Food commerce?

[Ahriman]

@Ahriman: What about the Soviet Union though?

"Until modern times".
Modern technology has lowered transport costs so much that all kinds of things are feasible, and localized food supply is no longer important for urban development.

Last time I checked, the Nile didn't run through the Kharga oasis.

Fair enough. Doesn't look like mostly food though. I really don't believe that Egpyt was feeding Sudan to a large extent with over-land trade, or vice versa. Spices, gold, ivory are high value:mass trade goods. Food isn't.
The route is referred to as the "40 days road". 40 days, for transporting foodstuffs?

Trade zones are tiered. Rivers are a medium-tier trade route, ancient roads are a low-tier trade route, and open water is a high-tier trade route.

The tier of a trade route determines its capacity to transport goods, which includes food.

Interesting, but still sounds overly complicated to me. Civ does a great job of abstracting from trading specific goods by using generic commerce. Its simple, elegant and transparent, and it works.

but it is the health, not the food, that causes the city to grow.

This doesn't make sense to me. If anything, the places in the world with the highest population growth have the worst health.
Food supply as a cause for population growth makes much more sense than health, particularly in ancient times.
An empty desert might be very health (nothing can live there, so no disease) but that doesn't make the population grow.

I'd call it a slum.

Many millions of people migrate to urban slums all over the developing world (especially Africa, India, China), because as horrible as they are, people still see them as prefereable to the life of rural subsisdence farming.

The existing civ economy means that *you* are in charge of your cities growth. The system is very transparent and predictable, there is no randomness.
If a city is huge and unhappy, its because of your actions (or inaction).

A migration mechanic that happens automatically is taking power out of the player's hands and putting it behind the scene. I don't support that. Civ is supposed to be simple enough that you can really understand the whole system.

 

[Yakk]

"Interesting, but still sounds overly complicated to me. Civ does a great job of abstracting from trading specific goods by using generic commerce. Its simple, elegant and transparent, and it works.

*nod* -- well, it doesn't work. Trade is pretty zzz in civ, and you cannot (as an example) starve a city by cutting off trade networks.

This doesn't make sense to me. If anything, the places in the world with the highest population growth have the worst health.
Food supply as a cause for population growth makes much more sense than health, particularly in ancient times.
An empty desert might be very health (nothing can live there, so no disease) but that doesn't make the population grow.

That empty desert will have horrible health if the population grows to more than a trivial number, because people will starve to death.

The modern era, with high health and low population growth, is simply an example of civic choices that turn excess health into happiness instead of growth!

A migration mechanic that happens automatically is taking power out of the player's hands and putting it behind the scene. I don't support that. Civ is supposed to be simple enough that you can really understand the whole system.

Well, if people migrated into cities based off of the happiness/health/social policies of the city...

Ie, you could watch as Red Crosses and Happy faces accumulated in the Immigration and Growth sliders. When you have enough Happy faces, you get an immigrant growth event. When you get enough Red Crosses, you get a population growth event.

Similarly, unhappy and sickness points accumulate, and when they hit the threshold, you get an unhappiness event -- maybe a plague, a diaspora, revolt, etc.

Social policies could change what kind of thing happens when your health/sickness/happiness/discontent meters fill up.

 

[Ahriman]

and you cannot (as an example) starve a city by cutting off trade networks.

You can starve a city by surrounding it and pillaging its food yielding improvements. Why do you need to be able to do it by blocking trade routes?

Without enough troops to surround the city, you *shouldn't* be able to cut off its food supply.

Pulling off a siege of an entire city was very difficult, historically. In many cases besiegers couldn't pull off a full encirclement (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antioch).
You have to have a huge number of troops to encircle a city outside of weapons range, and you risk spreading your forces so thin that a sally can do tremendous damage.

That empty desert will have horrible health if the population grows to more than a trivial number, because people will starve to death.

... which is an argument for *food* controlling population growth, not health.

Building a hospital doesn't increase population growth rate.

Higher health tends to lead to reduce fertility rates, not increase population growth rates.

Well, if people migrated into cities based off of the happiness/health/social policies of the city...

Then you would be rewarding poor city management. You should suffer for expanding past your capacity, you shouldn't just be able to farm the population off to other cities in your empire.

And which city to they go to? Its hard to set up a transparent system where the player is fully in control of what is going on without it being complex.

 

[chongli]

Fair enough. Doesn't look like mostly food though. I really don't believe that Egpyt was feeding Sudan to a large extent with over-land trade, or vice versa. Spices, gold, ivory are high value:mass trade goods. Food isn't.
The route is referred to as the "40 days road". 40 days, for transporting foodstuffs?

Ahh, the argument from personal incredulity. Because it sounds too complicated or difficult to you, it must not be true.

 

[Ahriman]

Ahh, the argument from personal incredulity. Because it sounds too complicated or difficult to you, it must not be true.

Nothing to do with "too complicated or difficult". Try, "too expensive". You have to pay the workers, and carry enough fodder (and water) for draft animals. 40 days of supplies for draft animals is a *lot*.
And there are no good roads.

Its like the reason now why today don't transport cement long distances over land. Its high mass, low value, so the transport costs are too high for it to be economic.

Sudan and Egpyt were both capable of growing significant amounts of food, and the population centers were linked by a water passage (with a few cateracts to portage around). Why would they devote intensive resources to trading grain with each other?

If you can provide some economic history evidence of large tonnage of trade, then I'll concede that I am in error. But I would be very surprised.

 

[Yakk]

Ya. When you move food over-land, you need to burn calories to move the food.

This caloriesound-miles moved ratio determines the maximum practical range you can supply people with food overland practically.

The Sailing Boat caloriesound-miles moved is much higher, because you pay for the food movement using non-food calories.

The result is that supply lines for food using ground based transportation must be extremely short to be economical, which also points out why trade centres (and hence big cities) are located at water based transportation locations.

 

[chongli]

Nothing to do with "too complicated or difficult". Try, "too expensive". You have to pay the workers, and carry enough fodder (and water) for draft animals. 40 days of supplies for draft animals is a *lot*.
And there are no good roads.

You don't need good roads. Camels cross the desert just fine. They also don't need much, if any, water. Not all food needs to be carried anyway, some of it can walk on its own (livestock).

Its like the reason now why today don't transport cement long distances over land. Its high mass, low value, so the transport costs are too high for it to be economic.

There are a lot of things that are economically infeasible today that were done back then, take a look at the pyramids.

Sudan and Egpyt were both capable of growing significant amounts of food, and the population centers were linked by a water passage (with a few cateracts to portage around). Why would they devote intensive resources to trading grain with each other?

Because not everybody lived on the banks of the river.

If you can provide some economic history evidence of large tonnage of trade, then I'll concede that I am in error. But I would be very surprised.

Large tonnage was simply unnecessary back then, as populations were much lower. The amount of food they moved around was much less than what we move today. That doesn't make my point any less valid, however.

 

[Yakk]

How many kJ does it take to carry 1 kg of food 1 km?

How many kJ are stored in 1 kg of food when eaten by people (and/or the animals in question).

That ratio is the ratio of transportation decay, per km, and gives you a half-life of transported food (at the half-life point, you need to burn 1 food calorie do deliver 1 calorie of food at that distance).

That is what I was talking about, and why I was saying that land transport of food may not be at all practical over anything except short distances.

Doing something like moving food "on the hoof" basically harvests the food along the transportation corridor, which means that the amount of food delivered is mainly a function of the food grown along the transportation corridor, and not the source.

 

[Elliot]

Historical accuracy in a civ game is really difficult because life before and after the industrial revolution is so different. Before railroads, cities need to be located on or near waterways because land transport is extremely expensive. With railroads and trucks, land transport is more reasonable, although naval transport is especially cheap nowadays with container ships.

To capture this in civ you would have vast expanses of your empire vacant or just producing susbsistance agriculture until 1800ish. Once you have the industrial revolution, however, populations explode in coastal cities and in landlocked areas. You don't see this in civ. What you see is a gradual increase in populations as you acquire more happiness and health resources. I think the way civ has approached it is more fun though. Waiting thousands of years for the railroad to develop your land would be boring. And the first civ to get to the industrial revolution would snowball and dominate the earth. Which is what happened as Europe dominated the world because it entered the industrial revolution first.

 

[Ahriman]

You don't need good roads. Camels cross the desert just fine. They also don't need much, if any, water. Not all food needs to be carried anyway, some of it can walk on its own (livestock).

Uhh.. what? You can't herd livestock for 40 days across desert. And yes, you'd have to carry food and water with you for your draught animals. More if you were taking livestock. Driving sheep or goats or cattle through the desert for weeks? Never happened.

There are a lot of things that are economically infeasible today that were done back then, take a look at the pyramids.

That is a demonstration of the power of military force and slave labor and religious mania (and pharonic megalomania). Pyramids were incredibly uneconomic, but the pharoahs had the power and wealth to make them happen.

People don't conduct trade missions under threat of force, they do it for profit.

So totally bogus comparison. When have people conducted trade expeditions except when motivated by profit?

Because not everybody lived on the banks of the river.

In Egypt? Sure they did. Or in a few oases.

Large tonnage was simply unnecessary back then, as populations were much lower. The amount of food they moved around was much less than what we move today. That doesn't make my point any less valid, however.

Large tonnage of food transport is necessary to feed a large city. So of course it makes your point (that there were ancient cities fed largely by food transported over land from elsewhere) invalid.

@Elliot
Agreed.

The civ mechanics are largely designed to make sense in an ancient world context, and they do so pretty well.

 

[chongli]

Uhh.. what? You can't herd livestock for 40 days across desert. And yes, you'd have to carry food and water with you for your draught animals. More if you were taking livestock. Driving sheep or goats or cattle through the desert for weeks? Never happened.

Uh, the entire route is 40 days long, divided into multiple segments with stops at oases along the way. You're blowing it way out of proportion, it's not that big of a deal.

That is a demonstration of the power of military force and slave labor and religious mania (and pharonic megalomania). Pyramids were incredibly uneconomic, but the pharoahs had the power and wealth to make them happen.

The pyramids being built by slave labor is one of the most persistent myths of ancient history, it's simply not true.

People don't conduct trade missions under threat of force, they do it for profit.

There is plenty of profit to be had bringing food to remote areas.

Large tonnage of food transport is necessary to feed a large city. So of course it makes your point (that there were ancient cities fed largely by food transported over land from elsewhere) invalid.

The entire population of ancient Egypt numbered no more than 100,000. You are way overestimating the amount of food that would've been brought along.

 

[jorissimo]

Why don't they just create a sytem where the total amount of breads and hammers produced in your empire come together, and then you can distribute it over your cities, but only if they're in your trade network. Cities outside of your trade network work the same as they do now, they only provide food/hammers/commerce for themselves.

 

[chongli]

Why don't they just create a sytem where the total amount of breads and hammers produced in your empire come together, and then you can distribute it over your cities, but only if they're in your trade network. Cities outside of your trade network work the same as they do now, they only provide food/hammers/commerce for themselves.

This is similar to how Master of Magic works, with the exception being that hammers are strictly local whereas food is global. Master of Magic also requires you to feed your armies, whereas Civ doesn't.

 

[MethanalCHO]

Just an idea: return the Caravan to Civilization. This is possible (for instance, CIV Colonization had the wagon cart).

Here's how it would work:

City A is food-rich. So rich, in fact, it has too much food for its granary to hold. City B is food-poor, yet a major production/commerce asset for the nation, and is on the brink of starvation. City A builds a Caravan/Freight unit. They then select "Food" as its cargo, from choices of Food, Production, Commerce, or any resources available to the city. They then move the Caravan to City B, and click on "Unload Cargo", and City B automatically gets the food. The player can then select the Caravan and set up a trade route to first collect food from City A, travel to City B, deposit the food, and travel back.

And no, you can't use a CiV Caravan to rush wonders. I believe returning the Caravan to Civilization would be the best way to accomodate this situation.

 

[chongli]

Just an idea: return the Caravan to Civilization. This is possible (for instance, CIV Colonization had the wagon cart).

Here's how it would work:

City A is food-rich. So rich, in fact, it has too much food for its granary to hold. City B is food-poor, yet a major production/commerce asset for the nation, and is on the brink of starvation. City A builds a Caravan/Freight unit. They then select "Food" as its cargo, from choices of Food, Production, Commerce, or any resources available to the city. They then move the Caravan to City B, and click on "Unload Cargo", and City B automatically gets the food. The player can then select the Caravan and set up a trade route to first collect food from City A, travel to City B, deposit the food, and travel back.

And no, you can't use a CiV Caravan to rush wonders. I believe returning the Caravan to Civilization would be the best way to accomodate this situation.

That's fine, I guess, but the problem in with this strategy in Civ 2 was that it took a lot of effort establish these routes and even more effort to change them. The Master of Magic-style approach is automatic and eliminates all this micromanagement effort.

 

[obscurereferenc]

Why don't they just create a sytem where the total amount of breads and hammers produced in your empire come together, and then you can distribute it over your cities, but only if they're in your trade network. Cities outside of your trade network work the same as they do now, they only provide food/hammers/commerce for themselves.

Yeah I've always liked the idea of having some resources shared empire-wide rather than city-wide. It's a simple system to understand but can lead to a lot of depth. for example you could have 'breadbasket' cities that provide much of your civ's food. When attacking a civ you could concentrate on cities that produce a lot of food, causing a food shortage and instability in the enemy civ.

 

[civ_king]

This would a a major strategic layer to Civ if added

 

[Ahriman]

Why don't they just create a sytem where the total amount of breads and hammers produced in your empire come together, and then you can distribute it over your cities, but only if they're in your trade network. Cities outside of your trade network work the same as they do now, they only provide food/hammers/commerce for themselves.

Because that would imply zero transport costs, and would make fringe cities too viable and would destroy the principle that the size and output of a city is heavily dependent on its local terrain.

Also, just my opinion, but the game is Civilization; its the story of cities. The game is about cities, and so the features of a particular city should matter for its development, not just your empire-wide production. Not all cities are created equal.

This isn't Imperialism.

 

[Yakk]

I'd be happy with a system where food wasn't the determining factor to growth (it was needed, but not determining).

Then when a city has excess food (determined by its food consumption rate, which is determined by policy and growth), that excess food gets shoved onto the trade network.

Depending on technology level and transportation network, a larger or smaller percentage is lost. Then the destination city, also depending on its technology level and transportation network, another percentage is lost.

Suppose 70% lossage on export on a land-locked city, and 70% lossage on import on a land-locked city, in the ancient era. Then 90% of food doesn't make it to the destination.

Having river access would reduce the lossage to 65%, and ocean access to 60%, which reduces the overall lossage to 84% (a 50% improvement).

By the modern era, you could have as little as 10% lossage on export and import, making a bread-basket city 80% as good as being right there.

You could then make deals with foreign powers to buy or sell food -- with the note that if you can make someone dependent on your food exports, then blockade them, they end up with serious unrest!

 

[Ahriman]

I'd be happy with a system where food wasn't the determining factor to growth (it was needed, but not determining).

Then what *would* determine population growth?

Throughout most of history, Malthus was right.