Food Resources Rethink

[dagriggstar]

So something that has always I guess slightly bothered me since Civ immemorial is that bonus resources (food typically) is static throughout the game. Bananas in reality are native to SE Asia but through human interactions have come to be grown all over the world. But in Civ it's just there at the start of the game or it's not.

So essentially I would like some mechanism where food resources can spread around the map. An example might be
1) Through exploration you find an Egyptian city Memphis that has a with a source of Wheat. Your Civ does not have any sources
2) You send a trade from your city Athens to the city of Memphis. This route gives Athens +1 food
3) For each turn that the trade route is active, there is a 2% (for example) chance that a farmed worked flat plains tile belonging to Athens will spawn wheat.
4) Wheat spawns in Athens. The trade route to Memphis no longer yields +1 food for Athens. Instead, each city in your empire gains +1 food. No extra food for duplicates.
The above example would need to include some mechanism for restricting harvesting resources.

Thoughts ? The example above would be a Civ 7 feature as tile yields would need to be reworked completely.

 

[Phrozen]

I tend to think that instead of the resource being there for transplantable resources like wheat, rice, horses, etc. is that those tiles are exceptional areas for farming/ranching that particular resource. So like the Palouse in the real world is an exceptional area for wheat due to the massive amount volcanic top soil it has.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I tend to think that instead of the resource being there for transplantable resources like wheat, rice, horses, etc. is that those tiles are exceptional areas for farming/ranching that particular resource. So like the Palouse in the real world is an exceptional area for wheat due to the massive amount volcanic top soil it has.

Yes, it's because of volcanic soil, but there's none in Civ. You have to admit that, as long as we meet the conditions, we can grow bananas in a variety of locations on earth, and make it Industries, even if not the original country of the plant. And, wheat gives more in Egypt for example because of flood plains, however not every wheat tile in Civ is on flood plains... This is definitely somethinig to consider when designing a new Civ game : the reproductability of some resources. Overexploitation, depleting, new techniques of finding them included.

Personnally, I always wanted several levels of exploitation intensity : careful (preserve), a little like chop vs. lumbermills for forests, but with food and farms, or "scourge mode". In the same way migrations should be made more easy, like you don't have to grow a city from scratch to do so, but can "borrow" (conquer) cities or locations to your neighbours (earth is "fully populated" from the start), and grow them with population you bring yourself from another location.

Also I don't think being able to reproduce infinite wheat for example, could lead to exploits : not only you can make wheat a basic farm outputs, or potatoes, or corn, or rice, etc. but there exists in Civ5 at least a lot of "crappy" locations that you don't want to colonize, because there's nothing there.

However, there is the question of plant variety, and we couldn't represent every major plant for every civilization present in a game, and we can see now that the generic farm is a good invention finally, eventhough misleading. Maybe give the graphical representation of nearby resources for generic farms ? (and properties too ? This can be balanced except if you start without food resource even if it's unlikely - don't forget there's animals too... but in Civ5 you can start without any except luxury it's true. Well, in a Civ5 type of game, you could always cure this early by commerce or planting cities : the farms spread as lonjg as you have one source of plant only in your empire - or in Civ6 type of comptoirs - basically having comptoirs with another civ would give you its resources)

 

[killmeplease]

bioresources should defititely be moveable in some way
it was a very significant process historically

maybe all bonus resources should be harvested, to unlock certain improvements, e.g. harvest wheat to build wheat farms, cattle to build cattle pastures etc
scouts could have 1-2 harvest charges, to collect new resources from distant places. or 1 cargo space, so they had to return into your territory with the resources they have harvested

different improvements could have different mechanics, e.g.:

the wheat farm: adjacency bonus for nearby unworked wheat farms (representing the extensive nature of wheat farming), +1 food per adjacent unworked wheat farm, for the maximum of 9 food on grasslands (3 base + 6 from adjacency), but capped at a certain level with technology: no adjacency bonus at first, then 1 max with oxen, 2 max with horses, 3 max with horses and oats, 4 max with iron plows of better designs (19 century agricultural revolution) and no cap (6 max) with internal combustion engine (tractors).
rice farm: higher base yield (4 on grassland with fresh water), but no adjacency bonuses. its yield is increased with irrigation (builder's action) by +2, for the max of 6
potato farm: +3 food (5 on grassland) minus distance to the city (high yields but expensive transportation)
pig farm: +1 food, +1 food per adjacent forest (max adjacency bonus = 3)
cattle pasture: +1 food, +1 food per adjacent unimproved flat grasslands or plains
goat pasture: +0.5 food per adjacent unimproved grasslands or plains. the bonus is smaller than for cattle but includes hills
sheep pasture: +0.5 food and gold per adjacent unimproved grasslands (flat or hills)
pastures get adjacency bonuses from 2 tiles max, 4 with horseback riding and 6 with steel (barbed wire)

to make it more fun, animals can be stolen from pastures by enemies, particularly barbarians -- in this case you have to chase them to get your herds back, or build a new pasture (if you have another one intact, to 'copy-paste' animals from it).

 

[monstercat]

Great ideas, you could have builders herd horses, cows and sheep to different suitable tiles, and maybe in the later game Builders can 'gather seeds' on a food tile, then plant them on another suitable tile, so in time that tile becomes another source of the resource. And I like the ideas of each resource to have different 'origins', then gradually becoming worldwide over time.