Transporting food and production

[Aristos]

Something that worries me a little after seeing the PAX demo is the new system of cities exporting food and production to other needing cities. I did not see any sign of the exported food or production having any cost, or counterpart. I hope that is not the case, Civ5 already suffers to some extent from the "instant gratification" generation problem; that is, many things do not have a trade off, a counterpart, a cost of opportunity.

I would like to see the new mechanism as a zero sum option, meaning that the city that exports 4 food units also looses those 4 food units, and not that the 4 food units are a magical product of the caravan.

Did anyone see a sign that this is indeed the case?

 

[Calouste]

Using trade routes to transport food between cities definitely has a trade off, because you only have a limited number of trade routes, and it is one trader route you can no longer use to get gold from other civs.

 

[ferretbacon]

Well, transferring the food or production would suggest that the city exporting the apples and hammers is going to lose what it's sending.

The system is for using your lesser cities to bolster the growth and build speed in, say, your capital at the expense of those lesser cities.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Nothing from the screenshots indicated that the food/production was going to be lost in the sender city. I think we need to wait for future developments before we say that it is a true transfer of resources.

 

[blackcatatonic]

^ But the reverse is also true, i.e. I see no basis for assuming that the exported food or production won't be lost to the source city, just as how trading away the last/unique copy of a luxury or strategic resource results in your no longer being able to use it.

 

[AriochIV]

I think we have to assume that the food or production is lost from the sending city; it's not certain but it wouldn't make sense otherwise; it would just be free resources out of the ether.

This is in addition to the opportunity cost to losing the gold from using the route for international trade. So I think using a domestic route would be best used only in the short term when you need a critical production or growth boost in a particular city.

 

[steveg700]

I think we have to assume that the food or production is lost from the sending city; it's not certain but it wouldn't make sense otherwise; it would just be free resources out of the ether.

I hope this is true: I want the game to incentivize building focused cities to create an empire with farmbelts and mining towns.

Of course, the end result of this might mean that you set up a mining town, ship out the production on one trade route, and then have to feed that town with a trade route from a farmbelt city.

You know what? I'm having extreme difficulty waiting for July 9th!!!

 

[ferretbacon]

That's what I'm most excited about with these internal trade routes: the ability to have a 'bread basket' city and an industrial center.

Just yesterday I was playing a game and settled a city next to Mt. Sinai. I placed the city between two rivers that had flood plains running all down their lengths. No production to speak of, but the crop yield was fantastic. If I had been playing in BNW, the city would have been an ideal candidate to ship out its food to more worthwhile cities.

 

[SamBC]

I think we have to assume that the food or production is lost from the sending city; it's not certain but it wouldn't make sense otherwise; it would just be free resources out of the ether.

This is in addition to the opportunity cost to losing the gold from using the route for international trade. So I think using a domestic route would be best used only in the short term when you need a critical production or growth boost in a particular city.

Gold from a foreign route is free resources out of the ether. Just sayin'. When the number of routes you can have is strictly limited, the opportunity cost of not getting that gold is potentially significant.

 

[apocalypse105]

They mentioned that in the pax demo at sunday .

If you use the option to transport foot or production you won't get any gold per turn from trade routes between foreign civs limit amount of trade routes

 

[Camikaze]

The opportunity cost will presumably be quite large. Ideally, I'd like a system where you could actually send production/food from one city to another, but if the alternative is free gold from trade routes, who would ever select the option giving them no net gain?

 

[Aristos]

The opportunity cost will presumably be quite large. Ideally, I'd like a system where you could actually send production/food from one city to another, but if the alternative is free gold from trade routes, who would ever select the option giving them no net gain?

Gold from trade routes are an abstraction, fair enough. But food and production from one city to another should be zero sum game, at least for me. I don't like the idea of magically appearing bread.

 

[asmartlittleman]

I am pretty sure that one of the devs mentioned that granary and workshop are needed to transport food and hammers respectively. Maybe the food and hammer bonus you get from these building will not be in effect in the city when you trade the resource. This would be a small trade off since you are not losing base food or production from tiles just the extra you get from the buildings. You also would have to build these buildings again making a investment even though i usually build these in all of my cities already. On the same note i think markets will effect the amount of money from trade routes.

 

[Babri]

Gold from trade routes are an abstraction, fair enough. But food and production from one city to another should be zero sum game, at least for me. I don't like the idea of magically appearing bread.

But who will use domestic trade routes then? I know that international routes should be more profitable but you have to consider these three points then:-

- Gold is much more scarce now because coastal & river tiles don't provide free gold.

- While you would 'create' gold by trade routes, you could only 'move' production or food as per your logic. That would make the second much less useful.

- The 'moving' of yields wouldn't bode well with rest of the ciV design. Most of the things in ciV are bonuses & positive modifiers rather than neutral or negative (eg: religion, SPs) etc

And I have a question. Will it makes sense that food yields increase with increased distance between cities. I mean this is true for gold international trades but would look quite odd for food or production.

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[apocalypse105]

I'm still wondering do you still be able to connect you're own cities with routes for gold per turn?

 

[janboruta]

I'm still wondering do you still be able to connect you're own cities with routes for gold per turn?

I think yes, because internal trade routes don't seem to yield gold - they only increase food or production per turn. Only international and city-state trade routes seem to create revenue in gold, especially if both nations have different resources available.

At least that's what we know at the moment.

 

[steveg700]

But who will use domestic trade routes then?

Someone alienated, with no embassies anywhere. A warmonger, for instance, or someone surrounded by warmongers.

Someone trying to rapidly built up a city.

Someone trying to build up a wonder.

Someone who wants to turtle-up, and doesn't want to import foreign tourism, religion, and/or export their science.

I think international routes are intended to be the generally superior option. They want you to interact. Internal routes are probably intended for very specific goals.

I think it's worth noting that you can only export food and hammers, which are both localized outputs that don't go into any kind of global bucket. I think that's a pretty strong indicator that it's zero-sum.

 

[Babri]

Someone alienated, with no embassies anywhere. A warmonger, for instance, or someone surrounded by warmongers.

Someone trying to rapidly built up a city.

Someone trying to build up a wonder.

Someone who wants to turtle-up, and doesn't want to import foreign tourism, religion, and/or export their science.

I think international routes are intended to be the generally superior option. They want you to interact. Internal routes are probably intended for very specific goals.

I think it's worth noting that you can only export food and hammers, which are both localized outputs that don't go into any kind of global bucket. I think that's a pretty strong indicator that it's zero-sum.

Fair enough. But there could be one issue. For example if you want to move only 4 hammers to a city but trade route transfers like 8 of them instead, then how are you going to control it?

Anyway I would still say that they would probably go with create than move approach as it requires less micro & has no direct negative impact, thus more compatible with ciV design approach.

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[Avatan]

In some way the money from trade route is also free money with nothing in return, so I am ok with the food/production not being a sum zero game.

Money should be more crucial and scarce, because then the devs are equating 4 hammers with 2gpt in the demo (at least in the early game) which is completely off balance in the current settings.

I see those internal routes being very useful in the early and at least, to kickstart young cities/rush libraries for exemple.

 

[kingchris20]

Yeah, just looking at the screenshots, I believe that you send food or production to the other city at no cost to the sending city.........my reasoning is that I believe it would show

4 or to the recipient city &
4 or from the sender city

on the trade menu......but it doens't it just shows a to the recipient city.