Propagation of natural resources

[Levgre]

I think it'd be fun if the next Civ took a big turn and allowed nations to take natural resources, such as cow or wheat, and grow them on any arable land. So early on a civ may end up looking like this (with smaller pastures for aesthetic reasons).

In modern areas, you'd start to get focused urban settings alongside "Grain Belts". Note that cities would spread land wise, there is a limit to how many population points can fit in one tile. With the right technology, the farmland would be incredibly more productive (super farms) and transport its produce at lower expense.

This type of building opens up many potential strategies and technologies to mirror real life nation development. It accurately reflects how the productivity of land is determined by the soil and climate. Variety in food sources, having cow/pig/sheep/corn/wheat/fish, would instead create a happiness benefit (and prevent a total production wipe-out by locusts)

Civs with a few super cities would gain an extra edge, as every tile in your borders could be exploited without making cities everywhere to do so. Even in Civ 3 few city strats are very weak.

Overall I think this approach could make a much more visceral building experience, and open up lots of strategy options! (Importing/exporting food for example)

 

[dagriggstar]

This is already (kind of) possible in both civ 4 and 5 (just with the xml). You need to improve the land first though.

Indeed I played around with it a little, but eventually ran into a few problems...
a) No map scripts have really been thought out with this in mind
b) Problem of growing resources in areas that they can't be grown. For example, Banana's in cold climates. Could be overcome by adding more terrain types, but no map script would use the new terrain types.
c) Makes the game much more "luck" based. ie you either strike lucky or not.

Probably some other problems I haven't thought of too...

 

[Levgre]

c) Makes the game much more "luck" based. ie you either strike lucky or not.

Well yeah of course you'd have to balance it out. There's nothing inherent to this that forces the game to be more luck based.

Grassland and rivers actually become valuable food sources, just like in reality. So you'd want arable land to be more scarce, and for there to be lot more "barren" land. Also the population system could be modified, to reduce "food being king".