Food trading idea

[frenzyfol]

I had this idea for trading food between cities.

If you tag a city as a food exporter then any surplus food made by that city will be automatically transported to the closest city tagged as a food importer.

Distance of trade route (modified by roads etc) effects how much viable food actually makes it to the next city due to decomposition of the food.

Technologies like refrigeration greatly enhance the amount of food that makes it across trade routes.

Tagging a city as a food importer/exporter and having the trade routes automatically figured out removes the micromanagement of setting up trade routes (ala civ 2)

Theres nothing unrealistic about this idea. Rome was fed by Egypt.

Thoughts?.

Also, would anyone have an idea as to how difficult this would be to implement as a mod?

[snoopy369]

Food trading is a horrible idea, as has already been discussed ad nauseum...

It removes the strategic choice when building a city of "do I select a city that has many hammers available but grows slowly, or a city that will quickly become large but has fewer hammers". It also allows much larger production cities, which makes wonder pricing difficult (do you increase the hammers, penalizing those who choose not to build giant cities and essentially forcing that strategy to be the one correct strategy [which is a strategy game no-no], or do you make wonders too easy to get for giant city builders)

Incidentally, this is also why allowing cooperatively built wonders between cities (aka civ2 caravans) is poor for game balance as well.

Realism is not a good reason to do something, unless it has a net zero effect (or positive effect) on gameplay and game balance. The Sims is a very realistic game, in certain ways... but few people I know would call it a good game

[frenzyfol]

Originally posted by snoopy369

It removes the strategic choice when building a city of "do I select a city that has many hammers available but grows slowly, or a city that will quickly become large but has fewer hammers".

It may remove the above choice, but it does make you decide between having a large economic or GP pump or a large production city.

I think it could be balanced by making it rather inefficient (allot of wastage during transport) in the early part of the game. Then when certain techs like refrigeration have been discovered it becomes much more useful, making expansion in the late part of the game actually worth doing.

[snoopy369]

It does not add any strategic choice. Your best strategy is always to build cities that produce a lot of food, and funnel their food once they're grown a bit into a few cities with large hammer outputs to allow them to use only large hammer squares. You can easily afford one GP pump while still having this; and the food helps economic cities as well. I guarantee you that a game with food caravans or trade would *require* players to build mega-cities with "feeder" cities, or lose.

Moving it to only the late game would certainly help, but it would mostly help by making it less powerful. It never is going to be good for gameplay, because there is no benefit to gameplay from allowing the trade of food. Trading health resources is as close as you can get and still have beneficial outcomes; that essentially trades food but with a strict limitation (it does not allow increasing food, only decreasing the leaving of food).

Turn it around. How is the gameplay superior by allowing food trade routes? What does it add to the game?

To me, it allows for larger cities, which is not useful. It also allows for less specialized cities, which is also not good for gameplay (allowing hammer cities to have more food, and/or allowing food cities to effectively have hammers by supporting them elsewhere). Other than that, I cannot see what advantage to gameplay it allows; thus I see no reason to allow an otherwise unbalancing thing into the game.

[frenzyfol]

I still disagree. If it was implemented correctly it could add strategical depth rather than take away.

It would make trade routes and distance between them more important. As I stated distance of trade route would modify the amount of food that was wasted on the way.

It would make techs like engineering, compass, navigation, refrigeration more appealing. Personally these techs are not high on my priority.

It could easily be balanced by altering how much food is wasted on the trip. Food used locally may be more productive than transporting food at a loss to obtain a gain in production somewhere else. This is adding strategic depth, not removing it.

It would make late game expansion useful.

It adds another type of city to the existing list of Commerce, GP, Mil pump, never does anything city.

The argument "I guarantee you that a game with food caravans or trade would *require* players to build mega-cities with "feeder" cities, or lose." is kind of flawed because you could also apply that to the existing city types. If you don't create a commerce city, GP pump, Mil pump you lose (at least on harder levels).

Also, you can already do "food" trading. Isn't that what a GP pump is, food in one location produces X which can be moved to another location where X would be more useful.
Most people would argue that GP's add rather than take away from the game.