would with a gold per turn trade. It gets tossed into their stockpile, just like gold would, for them to use however they want to use.

WOW DAT IS STILL P SIMPLE HEY AMAZO.

Now some people might be like, oh hey food decay. Alright, coolio my broolio, we can do that. Just set up a %stock lost over time function, and on each turn you lose, say, 10% of your food stockpile, modified by tech. And then, say, you hit zero, well, who cares, you can't lose 10% of zero. So people who are big food exporters will be like DAYUM SON I MUST HOLDS NONE while the little guys won't care because losing 10% of almost nothing is very little indeed.

SO, ya, no micro just macro no changes to Civ system, no annoyance of caravans. Simple, elegant and preternaturally potent.
 
Aeon221 said:
Here's how you'd do large scale food production. In the city screen, there'd be a little question:

"What do you want to do with excess food production: Grow City or Export"


For cities with export added, that'd be it. For cities set to use excess food to grow, you'd have the option of enabling another flag that would, on mouseover, say "Import Food".

The game would handle the rest. City AI would stop exporting food automatically (without disabling the flag) if local production fell below local consumption. And as soon as local demand is being met again, it starts mailing off food again!

Wow dat was p simple ya? But dere more!



Let's say you wanted to do international food trade! Well, with the system already described there's already room for a mismatch to occur -- like, say, if your cities can't consume all the food that's being produced, or if all your cities are set to export and none are set to grow. So it stockpiles up just like gold would, complete with a little thingy at the top left indicating the size of your empire wide food stockpile (picture it like: 284G, 221F). And when you want to trade it with another empire, you just set up a food per turn trade, just like you would with a gold per turn trade. It gets tossed into their stockpile, just like gold would, for them to use however they want to use.

WOW DAT IS STILL P SIMPLE HEY AMAZO.

Now some people might be like, oh hey food decay. Alright, coolio my broolio, we can do that. Just set up a %stock lost over time function, and on each turn you lose, say, 10% of your food stockpile, modified by tech. And then, say, you hit zero, well, who cares, you can't lose 10% of zero. So people who are big food exporters will be like DAYUM SON I MUST HOLDS NONE while the little guys won't care because losing 10% of almost nothing is very little indeed.

SO, ya, no micro just macro no changes to Civ system, no annoyance of caravans. Simple, elegant and preternaturally potent.
Click to expand...

I like this idea. Although I occasionally would want more freedom to micromanage my food, this way sounds like by far the least frustrating one.
 
Pretty much. Oh, and you could add in empire wide changes to your cities via ctrl+click. So, one click changing all your cities modes to export or grow or import for fast and easy doing.
 
Further simplifying Aeon's idea:

When a city is one turn away from taking on unhappy citizens, it automatically exports its excess food to all cities set to import food that have themselves not reached the happy cap. If no such cities exist, then it will export food to all cities that have not reached the happy cap. If all cities have reached the happy cap, the empire will begin to stockpile food (with 10% decay).

This system makes it impossible to grow your cities past the happy cap. You can still take on unhappiness by being sufficiently close to the happy cap when you whip, draft, lose a luxury import, etc.

The health cap will be ignored.
 
Mmm, I don't really like that idea. Having it as an option maybe, but plenty of people want their city to grow past the happy cap, if for no reason other than to have lots of spare whip fodder lying around.
 
Ramesses, Civ5 is going to have civ-wide happiness limits, so adding one pop to ANY of your cities will supposedly have the same effect. Of course, one could fill the coffers of those cities that are not about to grow.

I like the concept, in general. Food trade should be a profitable enterprise (though the profit may not necessarily be available to player utilization).
 
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