increase food production by food caravans?

[SlowThinker]

Normally if you deliver a food caravan and establish a food route you get +1 food production in the destination city and -1 food production in the source city. So total food production of your civ is unchanged.
Is there any trick how to increase the food production by food caravans?

[Harry Tuttle]

Well, besides training the routes by using the utility Civcity, I think the only trick would be to send caravans to cities that could produce more food by simply expanding into existing city squares. Make the city grow faster by plying it with food until it hits the maximum number of usable tiles then move on to the next city.

Hmmmm, interesting. If I have a city build a food caravan and then set its home city to none it will add +1 to the destination cities food bar and -1 to the cities trade route message. This only happens once...

[rjmatsleepers]

My recollection is that someone posted an exploit involving food caravans. This was a few years ago and I can't remember the details.

What happens to the food route in the originating city when a new (non-food) trade route is established? Is it possible to lose the -1 while keeping the +1?

RJM

[DaveV]

This was another Xin Yu trick. As I remember it, the trick was to send two food caravans in one turn. The first filled the food box; the second caused the city to grow by one population. I think his example concerned three cities: A, B, and C. First turn, A and B send food caravans to C; next turn B and C send food caravans to A; third turn, A and C send food caravans to B. I've never tried it, but Xin Yu said you could grow cities to size 255 using this trick and I trust him.

[Grigor]

Has everybody forgotten?? THis trick has been banned for so long that none of us remember it! From a 2002 thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=27833

Smallville is a size one city. Around it lie Big Town, Metropolis, Whopperburg, and Mega City, all of which have granaries and have built food caravans. The food caravans are rehomed to Smallville & sent back to their former home cities. But wait, the home city only shows three trade routes -- the fourth food route has no ongoing cost but the fourth city still gains a +1 food per turn -- for FREE. Smallville feeds the nation (picture 80 cities?)

There are some other tricks listed there by Starlifter, a **great** Civ2 player.

[Straybow]

Yes, all van rehoming is forbidden for use for trade routes or food routes. I'd forgotten that particular exploit.

[SlowThinker]

I have run some tests...

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
What happens to the food route in the originating city when a new (non-food) trade route is established? Is it possible to lose the -1 while keeping the +1?

It seems the -1 / +1 always depend on the existence of a corresponding food route. In other words, +1 food requires a food route, and the food route induces -1 food.
I am almost sure there is no +1 without -1.

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
If I have a city build a food caravan and then set its home city to none it will add +1 to the destination cities food bar and -1 to the cities trade route message. This only happens once...

"Cities trade route message" ... what do you mean?
My test says: a delivery of a NONE food caravan to Berlin causes causes a message "Food caravan from Berlin arrives in Berlin". A food route is shown in the city window ("Berlin food supplies: -1"), but "Food" in "City resources" remains unchanged, because +1-1=0.
Yes, this happens only once, because a city will never establish a 2nd equal route (i.e. to an equal city and with an equal commodity).

Originally posted by DaveV
This was another Xin Yu trick. As I remember it, the trick was to send two food caravans in one turn. The first filled the food box; the second caused the city to grow by one population. I think his example concerned three cities: A, B, and C. First turn, A and B send food caravans to C; next turn B and C send food caravans to A; third turn, A and C send food caravans to B. I've never tried it, but Xin Yu said you could grow cities to size 255 using this trick and I trust him.

This trick does nothing special with +1 / -1 food routes. It doesn't increase the city's food production, it only fills food boxes.
(About details of the trick: very large cities have a large food shortage, so the cities need granaries in order to prevent famine.)

Originally copied by Grigor
Smallville is a size one city. Around it lie Big Town, Metropolis, Whopperburg, and Mega City, all of which have granaries and have built food caravans. The food caravans are rehomed to Smallville & sent back to their former home cities. But wait, the home city only shows three trade routes -- the fourth food route has no ongoing cost but the fourth city still gains a +1 food per turn -- for FREE. Smallville feeds the nation (picture 80 cities?)

This trick doesn't work. The 4th route is not established, and there is no +1 food in the fourth city.

[Grigor]

OK, I underestimated Slow Thinker yet again.

After a close reading of the thread I quoted above, it seems that there is only one aspect of fod production increase involved here:

Because the delivery of more than three routes does not result in a -1 penalty, the total amount of food in the game has been increased by the amount of half the food box in the city to which the food was delivered.

It is true that this comes at a cost of 50 shields. This way to convert shields into food was discovered early in the history of CivII. Some players found that the possibility of creating food from money seemed to violate some unstated principle of aesthetics. The creation of unnaturally lage cities was used as exhibit #1 in this argument. Early in the history of CivII there were a lot of threads critiqueing CivII on the basis of its accuracy or lack of accuracy in reflecting the real world.

I think we are beyond that now.

It seems to be a CivII urban legend that such a delivery results in an uncompensated +1 in the receiving city. Evidently this is not correct.

[SlowThinker]

(Frankly said, I didn't understood the FCT precisely, and since I never played a GOTM for a high score, I didn't study either the related problems nor whole "Food for Thought" thread.
So my next posting may be dumb)

Originally posted by Grigor
It seems to be a CivII urban legend that such a delivery results in an uncompensated +1 in the receiving city. Evidently this is not correct.

It seems they didn't complain that
there is +1 food without -1 food
but they complained that
a half of the box is filled without +1/-1 food:

Originally posted by starlifter in Food for Thought
CASE 3: More than one food delivery from the same source city to the same destination city.
Comments: The 2nd and subsequent Food Delivery from the same source to the same destination was not credited with the source -1 route, nor the +1 in the destination.
Conclusion: Case 3 always results in the FCT!!

Edit: I just reread more of that thread and it seems I had understood the problems around FCT somewhen in past

[Sharkbait]

What would happen if you rehomed a bunch of food vans to a size 1 city and then RB a settler to disband the city? Could you then contribute them to a city and get a benefit?

[SlowThinker]

I guess all units homed in a city disappear when the city is lost.

[Sharkbait]

Oh yeah....spot the person who hasn't been playing much lately....

[civiijkw]

Originally posted by DaveV
This was another Xin Yu trick. As I remember it, the trick was to send two food caravans in one turn. The first filled the food box; the second caused the city to grow by one population. I think his example concerned three cities: A, B, and C. First turn, A and B send food caravans to C; next turn B and C send food caravans to A; third turn, A and C send food caravans to B. I've never tried it, but Xin Yu said you could grow cities to size 255 using this trick and I trust him.

Size 127 is the limit as size 128 = size 0. If you send A to B, B to C and C to A every turn then the caravans will fill half of the food boxes, allowing a city growth every other turn for all three cities. The food box grows as the city grows (maybe to a limit of 1000 - I'm not yet sure). The hunger is done after the city growth, so a granary in each growing city or the Pyramids are required.

[Felch]

Cities have a 7 bit size value? Any idea what they use the 8th bit for?

[SlowThinker]

Look in "Everything about hexediting": http://apolyton.net/forums//showthre...0&pagenumber=1