mmmmm...yumi..yumi..foooooooood

[Lord_Davinator]

Well since we all have learned about the way trade is going to effect civ3 I am a bit suprised that no one has thought about fooooood. are cities still going to depend on food they produce or is food going to be shared between your cities?
I think it would be better for the food to be shared. But I haven't heard anything on this so I am lead to belive it will be much like civ2.

[Seventh]

Yea, I agree. I always found it incredably fustrating to have a city starve when another city was thrieving just a few squares away.

Cities are not microcosms, they're interdependant, and they should be able to pool thier resources; this includes food and units and research output.

[Cyclotron]

Isn't pooling food already done in Civ2 with food caravans? Since caravans are going out, it would be nice to make a food transfer system that was less clunky. Either way, sending food has to cost something, whether it be production, gold or whatever...

[Lord_Davinator]

well the civ2 caravans did it but I really think they were a very very poor way to implement this.

we need a more flexible system and true it should cost a few bits of gold.

[TechWins]

This is one of the reasons why the end game starts to become boring. My cities starve when they get really big and it makes me very mad.

[Adm.Naismith]

Firaxis explained that "Special resources (from colonies or simply connected with road inside borders) are shared between cities connected with roads to the Capital".

While proper trade seems now dedicated to trade between different civs, I suppose that any special resource that give extra food, will obey to the above rule.

So, my guess is: no sharing of food from tile worked from city population, but food from Workers units effort (colonies).

[Vrank Prins]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Isn't pooling food already done in Civ2 with food caravans? Since caravans are going out, it would be nice to make a food transfer system that was less clunky. Either way, sending food has to cost something, whether it be production, gold or whatever...

YES you can send food to another city to relieve a foodproblem, but NO You can NOT trade it. You can trade all kind of goods, but grain and beef, which are goods on the map aswell, NO.

I would like it if these goods also became tradecommodities. And also that it would become possible that cities can grow and specialize in cashcrops. (One of the pillars of Dutch exports is agriculture, not only tulipbulbs but vegetables !! and dairyproducts too, the Netherlands are second in the world after America first when it comes to agricultural exports).

[drake]

This is one of the reasons why the end game starts to become boring. My cities starve when they get really big and it makes me very mad.

Your cities wont starve if they've grown to their size naturally (without food caravans).........

Using food caravans for city growth is an absurd method

Anyway, back on topic, yeah, crops should be able to be shared with neighbors pretty easily..........

[TechWins]

Your cities wont starve if they've grown to their size naturally (without food caravans).........

I don't use food caravans to stimulate growth. It's just that my city gets such a huge surplus of food that my cities are at size 30 by the 1800's. Then I have to start doing a lot of micromanagement (transforming forest into grassland, tons of irrigation, and farming) to make sure my cities don't starve any more that what they already are.

[drake]

Yes, but tech, a city wont grow beyond its own limits

hmmmmmmm....I suppose changing governments might do that..........

[Lord_Davinator]

Precicely the amount of food your city has depends its growth...now if we were able to alocate food per city then I could make real humongous inner nation cities with size10-12 border cities.
which would increase my economic revenues and also increase the productitiy of the inner cities

[marcuspeddle]

starving

I agree with sharing food between cities, especially in the mid to later part of the game when transportation is easier. Cities have been importing food to feed their populations as far back as ancient Mesopotamian times. After the invention of airplanes there should be no cities starving. Unless, of course, the total amount of food in your country isn't enough to get shared around. What about 'food for oil' or some similar trading system where you can get food from another country in exchange for some resource or gold. Wait, I think someone mentioned that. Anyway, it's a great idea.
As for starving cities, I find the problem only gets serious when there's global warming and my farmland turns to desert. Ouch! Those are hard times. In my last game I had global warming a number of times. Just as enough of the population starved to bring the food/people balance back I got hit with another drought and people started starving again. *sigh*

[Theben]

Originally posted by Seventh
Yea, I agree. I always found it incredably fustrating to have a city starve when another city was thrieving just a few squares away.

Cities are not microcosms, they're interdependant, and they should be able to pool thier resources; this includes food and units and research output.

It depends on the govt type you have. In feudal kingdoms areas quite literally had severe famine even though nearby lords had more than sufficient food to help their neighbors. In feudal Japan it took an edict from the Shogun or a previous alliance to get a warlord to ship over food. In fact in Japan food riots were quite common, and became even more violent and large in scale, as the Tokugawa era went on. Once the Meiji "Restoration" centralized the govt, food riots ceased to exist almost immediately.

Which is one reason I'm disappointed Firaxis likely won't use a SMAC-style SE system. I had suggested 2 government values of
centralized and decentralized which would've factored in things like intra-civ trade.

[Lord_Davinator]

I thought a SMAC type SE system was about to be implemented in civ3...guess I was wrong but the idea of a centralized and decentralized gov. could be implemeneted with the old gov system...
once you pic the gov.. you get further options into apply the system one of which could be the centralixation system.
But hey since the game is almost complete I doubt that such ideas will be used...