Sure would be nice if you could move food from one city to another

[Dis]

I kind of miss Civ2 food caravans.

So here I am in a team game archipelago map. I'm trying to get the spaceship built by 2050. I'm like 1 turn off on the last couple spaceship parts. I try to maximize production by starving my city. But then the city shrinks down to size 10, and I still can't get it built in time (though initially I could beat it by 1 turn- before my city starved down). I wish there was some way I could sustain starving cities. .

getting a spaceship victory on an archipelago map is not easy.

[Tokyo Sexwale]

Yeah, I think once you have cars or fridges, you should be able to send food surpluses to another city to help them grow. Or, all food in the empire should just be pooled and shared out. Not many modern cities IRL get their food only from surrounding areas.

[MasterDave]

I suspect that the food caravan may return to the game in a future expansion. It sort of exists now, with Great Merchants serving both the role of trading caravans and food caravans (you get plus one food when placing one in a city), but they come along too rarely to really be a solution for widespread food problems.

[sparkyal]

Yup, I miss this too from CIV II. There really were a lot of good things in CIV II (CIV III I wasn't a huge fan of though)

But CIV IV, IMHO, is the best rendition hands down.

sparky

[Dis]

My city wouldn't exist if we didn't get food from California.

[_BuRjaCi_]

I think food-sharing should be possible between city's that can be reached within one turn. That would allow us to add depth to the game without complicating it .

-Someone who is learning the game would not have to deal with it for at least, a few hours into the game, sending food would not give him significant advantages until the advent of railroads.

-It would help justify the airport improvement.

-Opens the posibility of trading food with other civs

-It would be realistic (have you ever eaten food that took more than a year to get to you?).

[Mattimus20]

Food Pooling

I like the idea of pooling all your food together into a stock pile and dispursing it as you wish. It sucks if you have a city that you build in the Tundra to take advantage of a huge silver spot only to have the city grow to a meager 2-3 size. If you have 3-4 silver mines, you can't take advantage of all of them to increase your cities production. Hauling in food would be good.

One suggestion for this would be to only allow complete dispursement of your food after the event of railroads and prior to railroads only allow food to be shared between cities that are around 6-10 spaces apart. It blows my mind thinking about how the only advantage a civ gets from railroads is the fact that you can move military units further. I don't believe that railroads increase trade routes or increase production/commerce, which they should.

[DirtyMartini]

While it would be nice, I don't see the idea of empire-wide food pooling being realistic --

a. it's more micromanagment, a concept that civ IV has tried to minimize

b. "giant hills mine fest ironworks wonder city", or "unbelievably massive great person pump" fed by a "spam cities and farm everything in sight" strategy could be unbalancing.

Selected transport of food (ala food caravan) could work as it requires you to build something, thus committing time and resources and minimizing the possibilities for exploitation.

[Stickyman]

Railroads do provide a production increase for lumbermills and mines. Workshops too?

[Dis]

just lumbermills and mines.

[MasterDave]

Supermarkets as they are now are pretty much worthless, and I very rarely build one. I think that one way to make them more appealing would be to either have them grant an outright food bonus (perhaps one extra food per farm in range), or to allow food from other cities to be sent to cities with supermarkets.

I can accept that moving large amounts of food around between cities (outside of grains and other non-perishables) in anceint times before refrigeration would be difficult. However, perhaps supermarkets should allow for food caravans to be sent to a particular city with a supermarket from any city on one's trade network with a surplus. That would make them worth building.

There are not many examples of cities like Las Vegas (far from major food and water sources) existing before modern times.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by _BuRjaCi_
I think food-sharing should be possible between city's that can be reached within one turn. That would allow us to add depth to the game without complicating it .

-Someone who is learning the game would not have to deal with it for at least, a few hours into the game, sending food would not give him significant advantages until the advent of railroads.

-It would help justify the airport improvement.

-Opens the posibility of trading food with other civs

-It would be realistic (have you ever eaten food that took more than a year to get to you?).

You have a string of cities. A - B - C - D each one turn away from the next. A has a surplus, D needs food, B and C are neutral. A provides B with surplus, B then provides C with its new found surplus, and then C provides D with it's surplus. Net effect, A provides D with a surplus.

It's not just a game mechanic either. Such things can and do happen in the big wide world. Brits buy food from France, the French buy German produce, whilst Germans buy foodstuffs produced in Poland - net effect can be that Poles provide Brits with food.

Doesn't even need fast transport to do it. Just organisation and proper logistics.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Dauphin


You have a string of cities. A - B - C - D each one turn away from the next. A has a surplus, D needs food, B and C are neutral. A provides B with surplus, B then provides C with its new found surplus, and then C provides D with it's surplus. Net effect, A provides D with a surplus.

It's not just a game mechanic either. Such things can and do happen in the big wide world. Brits buy food from France, the French buy German produce, whilst Germans buy foodstuffs produced in Poland - net effect can be that Poles provide Brits with food.

Doesn't even need fast transport to do it. Just organisation and proper logistics.

Well why not make a similar sulution to the one used in diplomacy at peace treaties (only one side can give stuff). Let's make it only possible for a city to send or recive food. Problem fixed.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
While it would be nice, I don't see the idea of empire-wide food pooling being realistic --

a. it's more micromanagment, a concept that civ IV has tried to minimize

b. "giant hills mine fest ironworks wonder city", or "unbelievably massive great person pump" fed by a "spam cities and farm everything in sight" strategy could be unbalancing.

Selected transport of food (ala food caravan) could work as it requires you to build something, thus committing time and resources and minimizing the possibilities for exploitation.

Just put a max food import/eport level like six or four or ten. It could be modified by technology and it prevented major exploits of caravns for food hoarding in Civ2. Why wouldn't it work in cIV?

[Nugog]

Once you have Railroad, food sharing should be possible IMO