Is growing cities too easy?

[rusbeh]

For a long time in this mod I've felt that growing cities is too easy. Food doesn't really feel like an important resource to prioritize despite it being the most important resource historically. Farms feel bad compared to other improvements despite them being important food generators in real life. I think growing cities should be more challenging and farms provide more food. Famines are basically non existent in the game.

Currently it doesn't make sense that trade routes can conjure food out of thin air. Food should come from terrain and improving them. Trade routes should transfer that food to important cities that need it (cities with a lot of specialists for example). I would like to see scenarios where there's cities in my empire that could specialize in being bread baskets of the empire. I could cause a famine for my neighbour if I conquer a big farm city and provide a lot of much needed food for my empire.

Maybe cities could eat more food for each population point (2.5 or 3) and farms provide 1 more food. Internal trade routes could be separate from external trade routes and just move food and production, not produce it. That way you dont feel like you miss out on money. Not sure if this would be balanced, just thinking of possible ideas. Oh and I also dont think unhappiness should have that strong of an effect on growth. What do you think?

 

[caudheur]

I do agree that, unless I go tradition / artistry / rationalism, food is really the least of my concern once I reached a minimum pop to make the city functional and productive.
I would love to see a more dynamic management of food that would be relevant still in late game in order to avoid famine for example (because as such it's way to easy to "lock" a city at its current pop and never care for food)

 

[Pipiskus]

I understand your complaint but i believe its not a common opinion, no one would want to change anything , its too complicated, time-consuming and the game already feels quite good:
But if i was trying to implement it i would probably increase population cost as you suggested but also made food go into common pool like happiness (but in addition to cities food in its range) and being distributed among all cities, so the moment you lose a city a famine mechanic comes into picture. But its probably doesnt worth it. idk, probably too complicated for this game.

 

[rusbeh]

I know what I suggested with famine and trade routes might be too much work at this stage of the mod but there could be smaller changes made to make food a bit more meaningful. One other idea I thought was to slightly increase the amount of food required to gain a population. With this farms could be buffed with +1 food. Btw what is the purpose that farms provide adjacency bonuses? They would be more convenient if they could be scattered between other improvements and still get their full potential.

 

[andersw]

For a long time in this mod I've felt that growing cities is too easy. Food doesn't really feel like an important resource to prioritize despite it being the most important resource historically. Farms feel bad compared to other improvements despite them being important food generators in real life. I think growing cities should be more challenging and farms provide more food. Famines are basically non existent in the game.

Currently it doesn't make sense that trade routes can conjure food out of thin air. Food should come from terrain and improving them. Trade routes should transfer that food to important cities that need it (cities with a lot of specialists for example). I would like to see scenarios where there's cities in my empire that could specialize in being bread baskets of the empire. I could cause a famine for my neighbour if I conquer a big farm city and provide a lot of much needed food for my empire.

Maybe cities could eat more food for each population point (2.5 or 3) and farms provide 1 more food. Internal trade routes could be separate from external trade routes and just move food and production, not produce it. That way you dont feel like you miss out on money. Not sure if this would be balanced, just thinking of possible ideas. Oh and I also dont think unhappiness should have that strong of an effect on growth. What do you think?

What difficulty and policys?
What time of the game play?
Going tall or wide?
And how big is too easy for you?

 

[Anarcomu]

I like the concept but I think Civ 5 (and Civ in general) is not the kind of game that would benefit from such a mechanic.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I actually pretty much agree with everything he said, food is by far the worst resource in the game, on high difficulties you dont even want uninhibited growth and it is super rare that I go "man I wish I had more food in that city". The monopoly bonus from crabs almost makes me physically ill because food is so bad. Is everything he said within the scope of the mod? no, but we could at least make food more scarce so that you actually value it.

 

[rusbeh]

What difficulty and policys?
What time of the game play?
Going tall or wide?
And how big is too easy for you?

Emperor. I play all types of playstyles and food is never a problem.

 

[hokath]

Well this is a hard one. I wrote a whole 100 line response and decided it was unreadable.
TL;DR If more pop is good, then food is good.
Think about your first city, you will work a 2 food tile over a 2 prod, 2 gold tile because otherwise you will never grow.
However in a world where unhappiness outpaces infrastructure, food is a liability and hammers become much better.
So as with everything in the game, its in a context of your other (civ/policy/terrain) strengths, current level of development, overall strategy, etc.

For example if you are trying to produce great people (and you aren't Tradition which sort of trivializes this part of the game for a good long time) then having a (couple of) big food tiles sudden becomes a huge deal.

And so forth...

 

[Amask]

It's pretty silly how after some point in the game the terrain almost doesn't matter.
There's so much food coming from other sources.
+1 from this building, +1 from that building, +x from policies, +y from religion, etc
It doesn't seem like much but it actually adds up.
Even more so for high level AIs. Some lame ice/tundra city can be almost as big as another that's in a fertile river valley.

 

[azum4roll]

I've played a few Polynesia games where all I worked were Moais and Fishing Boats. Food (and growth) were so important in this scenario that I took Asceticism to get more in order to work more Moais.

Same with a specialist-heavy strategy. Before you get to Rationalism and Freedom, you can't afford to fill up your specialist slots even if you want to.

Though at the end, you only need population up to the amount you can afford to work all the good tiles and specialist slots, while not starving. Growing more is a waste of time.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

I have long come to accept that a Wheat Farm will often be: a good tile for a Capital to keep growing off of, a factor in a City's Unhappiness problem from growing too much, or an ignored Food tile. It's still very good to grow out of size 1 quickly, though.

It's funny to me that a Tradition Capital can have all of it's' tiles blocked but will not be subject to starvation. I've noticed this when I have a Spy in that city and am laying siege to it.

 

[rusbeh]

It's pretty silly how after some point in the game the terrain almost doesn't matter.
There's so much food coming from other sources.
+1 from this building, +1 from that building, +x from policies, +y from religion, etc
It doesn't seem like much but it actually adds up.
Even more so for high level AIs. Some lame ice/tundra city can be almost as big as another that's in a fertile river valley.

Exactly. Ideally buildings, policies, religion and other stuff should boost the food coming from tiles, not produce raw food yields. Kind of like what the lighthouse and granaries do. The change to tradition going from percent boost to raw food yields adds to this problem. I mean it doesn't even make sense. How could policies produce so much food. Rationalism has empiricism which is a great example of a well made food policy which boosts the food in cities by +25% and +1 food for every citizen. Same for exploitation from imperialism which boosts food from farms, camps and plantations.

I get that early policies shouldn't have much scaling yields but tradition when completed produces 13 food in the capital and 5 food in other cities. That's crazy high amount of basically passive food.

 

[hokath]

Rationalism has empiricism which is a great example of a well made food policy

On what grounds? The Empiricism policy of +1 food per citizen literally produces food equal to your city size (before the 25% modifier and others).
So in my 40 pop capital I get +40 food base. This completely dwarfs Tradition (as it should).
It is still a Policy that generates raw food.
And there is nothing wrong with this.

I mean it doesn't even make sense. How could policies produce so much food.

How can Policies produce any yields?

 

[CppMaster]

How can Policies produce any yields?

Easily. Scientific focus could result in more efficient learning.

 

[rusbeh]

On what grounds? The Empiricism policy of +1 food per citizen literally produces food equal to your city size (before the 25% modifier and others).
So in my 40 pop capital I get +40 food base. This completely dwarfs Tradition (as it should).
It is still a Policy that generates raw food.
And there is nothing wrong with this.

How can Policies produce any yields?

Of course it's stronger than tradition which is an ancient era policy. I find with tradition I can produce settlers better early than with progress and authority. I dont even need to work any food tiles after pumping out settlers because all the food comes from other sources. That makes farms and other food improvements redundant which also breaks immersion for me. You're right the rationalism policy does the same here, but the scaler is great. I'm not saying eliminate all raw food but trim down some of that so food from terrain becomes more meaningful.

I think it's different with food than other yields. You need nature outside of cities to get food for the people. Not exactly the same for culture, gold, science or faith.

 

[msw1]

I do feel like it could maybe be tuned a bit. Moving production and food between cities sounds really interesting but is probably too much work. But I agree that in the early game, after you've settled your first few cities and they're starting to grow but before you have a medieval era policy tree, it seems like food is not that valuable and cities grow too easily. I find that I often have to check the "Avoid growth" box in my satellite cities. Meanwhile, in the mid to late game, I never check that box and the more food the merrier.

Another point supporting this is that I would never want to settle a city whose only resources are some food resources like wheat. In real life that would probably develop into a great city eventually, but in VP that's a recipe for a bunch of angry citizens complaining that they're bored and illiterate .

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

Hmmm...my personal issue with growing cities stems more from the happiness system rather then food itself (which suffers because of it). Happiness issues hit hard early game and cause you to focus on minimum food, sometime mid game you have short burst of hyperfocusing food, then late game it falls to the wayside again cause working a bunch of food to get another pop is less valuable then working something else cause of how late the game is. Food should be massively more important early game, and the reason is unhappiness impeding it.
...Thought bubble that came up while writing this out, what if city needs wasn't linear in increases, but instead only went up a percent? (Instead of a city needed twice as much yields when going from 1 to 2, it's only like 95% more? And instead of 2 to 3 needing 50% more yields, it's only 44% more?) There's probably a better way to explain this but nothing is coming to mind

 

[looorg]

Like all things it depends. In my capital, and perhaps later on in a few select cities, I can not get enough food. Food isn't in that regard the problem. The happiness system is the problem. That is why you lock pop growth in your later founding cities. They have to much food and can't handle the unhappiness, mileage may vary depending on game difficulty and such. So I do send trade routes with food to my capital if I can. Bulking up my capital is more important then getting some poultry little gold and culture reward from a foreign trade route, that also have a lot more risk involved. I don't tend to lose internal trade route, the same can't be said for the non-internal once -- city-states or foreign lands matter little in that regard as they are both horrid at barbarian control and war declarations -- intentional once or those that they get dragged into.

Is sending trade routes with food creating food out of thin air? In some regard yes but on a conceptual level I am sure it can be explained. As with all things in the game a food produced might not be food eaten. Most people don't go out into the field and eat grain straight from the ground. You do something with it. Processing. Just like you don't go out and just make things out of trees or stone, they are processed for production. We just don't really see the processing in the game, Some buildings and such do give a little bit of food or extra food on resources. I guess those could be considered the processing of food. Otherwise a lot of it is tied to pop growth, as in spill over when a new pop is born.

But over all I would stay this is not a food issue, it's a happiness issue. It takes some time for you to get all the happiness things online in small cities. But this is what you get I guess when it distributes things over all cities. Getting a new city in that regard sucks a bit. Even if you build it with a improved settler such as a colonist etc the basic buildings does help but not enough. The people in those cities will almost instantly require buildings that grant happiness that are out of their reach in some regard.

I guess the main thing I would agree with is that farms are horrible improvements. I rarely build them until late in the game. The yield isn't really needed for growth as much. The second reason is that horrible event that just keeps happening over and over and over again where there is flooding. If you don't build any farms you never get that event triggering. So it's just not worth building them if you constantly need to send workers there to repair things and hope that the flooding doesn't destroy other things. Worst event ever.

 

[Anarcomu]

I tend do have a very different way of using trade routes. My capital is almost always the most well developed city in my empire, so it hardly needs any help to keep happiness in check. However, as you pointed out, other cities (especially the new ones), have to develop to be able to stand unhappiness. So, I end up sending production via trade routes to my least developed city, so they can catch up and be well developed city with low happiness. With production, you can ultimately build "Public Work" which is effective at quelling unhappiness. "Cooperation" belief help a lot in that regard.