Why don't fishing towns send food to cities?

[Justus II]

I am trying to figure out why some of my fishing towns on islands aren't sending food to my cities? I thought there was a range of 10 like trade routes, but they are 10 tiles away.

 

[Atlas627]

Naval trade (so both City Centers are Coastal, maybe alternatively adjacent to Navigable River?) reaches infinite distance but only if they're on the same Continent, afaik.

 

[Justus II]

Hmm, I reloaded a save, and that seems to be the case. The fishing town in question is on an island that is labeled part of the distant lands continent. An island fishing town on the other side of my main continent (but that the game still considered part of the same continent) was sending food to a city on my main continent. When I went back to that first fishing town, and then upgraded another island town nearby to a city (that was also considered part of the 'new' continent') it sent the food. That should be labeled somewhere!!

 

[Leyrann]

I suspect there's some bugs with the system.

In the screenshot below, Meroë is a Farming Town which should be sending 30 food somewhere. I've checked all my cities (Rome, Aquileia, Ostia), but none of them actually receive it. Ostia does, however, receive the 23 food from Pompeii, which is also a Farming Town.

 

[Leyrann]

Update: Pompeii is now sending food to Rome instead, Meroë still isn't sending it to any place that actually exists. Why did it change? Who the f knows. Can I influence it? Not in any way that's explained to me. Do I want to be able to just select a city to send the food to? Hell yes.

EDIT: And now I specialized Catana and it's sending half to Rome and half to Ostia. I guess the question should be, what the hell is a city connection and how does it work?

 

[boesthius]

Update: Pompeii is now sending food to Rome instead, Meroë still isn't sending it to any place that actually exists. Why did it change? Who the f knows. Can I influence it? Not in any way that's explained to me. Do I want to be able to just select a city to send the food to? Hell yes.

EDIT: And now I specialized Catana and it's sending half to Rome and half to Ostia. I guess the question should be, what the hell is a city connection and how does it work?

afaik this is currently a bug and the food is not sending across the borders like it should be. half of the time it does send, but other times you'll switch focuses and it just won't send to any city, let alone your capital even though you have a city connection as you're finding out lol

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

That should be labeled somewhere!!

The real tagline of Civ VII

 

[pokiehl]

I cannot make heads or tails of how city connections work. I really hope they fix this.

 

[ggmoyang]

I think devs should just allow players to manually select target city(or cities). With reasonable cooldown to change the assigned city, micromanagement would be no problem.

 

[evonannoredars]

Really hope clarifying this system is a priority, towns being used for feeding cities was advertised to be a pretty important feature so it's odd that cities are generally good at feeding themselves anyway (since growing them just lets you relocate the improvements) and that it's really unclear how which towns feed who.
Also wish specialisations didn't completely halt town growth, I'd prefer to send 50% or even 75% of the food to cities so my towns can still grow a little bit in order to be able to produce more food over time.

 

[KingLouisIV]

I suspect there's some bugs with the system.

In the screenshot below, Meroë is a Farming Town which should be sending 30 food somewhere. I've checked all my cities (Rome, Aquileia, Ostia), but none of them actually receive it. Ostia does, however, receive the 23 food from Pompeii, which is also a Farming Town.

View attachment 718731

How are you checking? I couldn’t figure out where to see this.

 

[Elhoim]

How are you checking? I couldn’t figure out where to see this.

You can see it on the city panel, the button on the left of the yields. Do remember that the interface doesn't update until you exit the city screen and enter again. If it's sending the food somewhere it should say there:

 

[Leyrann]

Really hope clarifying this system is a priority, towns being used for feeding cities was advertised to be a pretty important feature so it's odd that cities are generally good at feeding themselves anyway (since growing them just lets you relocate the improvements) and that it's really unclear how which towns feed who.

I would like to dispute the part about cities feeding themselves. In my first playthrough I made the mistake of turning all my towns into cities because I figured I had the gold for it anyway (and didn't realize that gold cost isn't the sole limiting factor in whether you want to upgrade), and it took ages for my cities to grow, which meant I couldn't really get a healthy number of specialists set up. Keeping a bunch of towns around (and praying to the RNG gods that the food gets distributed in a somewhat reasonable manner) alleviates the issue a lot - it's not difficult for a town to produce as much food as a city, or even more, so if you've got half towns, half cities, you'll probably grow your cities more than twice as fast as with just cities.

Agreed on the need for clarification though.

Also wish specialisations didn't completely halt town growth, I'd prefer to send 50% or even 75% of the food to cities so my towns can still grow a little bit in order to be able to produce more food over time.

Agreed, it would be nice if towns could simultaneously send part of their food away and slowly grow to cover more tiles (with farms, for example).

Also, I would prefer that they send (part of) their production to cities too, rather than it being turned into gold. Production feels really bad for towns because 1 production is more valuable than 1 gold.

You can see it on the city panel, the button on the left of the yields. Do remember that the interface doesn't update until you exit the city screen and enter again. If it's sending the food somewhere it should say there:

View attachment 718793

Huh, that looks a lot fancier than mine for some reason. I had to compare numbers between my cities and towns to figure out what food was going where. Including sometimes half numbers because some towns will split food between several destinations. (speaking of, there's an easy solution - have each town distribute it's food across all cities evenly)

EDIT: I was looking in the wrong spot lol (the third tab, rather than the first).

 

[Elhoim]

Huh, that looks a lot fancier than mine for some reason.

Because I edited the ini so that it has better scaling instead of the huge interface the game has by default jajajaja

 

[Leyrann]

I just noticed that Merchants can also build roads. I haven't tried anything with it, but could this perhaps be a way to make additional connections?

 

[Calcifer]

This is one of the few things that is actually explained in the civilopedia. A town sends its food to every city that it is directly connected to.
A direct connection is formed if two settlements are either:
- both adjacent to coast (navigable rivers count too) and on the same continent
- connected by direct road (roads passing through another settlement don’t count, you may have to use a merchant to create a direct road between two settlements)

 

[Leyrann]

This is one of the few things that is actually explained in the civilopedia. A town sends its food to every city that it is directly connected to.
A direct connection is formed if two settlements are either:
- both adjacent to coast (navigable rivers count too) and on the same continent
- connected by direct road (roads passing through another settlement don’t count, you may have to use a merchant to create a direct road between two settlements)

I read that, and it doesn't work.

In my screenshot earlier, there is definitely a road between Meroë and Roma, yet there is no food going to Roma.

Anyway, the proper solution is to just pool all food and allow the player to decide what percentage goes to which city. Just reuse the Civ IV espionage distribution system for the logic.

 

[Calcifer]

I suspect there's some bugs with the system.

In the screenshot below, Meroë is a Farming Town which should be sending 30 food somewhere. I've checked all my cities (Rome, Aquileia, Ostia), but none of them actually receive it. Ostia does, however, receive the 23 food from Pompeii, which is also a Farming Town.

View attachment 718731

In this case, I think Meroe automatically built a road to Pompeii (nearest settlement). You should try buying a merchant and build a road between Rome and Meroe.

And yes, if the above is true it kinda sucks and they should make it easier to understand which settlements are connected on both ends (or get rid of the direct road restrictions and just count the tiles).

 

[Leyrann]

In this case, I think Meroe automatically built a road to Pompeii (nearest settlement). You should try buying a merchant and build a road between Rome and Meroe.

And yes, if the above is true it kinda sucks and they should make it easier to understand which settlements are connected on both ends (or get rid of the direct road restrictions and just count the tiles).

But if it's that precise about the connections, explain to me how a few turns later, Catana had no issues sending food past Roma all the way to Ostia?

 

[Calcifer]

But if it's that precise about the connections, explain to me how a few turns later, Catana had no issues sending food past Roma all the way to Ostia?

They’re both coastal settlements.