Suggestion: Transporting food

[SirJethro]

I have a suggestion for Civ 4.....

One thing that I think could be improved would be the ability to transport food across your network. It would allow you to have more substantial "mining towns" in the mountains and "farming towns" in the plains. It would be much more like real life....not every city is self supporting in every way.

You could even trade excess food with other Civs.

It would also make sense to implement a waste factor on the food, based on the distance that it has to travel and the amount of corruption in the area.

 

[sealman]

Originally posted by SirJethro
I have a suggestion for Civ 4.....

One thing that I think could be improved would be the ability to transport food across your network. It would allow you to have more substantial "mining towns" in the mountains and "farming towns" in the plains. It would be much more like real life....not every city is self supporting in every way.

You could even trade excess food with other Civs.

It would also make sense to implement a waste factor on the food, based on the distance that it has to travel and the amount of corruption in the area.

sounds like a good idea but could result in some micromanaging complaints.

 

[SirJethro]

true...but if they had to teach the AI to use it, then you should be able to automate it to your advantage, or have your governor manage it.

 

[alver]

This works just fine in Master of Orion 2; you buy freighters who transport food around with no more micromanagement than checking you have enough freighters and enough total food production.

 

['Copter Pilot]

Couldn't the supply crawlers in Alpha Centauri do that?

 

[Maple]

Do you mean like in civ2 when you could give food from one city to another?

 

[slothman]

I don't like when I have my city maxed out but still have 1 extra food. In civ2 I could just send that to another city with the same problem and eliminate both. I civ3 it gets 1 food per turn after 30 turns (usually) it grows but then it has a deficit. Which just gets annoying to continue to shrink and grow.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by SirJethro
I have a suggestion for Civ 4.....

One thing that I think could be improved would be the ability to transport food across your network. It would allow you to have more substantial "mining towns" in the mountains and "farming towns" in the plains. It would be much more like real life....not every city is self supporting in every way.

You could even trade excess food with other Civs.

It would also make sense to implement a waste factor on the food, based on the distance that it has to travel and the amount of corruption in the area.

You are right on all counts, however. . .

I've had scores of complaints about Civ 3 but although I always realized yours is a valid complaint/idea my concerns about micromanaging and stupid governors resulted in my never mentioning it. We would need a much better AI.

Of course cities do NOT get their food from nearby areas; they often import food from thousands of miles away where areas with towns and small cities have a huge surplus of food. Neither concept is considered in the game, and there are dozens of concepts that need fixing first in the game.

But, yes, for Civ 4 Farming Zones or the like is a very good idea, and would make naval warfare much more important as island civs would starve without imported food: Britain almost did, and Japan was doing so in WW II. Even Germany suffered famine from the British blockade in World War One.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by SirJethro
I have a suggestion for Civ 4.....

Originally posted by Zouave
I've had scores of complaints about Civ 3 but

I read SirJethro as a friendly suggestion, not a rant.

And I agree with SirJethro. Sharing food makes sense, certainly if connected by rail, at least.

 

[ETO_Peregrine]

I would argue that this feature is essential to make Civ a better game. Currently I find myself looking at squares of grasslands and thinking "bad city site." This is counter-intuitive since the main object of human Civilization is the cultivation of permanent food sources. In Civ III hills and mountains are perversely preferable to good farmland. Moveable food would alleviate this problem since an agrarian city could support part of the entire civ as a breadbasket. Portable food and a shield specialist are at the top of my wish list for Civ III.

 

[MonkeyPaw]

I'd love to see a return of some food transportation system.

Back in the first Civ, my best game ever (took over the world by 1220 or so, on Emperor level) was facilitated by the use of Caravans, which could transport food.

I had a super-production city in the middle of some mountains, and I kept a steady stream of Caravans moving into it to keep it growing. The micromanagment wasn't too bad, whenever a Caravan was built I simply did a "Go To".

Every time I have a cool production city stuck at size 3 or so, I wish I could do this.