Food Trading

[Worthingtons]

Does anyone else wish it was possible to trade food from city to city like in Civ II??
I thought the Civ II system,whereby a caravan set up a permanent route between cities was flawed, but something working on the priciple of the trading of surplus food from one city to another , should be included IMO.

In England, Grimsby , a small town on the east town, probably used to produce enough fish to feed a third of the country , they didnt eat all of this fish of course! they traded it. With Moving of food,comes cost, therefore when moving food surplus from one city to another, there should be distribution costs involved. But it should at least be possible!!!

I hate it when I get a lovely site for a productive city (or a cash cow) but it cant develop due to lack of food!

[Jack_www]

I too wish that you could trade surplus food in one city to anther like in Civ2 as well. In real life the major cities of the world do not grow their own food, it grown some were else and brought to the city.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Jack_www
I too wish that you could trade surplus food in one city to anther like in Civ2 as well. In real life the major cities of the world do not grow their own food, it grown some were else and brought to the city.

Which is represented by the citizens working squares(gathering food) outside the city.

[Unregistered]

Re: Food Trading

Originally posted by Rothy
Does anyone else wish it was possible to trade food from city to city like in Civ II??
I thought the Civ II system,whereby a caravan set up a permanent route between cities was flawed, but something working on the priciple of the trading of surplus food from one city to another , should be included IMO.

In England, Grimsby , a small town on the east town, probably used to produce enough fish to feed a third of the country , they didnt eat all of this fish of course! they traded it. With Moving of food,comes cost, therefore when moving food surplus from one city to another, there should be distribution costs involved. But it should at least be possible!!!

Yes!!! Yes!!! For exactly those reasons!!

[Worthingtons]

Barefootwhatever, You've completely missed the point, Cities can get thier food supply from places hundreds of miles away! (not a few squares away) . Not only is this 'realistic', but it's a feature which i feel would make the game more enjoyable..
As i say, there should be heavy distribution costs involved but still possible, so we can develop those lovely hilly cities to thier true potential....

[Shaka II]

Yes, I have wished the same many times.

I think the hills in civ II could be irrigated, right? In civ III maybe the sea squares produce more than civ II?

In any case, it sure is tough in those mountain/hill bound cities. Makes city planning that much trickier, trying to share the mountain tiles among cities that have some good food tiles also.

[vmxa1]

Actually in civ2 hills could be made into grasslands and then farmlands, it just took awhile.

[The Andy-Man]

they should have a system (at least in a commie gvt) where all surplus food is pread evenly around the civ.

[Blaupanzer]

Reasonably, this should be made available by a technology in the late middle ages, allowing cities to transfer food in from other cities at some cost (an improvement perhaps). This process was one of the causes for the increasing power of central governments (versus the warlords) in that period throughout much of the Northern hemisphere. Would require a lot of coding if the Civ II code cannot be reused. Won't see it as a patch, I suspect.

[barefootbadass]

Maybe a small wonder, which would allow you to donate any city's excess food(specifiable by how much) to another city that needs it.

[Worthingtons]

Yep, Sounds good.

As i say though, there should DEFINATLY be a significant cost in it, otherwise it will become a neccessary evil (More Micro Management) as opposed to being a stratagy...

[Dimension]

Originally posted by Rothy
Barefootwhatever, You've completely missed the point, Cities can get thier food supply from places hundreds of miles away! (not a few squares away) . Not only is this 'realistic', but it's a feature which i feel would make the game more enjoyable..
As i say, there should be heavy distribution costs involved but still possible, so we can develop those lovely hilly cities to thier true potential....

I think you're the one missing the point. Look at the scale of this game. Cities do get their food from hundreds of miles away, even in 4000 BC.

For example, a standard map is 100x100. Earth is 25,000 miles around, so each square is 250 miles (400km). That means a city's 21-square area is 1250 miles wide containing 1.3 million square miles (840 million acres). Without overlapping, the US is only wide enough for three cities. Does that mean that these cities represent much larger regions containing groups of cities? Hell if I know, because the city screen tells me that my size-12 metropolis only has 800,000 people.

If you think it would be nice to carry food between cities, then yeah, I'll agree with you. Don't bother trying to bring realism into it, because you should need refrigerated freight just to get food from the square next to a city.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
they should have a system (at least in a commie gvt) where all surplus food is pread evenly around the civ.

Only to have some of your cities starve when you switch to Democracy.

[Ironikinit]

To be realistic, they should force communist gov'ts to import food.

Speaking of which... it would be nice to be able to export it. I guess that's covered by the taxman specialist, surplus food = gold.