Food Production and Related Question

[Urban Ranger]

I don't know if this has been discussed before:

1. Has there been any discussions on allowing food to be moved from surplus areas to deficit areas? If nobody else, merchants are always happy to do that.

2. What about allowing food production to increase over time, maybe as a result of civ advancements? This can be a result of better farming techniques, better land treatment, or higher yielding crops that come from hybridization and selective breeding.

[Ken Bregott]

1. It was in SMAC, and worked reasonably well. Keep it.

2. This will boost ICS. Not a good idea.

[UltraSonix]

Even in Civ2, and in SMAC, you could already use caravans to transport food from a surplus town to a deficit town.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Urban Ranger]

1. The point is food trading should be a part of the underlying economics, not something a ruler must do. I know that there are times for explicit intervention, but only during extraordinary circumstances (drought, etc.)

2. I don't think ICS is a good enough reason not to put this in. There are other ways to stop ICS, while telling players that barbarians produce as much food as modern farmers are really stretching things.

[Theben]

1. The problem with civ and SMAC is that caravans or crawlers must be built in order to transfer a rather pathetic amount of resources. There are suggestions in (cue heavenly glow) the LIST (glow fades) that discuss this very issue, including *ahem* my personal suggestion that the player can just allocate resources from one city/region to another w/out building anything. Just include a reasonable time delay until shipments start arriving (based on distance and current tech) and include loss due to distance traveled.

2. If the x10 system is implemented then I say yes, because the fractional accounting will allow for many small changes over time. Otherwise, for gameplay's sake I'd say stick with the current Civ/SMAC method of a few techs allowing +1/+2 food additions.
And I agree, there are better ways to deal with ICS.