New Units

[mjmacy]

I am starting this thread as a request for new Units.
I personally would like to see a unit that could transport food. I have cites that have a lot of food and others that are starving. This would never happen In real life. Transportation and the sale of food is the most important trade in the world. Without U.S. grain, much of the world would be starving right now. I'm Looking at you China. Anyways I'm off topic. Lets just see if anyone can make some of the units we request.

[ToeTruck]

How much U.S. grain does China receive each year?

[Dr Shot]

This could be done with a worker action,something on a one time basis. look at watch towers and colonies. this would make a good ballance between necessity and growth for any other(fun) reason(s).
I do like the concept, keep them commin' , eh!

[knighterrant]

I kind of like the way this was handled in Alpha Centauri. You made a transport and could stick it on a piece of land outside a cities influence area. Then you tell it to transport food/minerals or energy from that square to the city it was built in. It wasn't something you had to manually do every turn, it was like a mobile farm/mine/solar unit. Of course, these setups were the first to get hit with an air strike when another civilaztion decided you were too good.

[jontar]

Food for needy cities


Good idea. I've also found myself in need of something like that.
Maybe it can be done like the cow in 'Call to Power II'.
It's a unit that modifies directly how much food a square produces. It can be captured (usefull like the workers)
Im not shure it can be done.... someone?

[WarpStorm]

Can't be done by anyone outside of Firaxis.

[steven8r]

I too, used to think that having an over-abundance of food in some of your cities whilst others were starving was absurd. (Actually I still think the concept is absurd). However, I've become used to the idea that this will happen at certain city sizes and in certain locations.

Sure, a 'Food Caravan' unit or something could be used to prevent cities from starving, but even more useful is being mindful of what makes a city starve.

Each pop point in a city requires 2 food units. Look at the terrain around the city and see how to get the best food to shield ratio. (More pop isn't always a good thing).

My main strats are to grow slowly. I usually stay away from Graineries (unless I can get Pyramids) and Longivity. I only want the cities growing fast enough to get the most amount of sheilds out of the surrounding land. Use cities near food resources or Flood Plains, as Worker/Settler farms. These cities can take the pop hit and recover more quickly than Plains cities.

Another strat, let the surplus population starve. Yeah, I know it's pretty cruel. At least in the game, you won't take a rep hit for your population starving--just give them enough Luxury Resources to let them 'forget they are dying'.

This also works with unhappy population. Starve 'em down until only the happy folks are left.

Still, you'd think that if you can trade those 'Spare Tires' to another country, that you could share some bread with your own folks.

To summarize:
The concept of some cities starving while others have abundance is absurd.

This is a game factor. Forwarned is forarmed. Now you know this will happen, adapt your strategy accordingly.

[Willem]

Re: New Units

Originally posted by mjmacy
I am starting this thread as a request for new Units.
I personally would like to see a unit that could transport food. I have cites that have a lot of food and others that are starving. This would never happen In real life. Transportation and the sale of food is the most important trade in the world. Without U.S. grain, much of the world would be starving right now. I'm Looking at you China. Anyways I'm off topic. Lets just see if anyone can make some of the units we request.

You don't want a new unit, you want a new game. Your idea simply can't be done. No doubt this feature was removed since the AI wouldn't have a clue how to use it effectively, giving the human a huge advantage.

[Lucarse]

Guys did you ever play the Original CIV or CIV II ??.

The trader (camel unit) could carry resources or luxuries AND food, I used to use it all the time to fill up the grain silo's (food box in the city screen) of other cities.

I think they removed this feature as it was too powerful you could create and sustain a massive city with out having access to the tiles around you.

[minke19104]

CTP had food caravan too...

I just think of food tiles as housing tiles. This way, even if you are able to ship food around, if the city do not have enough tiles that can house its citizens, then it cannot grow any larger.

Food caravans would just make the game unbalanced, Imagine having a city in a hill surrounded only by mountain tiles. If you are allowed to transfer food around, then this city would have 20 citizens working every tile to make some crazy shield/turn. In real life you need at least some flat terrains to have massive sprawling city.

[TriMiro]

In a modern Country no city is self suficient. They all depend on some comunication between each other. Even if one is far away from the sea or the ocean one can still eat sea food. In every modern society food can be transported from one place to another.

There might be a special inprovement or a bunch of units that will be automated to deliver food across the map. All that one would need is road between 2 cities.

Having a all montain city and supplying it with food from the other cities is a good idea. There are cities like that in Russia for instance. Maybe it will disbalance the AI to Human ratio, but Human to Human it will be a very powerful tool.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Lucarse
Guys did you ever play the Original CIV or CIV II ??.

The trader (camel unit) could carry resources or luxuries AND food, I used to use it all the time to fill up the grain silo's (food box in the city screen) of other cities.

I think they removed this feature as it was too powerful you could create and sustain a massive city with out having access to the tiles around you.

true, the caravan unit was in civ 1 and 2. Firaxis made a good decision in axing it in civ 3. I would like to be able to set up supply lines where a city could transport food or shields to another city, however doing it with another unit is not necessary nor wanted. Any city in a trade network should be able to set up a supply line without the need of a f***ing unit.

P.S. the most use I found for the caravan in civ 2 was to rush wonders, not setting up trade routes.

[ToeTruck]

Food Caravans

Yea, I remember the food caravans in Civ2. Neat concept, but not much use except for the "fill the food box" cheat where you could grow cities to obscene pop levels. Or, of course, rushing wonders.

I'm thinking along Mad Bomber's thoughts, extra food should/could be distributed without the need for a unit. Luxuries and strategic resources work that way so why not food?

Might open up some abuse options...I could easily imagine a scenario where food is piped to a city so that it can pop-rush big improvements and then shrink back to size one while the unhappiness wears out. Maybe bad, maybe not.

All in all, I like the way the game is right now. Seems reasonably balanced.

- TT

[mjmacy]

Originally posted by ToeTruck
How much U.S. grain does China receive each year?

four billion pounds of US soybeans imported into China last year amounted to nearly three pounds for each of the country's 1.3 billion people.
"In fact, just this week China purchased 50,000 tons of US wheat."Testimony of Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman
Before the Senate Committee
on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Washington, DC March 1, 2000
China would starve without U.S. grain.

[mjmacy]

I agree that a food caravan could unbalance the game., which I would not like to see done. But I think it just doesn't make sense not to have one. I think that you should be able to send one or two foods from one city to another. the city exporting the food would lose one food per turn and the importing city would gain one food per turn.