Farmer Specialists

[chunkymonkey]

Excuse me if this has already been suggested elsewhere, but I think a neat little addition to the specialist range currently available would be a farmer. He or she would produce just one food - any more than this would be exploitable.

This would allow the cessation of those annoying end-game scenarios where you are in a situation where a fully worked city radius has +1 food, leaving the city to flip back and forth between starvation and growth. I know that this can be solved in some situations by forestation of certain squares, but i thought another alternative might be useful.

Maybe after a Modern age advance like Hydroponics or something.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Check out this old thread in the C3C requests forum. (Wow, that thread stuck in my memory all these months!)

It was a similar idea - a specialist that would produce 1 food for those cities stuck in the desert, flip-flopping between two population points (when you have an odd number of food per turn). However, the only place it would be worthy would be tiles that produce 0 food. Otherwise, you could either have a specialist that gives one food or a tile (like plains) that gives one food. So...I don't know, there isn't really a need for it. Just irrigate/mine to get your city at even food per turn..

 

[sir_schwick]

Here is a thead that solves this issue, but a lot more as well http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=97860

 

[donsig]

I'd like to see something similar to the CIv 2 food caravan brought back. Being able to transport food from the outlying (and not so productive) cities of your empire to your hearland would make those outlying cities more valuable. It would also add another dimension to the strategy aspect of the game. The game would also be a bit more realistic. Rome was fed on Egyptian grain was it not?

 

[rupertslander]

I like the idea of having farmers who would produce extra food, but instead of limiting him to one food, I would have no problem farmers producing two food - but they would have to actually farming a tile to get the bonus - that would take away the exploitability aspect of it.

Building on this suggestion - we could also have "miners" who would produce a one or two shield bonus on any tile he is working.

Also for both farmers and miners, they could only work tiles which are already capable of producing food/shields. And we could have fishermen and in the modern age we could have undersea miners.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I still say that the best, and least exploitable, option is the ability to vector food and/or shields from one city to another-via a central pool. If you place the requirement of being in the trade network (and having to pay maintainance costs on the underlying trade infrastructure-like roads and rail) AND the possibility of 'Wastage' over long distance transportation, then any exploitability of the system is almost completely lost (I NEVER underestimate the ability of a player to 'rape' the rules of a game !)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Tholish]

Yes, maintenance costs for road and rail! Let worked road produce 2 gold, worked rail produce 3, and maintenance cost be 1 for road and 2 for the road/rail combination. The AI wouldn't know how to use it though.

As for food, it would be nice to have a food producing citizen (agriculturalist), one who produces one extra food if working a tile, but no shields or gold, as it would be nice to have a shield producing citizen (industrialist), one who produces an extra shield, but not food or gold regardless of development. But once again, that's another thing for the AI to be too dumb to use right, though I could be wrong and it could be wicked with it. Add a commerce producing citizen (merchant), who produces an extra gold on the square he works, but no shields or food. And maybe, with advancing tech, you could get new and improved versions of them that produce 2 extra.

As for moving food between cities, it should depend on tech. At first you could only move a small portion, then with canning you could move more, then with refrigeration more yet, until you get to modern times when you can produce food on one side of the world and transport it to the other side. Perhaps this could be represented with units that represent units of food. When they are created they can be transported to another city, where they are disbanded to add food to that city. Every turn, the food unit is degraded in value, so the faster you can move it the better. At first each food unit is cut in half each turn, and only has a 4 food capacity. Later, the capacity increases to 10, and the decay is only -2 per turn. Finally, food units can hold up to 20 units and can be airlifted. What fun, we could micromanage food!