Sharing food with other cities.

[Grey Fox]

At the begining of WW1 England was producing amounts of food enough to feed 50% of its citizens. Cutting their shipping lanes even for a month would be a disaster and the end of the war. This kind of situation is an interesting strategic oppurtunity, and if it worked like that in RL why can't it be so in game?

In a way it already work this way in the game. Lets say, England trades all of its food sources from another civ. They are then attacked by the Aztecs, who puts a naval blockade to every coastal city of England. Englands large cities then begin to starve.


I like the way the game works now. Each city location is much more important. One of the biggest and most interesting issues of this game is City placement, and City Placement needs to be interesting. If they should add anything like this, it should be in the late industrial or modern ages. (And like a building or something, and a limit on how much food can be shared)

 

[Seryoz]

This would reduce the number of strategies which were competitive, and less competitive strategies means less interesting ways to play the game. The dominant strategy would almost certainly be to assign all excess food to a handful of cities; 1 commerce city containing Oxford University and x production cities, 1 containing the Ironworks.
1) The early game would be a rush to find, settle, and control the fat cross with the most production. Regardless of the site's food production, such a city would become the most important military city in the game.
2) Caste system would become a much more popular civic since you'd no longer be using excess food to whip units of population. Two food would be worth more beakers through a scientist specialist in the dominant science city than in their home town.
3) Since so much of the science city's beakers would be generated by specialists (and this city would be responsible for most of your science output), the civilization would be free to adjust the science slider to 0% eradicating most unhappiness.
4) Crossing the health cap simply means that each new unit of population consumes 3 food instead of 2. After the health cap, every 2 new units of population in the science city would eat as much as every 3 new units of population in other, smaller cities but would still produce more beakers.

Thedrin, I don't agree with you. You argue that food transfers would reduce the overall number of management strategies if it were implemented, but you seem quite hooked on this idea of super cities. Supercities are garbage, past strategies in Civ games has shown the benifit of dispersed production tactics, whether it be scientific, monetary, or industrial. In fact in most strategy games I've played, the idea of building super cities, super producers, super what ever, etc. is inefficient in the long run. This is because, at least in most turn based games, you are limited to the production of on unit per turn per production site. If this were to change in Civ, then I would conced that you have a point.

Using Gold production and Science production to compare to Shield production is not a viable arguement because, as you said the former are agragaged across the civilization, Shield production is limited to the point of creation. A civilization with numerous well-balanced production sites could outproduce the supercity you speak of easily. This is because a good strategist would stagger his less productive cities to produce at least one unit per turn to match the production of the supercity, but with multiple production sites he could likely produce more than one unit per turn to counter the limitiations of the one so-called "most important city".

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Now to get back on topic, I am interested in bringing back food caravans, mainly for evening out production across harsher terrains. I understand that manually built caravans would be a hassle, but by their nature they would force the player to consider the costs incurred by the constant supply to other regions.

Here are some characteristics Food Caravans should have:

1. Built like Settlers, halting growth in cities during construction.
2. Food and Hammers should be allowed in the production.
3. Upon arrival at destination they should add to the granery production growth at the next turn.
4. Food Caravans should be expensive just like settlers.
5. Scratch the money, hammers etc. (Production Caravans were cut from civ for good reason. Civ4 alread abounds with ways to get money, research, culture for nothing [well if you consider allocating speciallists & queueing wonders nothing]).

This should allow the user to project production away from large food rich cities in a more evenly distributed manner. The constant shipments of food from these larger cities can help halt unwanted growth, but they will also tie up the supply cities which does add "cost" to the whole process, not to mention, the fact that you have maintain the supply line. You can build supercities this way but maintaining the cities at the expense of numerous other cities would present a case of diminishing returns. The only reason one would use this method would be to maintain a city at a population level one to two levels beyond that of its natural capacity. I can think of many reasons why that would be benificial, and they're more numerous than the arguements supporting the ever expanding list of wonders.

 

[Seryoz]

One more thing; I don't think "Beyond the Sword" will add much in the way of bringing the food trade aspect back. I think it will do what Fraxis has been doing to Civ4 so far, which is adding more of the same. (This is not to say that I won't purchase the expansion.)

I saw a mod example around here that used SDK to allow civilizations to "pool" oil in a reserve to be used later to fuel units in the field. It would be interesting to do this with other other resources and do away with the automatic benifit structure that is currently in place. In place of this you could build reserves of resources that do convey benifits, but are rationed out with individual percentage sliders much like commerce is diveded between gold, science, and culture already.

 

[Thedrin]

Supercities are garbage, past strategies in Civ games has shown the benifit of dispersed production tactics, whether it be scientific, monetary, or industrial.

You've really only put an arguement forward for why it's bad for production cities. I never claimed that gold and science were comparable to production - in later posts I dealt specifically with production cities. I acknowledged that production cities don't work the same as gold and science cities. I also stated that a super-production city wouldn't use more than a single other city to provide food to it. I also acknowledged that multiple production cities would be used.

But I maintain that the average production of a production city would be far greater under a simple food transfer system than they currently are - that the player could settle more productive cities without having to take account of the amount of food that city could produce for itself.

 

[Seryoz]

Thedrin, you understand me perfectly. The problem is, food transfers, would not lead one dominate strategy. First off, strategy depends on the geography of any given Civ. Secondly, your dominate strategy does not guarantee success all the time, and cannot be implemented all the time either. The strategy you propose would take time and skill to build, that means it can also be broken. Because it can be broken, it won't become the predominate strategy. It will still have to compete with all the other strategies out there in the Civ world.

You argue that the dominate strategy would become one where poeple would assign all their excess food to several super-production cities. What I'm argueing is that this would not be cost effective as an overall strategy, because the production of food for transport, in the source cities, would eat into your resources to build other more useful units.

Averaging production across several cities would be effective only in very harsh terrains. This would not lead to a super production advantage because it would still be preferable to have multiple production sites for military units.

I understand your arguement about super-commerce cities, set to produce science and money over all else, and you're probably right here. My question is how is this diffrent from the game right now? Currently there is a rush on arable land, mixed with commerce potential to build the super-pro cities that you speak of. Combined with with all the wonders and minor wonders that abound in the current version of the game it is already possible to build super-pro cities. This is why so many well-placed single-city civs can outpace larger empires in ancient times (at marathon speed) because they are able to effectivly specialize and keep ahead in research. I think what you are saying is that food transport will exascerbate this problem.

Rome on the Earth Map, with 24-civs, is a super-pro city in production. It is not advantagous to expand in the early game because by maxing out production one can build wonders that enhance the science and commerce of the city, owing to the fact that the Italian Penn. also has marble and stone to speed things along. In less than 100 turns one can build a city with several of the early wonders that produce specialists of all types, and due to its high growth potential, it can produce Praetorians at 1 per two turns. But ultimatly the player is forced to expand to keep up in the tech race. I bring this up because, even though Rome can lead in tech, with the help of wonders and specialists, its more advanced units cost more to produce. Rome ultimately loses it's status without other cities to cover its back.

The increase in power of city specialisation for science cities is far greater than for production cities when food transfers are introduced. How this translates to game power; building super-production cities allow you to build more units than those who don't, building a super-science city will allow you to build more advanced units than those who don't.

Taking what Thedrin has already argued, I think that food transport could speed up tech advancement. How this translates to the game:
1. The eras could be shorter
2. Civs would have more advanced units, but fewer units overall.

I don't think that Super-Commerce cities are necessarily an advantage, like bearro has said, it depends on the map. If you were ahead in tech and your units cost more, your lesser advanced rivals could still concievably build in quantity to out maneauver the more advanced units. The lesser-advanced civs may also be able produce more units per turn allowing this strategy better odds of success.

 

[winddbourne]

I like the idea of food caravans. They are realistic. However they also need to be a unit as suggested buy seryoz, and thus something that can be ATTACKED. Especially naval food caravans with the return to the privateer.

The biggest PROBLEM with a super cities strategy now is that it is easy to pillage those super cities into starvation, bombard the smaller city with cats, ballistas, etc . . . and take out a huge chunk of enemy power all at once.

Allowing me to to kill food caravans, or even just stop them from getting to the city makes this an even bigger problem. As your super city is that much more vulnerable to seige warfare.

An even more appealing idea is to make said food caravans something that can be captured, like enemy workers.

Suddenly your "wasting" troops guarding your food caravans/ships and trying to get them to that great "super production" city that is the heart of your war machine. While I'm trying to capture as many as I can to help grow my own empire back home, or even to help me "colonize" your land once I've smashed you. A bit of extra food after the war would be nice.

Given that mechanic it is CERTAIN that Thedrin has nothing to fear. Sure I'd use the food caravans to even out my empire, and I'd certainly use them to settle a really great production city at the HEART of my empire where it's well protected. But I wouldn't depend on that kind of strategy most of the time.

It's balanced . . . A great benefit, that makes you greatly vulnerable. So long as you can play Ghandi you've got something good going, but the minute war hits . . . you'd better have some strategies in line to guard your supply lines.

Which makes it exactly what the game needs in my opinion. Another swords or butter decision about how you want to play the game. Whether the benefit is worth the risk depends on where you start, and what you want to do.

If you use Food Caravans/Ships you can have some huge specialist cities helping your space race, or your cultural victory, but you'd better watch out for the war machine next door with his 20 production cities churning out cavalry while half your cities are stuck growing grain!

It's exactly the kind of choice Sid promised us back in Civilization I. I hope it is in the expansion.

 

[Seryoz]

It sounds like the advent of corporations may allow this in some fashion. If you have a corporation that will allow you to harvest more food from a cow then you could spread the corp. into a city with low growth potential. From what I understand the city would still need to have a cow, or maybe it just has to be connected to cows. You pay a maintenece for the extra food production. Tieing the extra production to the connectivity of roads and rails serves this purpose well enough. It would make the issue of supply more automatic, and you would still have to protect your routes. This is OK, but I still believe the unit would be better.

But I still have a question: what if your other cities also recieved this benefit? Better yields in all cities is not neccessarily a benefit, units allow for better fine tuning and the fluidity to adapt to changing circumstances.

Food needs to become a transferable commodity like beakers, and hammers. This would require an addition in SDK, which I cannot do. Maybe a crash course in SDK and C++ is the key.