Food: Caravans and Distribution

[Spendoza]

This discussion was started in Balance - Combined, however that thread need not be hijacked
the highlights so far:

... modify the way food works in Civ games, to basically make it the way gold currently works. Gold is accrued in every city but you can spend it wherever you want. Why can’t we do the same for food? Let food be accrued in every city the way it is now, but allow the player to distribute the food to every city according to the player’s needs/wishes.

Perhaps food can only be distributed to a city with a market + (road or harbor) after X tech is acquired
or have a Food Bucket like the Culture Bucket, and you can send X to B City from A City at the cost of A City's growth. Theoretically speaking it shouldn't be so difficult to MacGuyver the culture bucket into a food bucket... The distribution system would be the tricky part so...

NEW BUILDABLE UNIT:
Food Caravan - similar to the ones in Colonization. Requires X and X to build (Food Bucket still necessary to go that route)
functions sorta Great Merchant from CIV, except instead of +/t it just deposits a one time lump sum from bucket A in bucket B

I am reminded of the Quest system from CIV, some of them asked you to give X food to Y civ/city, could the code held within that section help?

With SDK, it may be pretty simple to make a food wagon that is "constructed" with food in the same fashion as settlers, but does not take hammers at all (your hammers would just be wasted while the food wagon was building)
So the food wagon might cost 50 to build, and it just uses excess food to apply towards this cost. Once it's done, you can move it to another city and deposit, and that city gains 50 food.
It will probably be a lot easier to do than a food bucket.

I really like this part of his idea:

Maybe a Wagon would become available at Chivalry or so, which was somewhat inefficient (costing more food to build than the amount it would deposit). It would still have utility but you could not just move food around willy nilly.
Much later, when you get Refrigeration, you make a Refrigerated Truck that can move food with no losses

However,

I'm certain that nothing like it is possible just by XML modding.

d'oh!
Feyd Rautha had the following idea:

One thing to consider is that food in this game means population. Therefore, we need to look at how population functions in the real world. I lived for years in Indiana. While they have good population in Indianapolis, and some of the northern "rust belt" cities around the Great Lakes, in the more rural areas there are constantly articles and such about "brain drain". Basically, once people get to a certain point they move away from the rural farming areas to big cities often in other states.

Yes, the food is an issue, but at the core of things is that food can be moved to where people are or want to be.

That said, perhaps what could be done is that population loss from starvation could be removed and a function could be added that would drop the population of one city by one and you could then move the resulting unit across your nation to supplement the population at your metropolis. The metropolis doesn't grow naturally (too many people and not enough food), but the people there don't starve because the food from other places makes its way there.

In a mechanics sense this could probably work, but it would dramatically change the game. You could set up feeder cities that did nothing but work five or six tiles and then send any new citizens to your capital. This would lead to massive cities with more citizens than tiles and the like which could mean massive production, science, or the like. If you think about it though isn't that how our cities work today?

An option would be to make a "immigrant pool" representing this group. They don't consume food, but they've lowered the population elsewhere to make the population in your metropolis greater. They work as normal citizens in every other way. This way you could limit it by various means...
Granary? +1 immigrant pool due to it's ability to store excess food for them.
Trade route? For each one the capital has it can have one immigrant (signifying the food that is coming in as well).
University? Brain drain begins and capital or other metropoli can have two more citizens.
Currency? Trade becomes more prevalent and you can have an empire wide +1 immigrant pool.
Refrigeration? Food becomes a non-issue and a much larger group of immigrants (10 or even 20) can be settled in a particular metropolis.
Other techs/buildings? All of them add more citizens that can be sent to the big city.

In the end, this now could be my favorite mod idea! Either way though I hope something is changed.

food bucket = immigrant pool?

One potential problem is the starvation mechanic... if you boost a 1pop city to 2pop and only have 2 food to support it there will be starvation, correct? the "boost" would be temporary and therefore borderline useless.
Perhaps Caravans should be the bastard child of the Great Merchants of CIV and the granary of CiV, adding a permanent +X to city B at the cost of City A's growth.
Either that, or you would have to have a steady stream of caravans going from A to B..
How difficult would it be to make City B pull X/t from City A once a Caravan has arrived/settled? (does that even make sense outside my head?)
Maybe certain buildings (market, granary whatever) reduces the speed at which starvation occurs?
Another ambitious idea I am very excited for but lack the programming experience to implement.
Thoughts? Thal, Dale, I'm lookin at you!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Simple method.

When a city is connected with the capital, (1/2)* of their excess food becomes "Imperial"

"Imperial Food" is first used in cities connected with the capital that have shortfalls

The excess is equally divided among cities connected with the capital that do not have "Avoid Growth" on.

Maritime City States give a benefit directly to the "Imperial" food.

* The 1/2 could be modified... say 1/2 but 1/2 with Rail Roads or Refrigeration?
This avoids the mm with Caravans.

If you wanted "Food Exporters" you would just put them on "Focus Food" and "Avoid Growth".

 

[Thalassicus]

Civilization II had caravans, did not miss them to be honest, it turns into tedious micromanagement. I preferred Alpha Centauri's method where the supply crawler could transfer a steady stream of nutrients, minerals, or energy (food/prod/gold). It would be a relatively easy way to implement a semi-nationalized food supply.

Honestly, I miss supply crawlers.

 

[Tomice]

I think they could have made a change in this game to make continent specific food supplies. They already have a partial concept with Maritime City-States, but they could have calculated the surplus food per city and divided that among all the cities. Maritime city-states would not be as powerful either because they could just send their food to this pool (instead of to every city). Why did they not do that? I have no idea.

Because it'd make the surrounding of a city irrelevant, which is neither fun nor realistic. It would be 100% your choice, which city grew and how big. Did leaders ever have means to decide this? Not really.

This would lead to massive cities with more citizens than tiles and the like which could mean massive production, science, or the like. If you think about it though isn't that how our cities work today?

I agree that specialists should be more valuable and common than they are now. It would be realistic, too.

But we should be careful about the "super-city" issue. Everything concentrated in one city might not be fun. Although, it's quite realistic, think about Moskva, Paris or ancient Rome. Centralism is common.

 

[Spendoza]

@Tomice - You raise a good point. Perhaps I am over thinking the issue.

After playing a few turns last night, I got to thinking. My problem is I'm still playing like its CIV. It's not.

New idea:
Merchant Specialists also give +2/t, perhaps increasing to +3 at Refrigeration

That would achieve exactly what I am imagining (a way to grow cities that have little surrounding them) with only one simple block of code.

I'd like to incorporate some sort of bonus for having with the capital.
Any thoughts on the balance of this addition?

 

[Displaced - BR]

I always was puzzled with the food bonus the great merchant grants in Civ 4, because there's no logic for me...it should be gold only, so I don't think the same "mistake" should repeat in Civ 5.

The trade route system is better than the caravans because, like Thalassicus said, it would be boring to manouver the caravans in mid/large empires.

Also, it's not incompatible with the food bucket concept. Altough personnaly I'm not going to use such a concept if someone put it in a mod, I think it's a valid add on to those who enjoy it.

My thoughts of bonuses given by the trade routes are that every route grants +1 Food, +1 with railroad connection (that includes the harbor) and finally +1 with refrigeration.

 

[Spendoza]

@Displaced - So you propose having trade routes give a max potential of +4 (Road +1 Harbor +1 Railroad +1 Refrigeration +1)?
If so, I like it. I hear what you're saying about the merchants giving food, and it makes sense to me. Your trade route suggestion sounds a lot cleaner and would solve all the potential issues I can think of.
Not sure how to begin implementing it, but that's the fun in learning, isn't it
I think the key is:
- bonus food going to whatever city is NOT the capital
- only 1 bonus/type, i.e. a city connected by road to 3 other cities is only going to get +1 for the road connection(s)
is that even possible?

 

[dguichar]

If you look at the topic of age Pyramid (might read there to understand what follows) and mix it with this in order to have growth not based in food (but still using it to feed civil popula) and making an empire granary, where extra food is used for the military (nobody really has played Master of magic?).tion