Importing & Exporting Food

[Teabeard]

Does it seem a little strange that you can have one city where citizens are starving while another city has a surplus and both are connected to each other via roads and/or harbors? It used to be in Civ 2 (I think) that you could send Caravans with food to starving cities and make them become more than just 1 or 2 pop and insignificant.

So therefore I propose food, when in surplus, is treated as a trade good so that you can share it will all your cities or even with other Civs. This has greater importance later when the U.N. comes around so that food and money might be used for humanitarian aid. This idea goes great with the idea of refugee camps someone else posted awhile back... Well I for one would like to see some humanitarian aid option added to late game diplomacy.

 

[Globetrotter]

I thought about that some long time back. Great idea!
Same should stand for shields (create sort of a storage pit) in which you can store up to x amount of shields, that you can choose to reinvest at any point, or to export to another city

 

[Comrade Pedro]

And what ways could you use to do that transfers?

 

[rhialto]

I don't think shields should be storable, stockpileable, and transferable. To a great extent, they don't represent raw materials, but rather, they represent worker time multiplied by mechanical efficiency multipliers. You can't stockpile man-hours, although if you have queued jobs, the shields should roll over into the next job immediately.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Well, maybe you could have an "Export to New City" button in the city window, and when you click it, a box pops up, letting you type in how much foof you want to send to the other city in the selection list. This would be great for balancing cities that always seem either to be one food up or one food short of zero growth, which can be a real pain. Come to think of it, this might be useful for shields too, though I would only allow food trade after Steam Power is discovered AND you have a RR between the cities. Shield trade would have same requirements, but comes only after Mass Production.

 

[Globetrotter]

And what ways could you use to do that transfers?

As mentioned by Ivan, create a link to export X amount of food per turn from source city A to destination city B, keeping in mind that if for some reason you start to have a shortage in city A, you could still keep the export going. But if you are initially in shortage in a city, you can't export until you get a surplus. In the city screen, you could have an additional bar or whatever where it says amount of food per turn imported from A, or exported to B.

Good idea also to make it available with RR, although you could have some caravan unit added

 

[Zild]

Food caravans is one part of Civ2 that I do wish had been kept, and I see little reasons in terms of both realism and gameplay to have taken it out...

I'm not sure where I stand on what techs are required, but I would say that at the very least it should require roads (harbours/airports acceptable).

On the subject of trade in general, it might be nice to see a bit more of an ability to interupt (perhaps even steal) supplied, although right now I've no idea how this could be implemented!

 

[slothman]

I don't think shields should be storable, stockpileable, and transferable. To a great extent, they don't represent raw materials, but rather, they represent worker time multiplied by mechanical efficiency multipliers. You can't stockpile man-hours, although if you have queued jobs, the shields should roll over into the next job immediately.

That's not exactly true. When the Empire State Building was being build they got "manpower" from Pittsburgh. They didn't transfer people but people in Pittsburgh created steel beams and such which were then transfered to NYC. So essentially Pitts. gave some of it's shields to NY. If that didn't happen NYC would have a much harder time since it wasn't close to both iron and steel mills.
I do think food should be traded. I always found it annoying when I have 2 cities that are off by one food so they grow then shrink by starving then grow again. D'oh. If I could send food from one city to the other they could be stable. I did that alot in Civ2.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

The food shortage can be a significant thing, if you have a good luxury situation, and your city is celebrating, you lose this benefit when starvation sets in, only way around it is to build a worker, and you don't necessarily want to do that, you may lose quite a few production shields for that turn. If significant corruption is a factor in some of these cities, the general losses you incur just from this slight lack of foresight in game design can become considerable over time in lost gold, shields, etc. This is in addition to the other situation, where you might want a worker on a forest or hill tile, but have to put it on irrigated plains/grassland so that you won't be one short in the food box, and because of this, it takes you an additional turn and lost shield overruns to build a unit.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Boy, don't get me started on the whole 'trade of food/shields' issue. This could and SHOULD have been done in Civ3 IMHO!
Very easy to do as well. If you are connected to your capital via your trade network, then in your city screen you will have a small + and - tab after food and shields. If you click on '-', then a pop-up will appear asking how much food/shields you want to export to your 'central trade area'. you type in the number and this many 'bushels/shields' will be exported each turn-for which your city gains income based on the 'relative distance' from the capital. If you click on the '+' sign, then a pop-up will ask how many shields/bushels you want to IMPORT! You enter a number, and you will recieve this amount, each turn, from the central pool (if that quantity is available!)-with the money being deducted from the city's treasury, again based on its relative distance from the Capital.
Wastage would be a factor for more distant cities in the earlier part of the game. Depending on tech level, you will lose a certain fraction of the food or shields you move for every X Hex between the trading city and the capital.
The important part of having food and shields in a central trade area is that, when you enter into diplomacy, you can trade food and shields in much the same way as you trade luxuries and strategic resources.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker

 

[Jon Shafer]

Game balance.

Shipping food = city surrounded by mountains at 200 SPT. Not cool.

 

[Zild]

Who says not cool?

If a player manages to find a good locations in the hills and/or mountains, and can provide food via trade, then good for them.

Of course, keeping that city - and its trade connections - protected will be a vital concern. If an enemy wants to really cut the civ's production, they can move in and pillage the roads. After a few turns, the city has lost a lot of pop due to starvation, and the civ is now missing a lot of its production.

Could add some real strategy...

 

[Teabeard]

Game balance.

Shipping food = city surrounded by mountains at 200 SPT. Not cool.

So what? How is it unbalancing when everyone else in the game can do this too? I'm sure things will have to be tweaked, but it can be done.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Thats a VERY good set of points you make Zild. I would also add that building a trade connection (be it road or rail) through the mountains would be VERY time consuming. Also, cities surrounded by hostile terrain would also have a cap placed on either their max city size-depending on tech level. If so, then growing your cities population too quickly using imported food will be very dangerous as you risk MAJOR overcrowding.
In addition, importation costs AND possible wastge would help reduce the kinds of 'exploits' Trip is referring to (though no system is perfect IMHO!)
Last of all, good city placement is still a major issue using this system, as you will need good 'bread basket' cities established before you can start properly supporting your heavy industry cities!


Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Teabeard]

What do you guys think of Wheat, Fish, Cattle, etc. being resources you can ship around and the benefits of which is population support?

 

[Zild]

It sounds like it's worth expanding upon... tell us more!

EDIT: Also, an idea inspired from another thread on this subject, how about a new tech or two that is required for trading food? Something like "Preservatives" - such as salting food to make it store longer - might be a good ancient or medieval era tech. I would have it as one that's not necessary for progress to the next era (a bonus tech, like Republic), but goods can only be trasnported by road or harbour if the Civ has discovered Preservatives (or Electricity later, for refrigeration). It would require additional research to allow food trading in the earlier eras.

 

[Teabeard]

Well, I don't know... it was just an idea that popped into my head so I thought I'd throw it out and see what happens.

 

[slothman]

I think you should be able to trade food even from wheat fields to mountain cities. For every food that gets to a city it has to be lost from another. You just won't have wheat/flood plain cities at size 40. It would be good if ther ewas a limit for both food and shield transport. Right now, at least in America, like 70% of the food eaten comes from about 100 miles of the store. It would "force" food producers to still keep most of their food. Plus with waste food or shields could go bad so if 10 food leave Kansas only 6 might arive on NYC or Toyko. It could improve with better techs or trades though.

 

[Teabeard]

I think one way we can make this a bit more interesting is to have something like corruption/waste which reduces the amount of food that arrives to it's destination. This factor becomes worse the further a city is away from the source of the food.

The waste factor can be improved on through scientific discoveries. I'm not sure what the techs will be, but pottery helps, as would food dehydration, refrigeration, plastic (to store it in), canning, and so forth. As you get into the modern age most if not all food arrives at it's destination intact and so large cities can be supported.

Some might say it's ridiculous for food to be imported, but to them I say consider that Las Vegas is a city which is built in the middle of a desert and could not support it's large population with what it could gather in it's immediate area. I bet there are other cities in the world like this too, especially ones built in deserts and mountains and islands.

I remember we had a Caravan thread where we discussed how trade might work and I think we could apply the same to food importation/exportation. If the caravan/freight that is carrying the food to a city is pillaged then that city loses it's food supply until (hopefully) the next caravan/freight arrives. If food doesn't arrive soon enough then starvation sets in. This will make things interesting in a WW2 scenario where you can use submarine warfare as the Germans to try to starve Britain into submission, or if you are the USA you can apply that to Japan. Starve them of not only resources but also food.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, this was put forward in another thread. The way it worked there was that, when you vectored food or shields to the central pool, the column it went into depended on the type of terrain which surrounded your city. So, for instance, a city surrounded by grassland and plains would produce a lot of livestock and grain, wheras a coastal city would produce lots of marine produce. Thats a very quick summation of the idea. Basically, when you traded food or shields, the TYPE of food or shields/food traded would determine its base value in trade terms-based on supply versus demand factors. So, for instance, an inland civ with few, or no, coastal cities would pay a lot more for the marine produce of another civ than if you were trading to an island civ.
The other thing was that the relative scarcity of a type of food or shield would determine whether or not it produced any happiness for the recipient city! So, again, the inland cities of CivA would see marine produce as somewhat of a luxury (in that it would generate a limited amount of extra happiness), so they would seek it out almost as much as they would a NORMAL luxury item!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.