transporting resources

[Jake5555555]

In civ you should be able to ship food from one city to another. Do you really think that the people in New York are fed by the surrounding farmlands? This way you could have some cities on a huge irragated grassland producing massive amounts of food and sending it over to feed the people of the cities in the mountains who will then be able to mine huge amounts of shields and produce anything you want really fast. You should also be able to transport shields, so you could have mines in one area sending shields to a coastal area to build your fleet of battle ships really fast.

 

[rcoutme]

There is another thread on resources, supply, etc. that you should check out.

 

[Mgoering]

The idea is superb. Food transport was available in Civ2. The shields idea is even more interesting. Those two options should definitively be part of Civ4.

Thank you Jake5555555.

 

[Portuguese]

yes, bring them back

 

[Tholish]

It should be integrated into play, not be some formula or something you do with a slider. You should be able to make resource units, like Food Units or Shield Units--maybe they would look like wagon trains or something--that cost food or shields to make, then can be transported to another city to add to the food or shields there.
Actually, a zero shield cost nonfunctional unit that costs one population is the same thing as the food train, since food and population are the same thing. Just join a city that you are feeding and counteract its starvation. A shield train would be harder to mod, since you cannot alter the horrible rate at which you get shields for disbanding units. The AI would use neither, so transportable food and shields await a better AI. (In fact have used this as an exploit to win on an All Desert map, building workers, then joining them to cities just in time to get a settler right before the city starves. Something the AI would never do. It used to work, anyway, though it was just a lot of dull work.) I say just put in more strategies.

 

[GoodGame]

I prefer an automated approach----making Caravans and such and setting them on way points is a pain.

Rough idea:

optional Canning: food pooling, allowing food-specializing cities to doing something with growth at pop12 w/o Hospital. Pooled food automatically shared with all other growing cities, starting with larger cities first. ~10% is lost as waste (exact number proportionate to the number of cities). Excess pooling is lost if it can't be used.
Prereq---Industrialization.
Cannery is the enabling city improvement (80 shields?)


optional Refrigeration same as Cannery but improved food pooling from cannery. Food pooling waste reduced by half. Excess Pooling can be saved turn-to-turn. Also allow the SuperMarket.

Supermarket: Converts excess pooled food to wealth, 6:1 (?) ratio.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Simple solution: You can move food and shields to any city within your nation which is on the trade route. However, in the earliest part of the game, wastage is a HUGE issue-particularly food! So, for instance, you might lose as many as 4 food per tile you transport it over. However, as your technology improves, this might drop to 4/1, then 3/1, then 1/1, then 1/2, 1/3 etc. Of course, by the modern age, there will probably be NO wastage at all! BTW, wastage isn't just spoilage, but also food and shields which are stolen. Thus, the number of shields/food you lose might be ALSO based on the crime rates of the cities you send from AND send to!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Synergy67]

Waste and loss for shipping food could be affected increasingly by distance. Highway brigands in earlier times were a big problem. The farther you shipped anything, the more likely someone else would hijack. This could be translated as the further you have to ship food to feed an outlying town, the more of that food would be lost in shipment. Thus, you would need some highly productive food areas to really help faraway cities significantly...which sounds realistic to me. This loss could be reduced by building occupied forts along your highway system (basically a fortification with a military unit in it)

Doug

 

[Trade-peror]

Food and shield shipping would be nice additions to Civ4, but even more intriguingly, offers opportunities to give some economic depth to Civ. While I will not go into abstract economic theory at this moment, it is notable that early trade often came from the trading of food or raw materials needed for survival. With a food and shield shipping system, this trading could be worked in with conceptual consistency and no additional micromanagement. At the very least, it should supplant the grossly arbitrary Civ system of building roads everywhere to increase trade. Roads, inherently, obviously have nothing to do with trade, and function to facilitate trade, not create it independent of other factors.

 

[brinko]

sea export/import ships would be interesting, but on land theres already the railroad.

lets say one ship of iron can last a country 5 turns, before another ship replenishes its supply, but if in between the 2 continents is 15 squares of ocean, 3 transport ships would be need for a consistant supply of iron....(maybe 4 to be safe) so god forbid a war breaks out, a country should be able to control enemy sea imports and exports by sinking these ships. thus in turn controling the direction of the war. a country should not be permited to trade overseas unless the minimum transport ship number has been reached for consistant supply...this i think would put a little more emphasis on the trade aspect

 

[Camber]

You could make an effective radius for resources (and food) that grows according to techs you research. Faster transportation would expand it for food, as would refrigeration and canning advances. Building a cannery or a harbor would also expand the radius. For ore, smelting and refining would expand the radius. Friendly cities within that radius, connected by trade routes, could benefit from any excess produced in the city. You could designate for each city how much of its resources it would use, and how much could be exported. I would certainly like to see an end to the food-hoarding cities and all-or-nothing resource system. I want to trade 15 iron units per turn with Rome instead of just 1 Iron resource, just as we do with Gold.

 

[TheDS]

Yes, please, we don't have enough pettifoggery in this game without having to manage FOOD shipments, a la Civ2. Talk about unused functions!

But if you must, let us take the MOO2 route and pool our food resources to make it a little easier to handle.

 

[searcheagle]

sea export/import ships would be interesting, but on land theres already the railroad.

lets say one ship of iron can last a country 5 turns, before another ship replenishes its supply, but if in between the 2 continents is 15 squares of ocean, 3 transport ships would be need for a consistant supply of iron....(maybe 4 to be safe) so god forbid a war breaks out, a country should be able to control enemy sea imports and exports by sinking these ships. thus in turn controling the direction of the war. a country should not be permited to trade overseas unless the minimum transport ship number has been reached for consistant supply...this i think would put a little more emphasis on the trade aspect

Limiting the ability to transport goods over railroads would improve naval warfare and make it more interesting.

 

[dojoboy]

Some features are abstract and should remain so. I'm opposed to creating a micromanagment nightmare in regards to resources. I would prefer more economic options in the current model.

 

[dojoboy]

Roads, inherently, obviously have nothing to do with trade, and function to facilitate trade, not create it independent of other factors.

Why do you say this? Do you mean if reference to a camel, laden with goods, walking across the sands? There would still be a route taken.

 

[Trade-peror]

Why do you say this? Do you mean if reference to a camel, laden with goods, walking across the sands? There would still be a route taken.

A camel laden with goods would be a means of facilitating trade, because the camel is carrying goods to be traded. However, the act of the camel walking is not trading, and does not generate any wealth.

Perhaps this is a bit more clear: roads allow people to trade, because people can use the roads to transport the products they will be trading. However, the road itself does nothing in terms of trade, if the people and products they are trading are not there.

 

[dojoboy]

Yes, that is more clear.

 

[sir_schwick]

I am going to shamelessly self-promote my thread on new economic thought. It does make the suggestion of food imports into cities being dictated by you, since the food technically imports all its raw materials(food, shield basics and tradeable basics).

 

[Trade-peror]

I am going to shamelessly self-promote my thread on new economic thought.

So will I--use the link in my sig to get to my Unified Economic Theory II thread. It covers transportation of goods, markets, import/export, trade routes, and extensions of basic principles into areas such as population organization, culture, military, crime, corruption, and science/education.

Actually, I also recommend sir_schwick's thread on new economic thought, as it also covers many trading principles I would like to see.

 

[Kayak]

You could make an effective radius for resources (and food) that grows according to techs you research. Faster transportation would expand it for food, as would refrigeration and canning advances. Building a cannery or a harbor would also expand the radius. For ore, smelting and refining would expand the radius. Friendly cities within that radius, connected by trade routes, could benefit from any excess produced in the city. You could designate for each city how much of its resources it would use, and how much could be exported. I would certainly like to see an end to the food-hoarding cities and all-or-nothing resource system. I want to trade 15 iron units per turn with Rome instead of just 1 Iron resource, just as we do with Gold.

Excelent idea summary! I truly hope that resource trade is changed over to units rather than all or nothing as it is now. This would make trade interesting again.