A new food system

[Nyx_]

In this thread, we tackled the issue of spending a lot of time managing
cities and units. We especially suggested solutions to reduce the number of units.
I think there are also ways to make city micromanagement faster
without compromising the strategic depth.

The main idea is to dissociate rural population from urban population,
i.e. dissociate tiles from cities. We can do it by centralizing food
and gold production:

- There is a food national stock, like the current gold stock.
- You can build improvements everywhere on your territory. Each of them
increases the stocks, not only those inside a city radius (except for hammers)
- The production of a city depends on its size and hammers in its radius.
- Your cities consume food each turn, according to their size.
- You can increase or decrease the size of a city by pushing a button. It spends
time and consumes food.

An example: Delhi
(thanks to OTAKUjbski)

Arbitrary rates:
FP (food consumption per pop.) = 10
HP (hammers per pop.) = 15
City maintenance (Delhi) = 10

Results:
Total Food Production = 60
Total Food Consumption = FP * 4 = 40
Food stock increase = 60 - 40 = 20

Total Gold Production = 22
Gold stock increase = 22 - 10 = 12 (with 0% science)

Delhi's production = 4*HP + 18 (extra hammers inside the radius) = 78

Some effects:
- trading food
- the whole territory is used and lusted after
- new overall strategies based on your control over your population

How does this save time ?
You don't have to micromanage your cities at each variation of population or tiles.

Why do I want to centralize gold ?
Otherwise there would be nothing other than farms outside city radius.

Why not centralize hammers ?
It's a good idea.

What about City Specialization ?
For example, a city with a market would make 25% extra gold from the gold
in its radius.
New results with a market in Delhi:
Delhi's Gold Production = 25% * 12 = 3
Total Gold Production = 22 + 3 = 25

Actually, because your cities don't need nearby farms to grow, you can
easier specialize them.

Any city, even the smaller ones, could make a lot of money with a market.
If it causes trouble, we can add one rule to counterbalance that:
- As well as cottages, cities naturally bring money depending on their size.

With a market, two closed cities could use the same tiles.
Why not ? The other rules penalize closeness between cities.

A city far away from the farms could quickly grows.
The city maintenance already includes a distance penalty. But I can find
a more complicated mechanism.

 

[Gangor]

Several questions:

Why not just have an organically increasing population that grows as long as extra food is available?

What do the citizens in your cities do if they're not farming? How do you balance their new productivity (presumably being only hammers) with specialists, etc?

How do you represent the difficulty of moving food long distances before it spoils?

 

[Nyx_]

Why not just have an organically increasing population that grows as long as extra food is available?
-> How to redistribute the extra food to the cities? I think it gives many strategic opportunities to let the player choose how to redistribute it.

What do the citizens in your cities do if they're not farming?
-> They are in charge of the building constructions. They increase the city production.

How do you balance their new productivity (presumably being only hammers) with specialists, etc?
->I don't know if specialists are well suited to this system.
They may consume more food than other citizens, or not bring production.

How do you represent the difficulty of moving food long distances before it spoils?
->With a distance penalty. We may increase the city maintenance or add a food penalty.

I suggest this version which corrects a few things about production and city specialization:

(1) The resources (food, hammers, gold) on your territory belong to your empire instead of your cities.
(2) The bigger your cities, the more they consume food of your central store.
(3) The bigger your cities, the less the building constructions take time.
(4) You can choose the size of your cities.
(5) City Specialization: the buildings use resources to make more resources. They are unavailable below a certain city size.
- market: available size 4. From 3 food, it makes 1 extra gold.
Thus, if a city has 15 food in its radius, it will make 5 gold in addition.
- forge: available size 6. From 3 hammers, it makes 1 extra hammer.
- bank: available size 8. From 2 gold, it makes 1 extra gold.
(6) A building construction consumes an amount of hammers of the central store.

With such a system, hammers are the raw material for the constructions; city population is the workforce who builds constructions; and food maintains the workforce. You don't manage the rural population who works in cottages, farms and mines.