City growth, food and population....

[Jimmyh]

City growth, food, population, etc have all had the same functionality in every Civ game to date.

This system works, but is it realistic?. In reality a civilization population does not get bigger because of food.

So I'd like to know what people's thoughts are on this system and how you would go about expanding/improving it. Or maybe your happy with it.

Civ has 1 food type which represents all food in the city, maybe a city should represent all food types, maybe having multiple food types will increase health.

Should a city have real population numbers, instead of a city size. You would of course need to use that population to work the city, build units, improvements, wonders etc.

Any way, just some of my thoughts. I would love to hear what other people think.

Jimmy.

 

[ColinTH]

Civ has 1 food type which represents all food in the city, maybe a city should represent all food types, maybe having multiple food types will increase health.

Civ4 had health foods, mainly because health was a major part of the game.

As far as Civ5 goes, happiness is the major issue. Quite frankly I would not want a health issue to deal with.

 

[Dentalfury]

City growth, food, population, etc have all had the same functionality in every Civ game to date.

This system works, but is it realistic?. In reality a civilization population does not get bigger because of food.

So I'd like to know what people's thoughts are on this system and how you would go about expanding/improving it. Or maybe your happy with it.

Civ has 1 food type which represents all food in the city, maybe a city should represent all food types, maybe having multiple food types will increase health.

Should a city have real population numbers, instead of a city size. You would of course need to use that population to work the city, build units, improvements, wonders etc.

Any way, just some of my thoughts. I would love to hear what other people think.

Jimmy.

I think the growth mechanic that is in place is fine for cities at the moment. It would be interesting to see if a new resource was added to tweak growth factors to make them more valuable. For instance, Wheat gets a +1 to food if worked by a city, how about making it +1 to food and 10% food carried over to next growth cycle like hospitals/etc. already provide.

My biggest problem with the food/growth system though is the lack of inter-city resource management that existed in Civ2 and in Alpha Centauri. Some cities are in great areas to grow crops, others have access to vast mineral resources, why does every city I make have to be great at gathering both to be effective? I can see this restriction on older era cities because transportation/refrigeration technoloy was not sufficient to transfer food/products from city A to city B hundreds or thousands of miles away.

When really thinking about it though, even cities in ancient times, like Rome for example, imported tremendous amounts of food daily to keep its city going. Makes me scratch my head a bit.