Late Game Food Shortages

[rsherm]

Does anyone else experience this? I often find that as I have maxed out my cities (all railroads, farmlands, mines; all city improvements complete) I frequently run into food shortages and eventually will have a population loss (it takes a long time b/c of granaries, but by the end of the game it happens often enough). Is this a bug? Or is there a solution for this?

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I looked for a similar title in the Civ2 threads but didn't see one. Thanks!

[Prof. Garfield]

Each citizen in a city requires 2 units of food per turn. If the city produces an odd number of food, then the city will grow until it has a deficit of exactly 1 unit of food. This is because at one less citizen, the city will have a food surplus.

You can either use food caravans to transfer a unit of food between cities or you can reduce a city's irrigation or farmland by one square.

[Ali Ardavan]

One food van delivery to a large city is all it takes. You do not need the food route, just the delivery. Your food box gets half full and that is going to last way past the end of the game.

[rsherm]

Thanks for those answers. I have tried using the food trading before (i.e. using a city that has a food surplus to deliver a food truck to a city with a single food shortage). Maybe I went over-board with it or didn't pay attention as sometimes that would lead to shortages in the food van city.

How do I make it so that the food truck delivers but that a permanent food trade route is not established?

[Ali Ardavan]

Originally Posted by rsherm

How do I make it so that the food truck delivers but that a permanent food trade route is not established?

I too dislike that 1 food/turn route and have learned how to prevent it. If the source and destination already have 3 trade routes each you can do this. Right before making the delivery open up both cities and turn all citizens who work on arrow producing tiles into specialists. Make the delivery. Put your citizens back to work.

When there are fewer than 3 trade routes in place, you will get a food route. But that can be replaced upon a trade delivery using a similar tactic.

[Sir_Lancelot]

I avoid food shortage by carefully city management.

When a city gets near its maximum population potential, I always make it produce even numbers of food. If it produces an odd number, I replace one grassland with a plains or vice versa, or I pillage one farmland.

Because I also never use Republic or Democracy, my settlers needs only one food. This is another easy way to make sure the food surplus is an even number.

A third method that can sometimes be used, is to make airbases. On some few special resources (jungle or swamp) an airbase will increase food output by only 1. But on most tiles where an airbase increases food production, it increases it by 2.

Originally Posted by Ali Ardavan

I too dislike that 1 food/turn route and have learned how to prevent it. If the source and destination already have 3 trade routes each you can do this. Right before making the delivery open up both cities and turn all citizens who work on arrow producing tiles into specialists. Make the delivery. Put your citizens back to work.

When there are fewer than 3 trade routes in place, you will get a food route. But that can be replaced upon a trade delivery using a similar tactic.

That's a clever trick! I already knew about maximizing arrows before delivering "normal" caravans/freight, but I've never thought of doing the opposite in order to avoid food routes.

[haleewud]

Please note that the airbase trick to increase food production is disallowed in GOTM play.

[rsherm]

Thanks for the tips Ali and Lancelot. The one indicated by Ali will definitely solve my problem.

As a sidenote, how do you play successfully without Republic/Democracy Lancelot? I've been playing Civ2 since it came out ages ago, but only found this forum recently (and obviously despite lots of hours logged playing I am still quite inexperienced compared to many on these forums). I have always found the SSC/Democracy/Espionage route to be most successful. I'm assuming you just shoot for Fundamentalism? Is there a thread with details about this somewhere you can point me to?

[Sir_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by haleewud

Please note that the airbase trick to increase food production is disallowed in GOTM play.

That's no surprise. But my CPU opponent don't mind me doing it lol.

I do not use this trick to get bigger cities, but I often use it in order to store some food after the city has maxed out, and I pillage the airbase before the population increase. This way, I won't suffer starvation just because an enemy Helicopter came near (if the city has no Granary).

Originally Posted by rsherm

Thanks for the tips Ali and Lancelot. The one indicated by Ali will definitely solve my problem.

As a sidenote, how do you play successfully without Republic/Democracy Lancelot? I've been playing Civ2 since it came out ages ago, but only found this forum recently (and obviously despite lots of hours logged playing I am still quite inexperienced compared to many on these forums). I have always found the SSC/Democracy/Espionage route to be most successful. I'm assuming you just shoot for Fundamentalism? Is there a thread with details about this somewhere you can point me to?

I don't need the benefits from Rep and Demo, I stick with Monarchy or Fundamentalism. It annoys me that I get too much gold, rushbuilds should have been more expensive.
I have not tried Communism yet (I'm a novice and haven't played much).

Demo is very powerful if you manage to get WLTKD (We Love The King Day), it'll make your cities grow super fast (maybe too fast). But the disadvantage is military unhappiness. I tend to place my army around the map and that would cause much unhappiness, maybe enough to cause disorder.

In Monarchy and Fundamentalism, I still manage to produce much trade because I easily can keep my cities celebrating.

But I play on Prince, maybe I should move up one or two levels and perhaps find out that getting gold is harder?

[Ali Ardavan]

Originally Posted by Sir_Lancelot

But I play on Prince, maybe I should move up one or two levels and perhaps find out that getting gold is harder?

You definitely should. You should also join the GOTMs and see how others play under the same circumstances and how their result is different from yours.