How does one make a whole bunch of size 50 cities?

[Illusion13]

Example: look at the highest Deity score game at HoF. Every single one of his cities is starving at like a huge load of foods per turn... I know it probably only starves one citizen a turn, and he probably worker piled it to that huge size, but they got to have came from somewhere... Especially with Civ 2's support system where you physically couldnt have too many units before production goes bad and stuff...

 

[Ace]

Hi Illusion13,

The way to get these large cities is to use the FCT (food caravan trick). I.e., pairs of cities exchange food freight each turn. Each time a city's food box is filled, the city grows by one citizen. Its time consuming and, frankly, a boring way to play, but it leads to very high scores.

 

[Illusion13]

But there's only so much food one city can provide... Or am I completely wrong on how food caravans work?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Food caravans give half a food box for a city. So it a city's food box is 100 food is gives it 50 food. Say the city only has 20 food in its food box. The first food caravan gves it 70 total food. The second food caravan gives the city another 50 food (up to the max), and, once the city has a full food box it adds another citizen. It then calculates how much food the citizens use and can give the city a food shortage. Repeat the cycle and you can keep adding citizens up to the max city size.

All it takes is two food caravans delivered together and the city will keep growing.