Hey guys,



during my last playthrough I came to think that after the "industrial revolution" of age IV the population growth of cities, which lie in more rigid climates is a bit too extreme.

Those Cities should only be able to grow by themselfes, if they would concentrate their population on food production. But if you'd want to make those cities into centers of dust,production,science and let them grow to big sizes, you would need to supply food from other regions.



Let me explain this by some examples. Those were three big cities during my last gameplay.



Janeldaan produced most food in the empire, Skaeen was a trading center and Vanoran had the highest production in the game. All three however were roughly the same size, even though Janeldaan was in a much more fertile region. I know, I built them so, that their food production would stay high, but I don't believe that it should be enough to let them grow to those sizes.



I therefore propose a mechanic to have cities transport food between each other. This would achieve two things:



1. Make green lush areas not the "jack of all trades", but strategic centers of food, needed to let your other cities specialise in the late stages of the game.

2. Make Winter more dangerous, because the great loss in food would encourage planning ahead even more.



If you ask for real-life examples, think of Rome and how it needed regions like Egypt to maintain it's very high population. I believe this would add even more interesting choices to an

already intricate game



If anyone is interested in specific number you can see them below.



Question: Is it possible to add Spoilers here? So that my big pictures don't make the post so long.

In the game, there is already a mechanic like this (the stockpile system) that allows a city in your empire to produce stockpiles that can then be used to affect another city. However, they don't work in the same way as the method you proposed, which I assume is some sort of trade route that transfers food? The current system requires industry and is kind of an annoying process, however a trade route type system might allow things to be smoother, allowing for perhaps an order of a transfer of food for x amount of turns.

Exactly, what I propose is not a booster package, but a constant flow of food, kind of like a trade route, but with an actual malus from the cities which are sending the supplies. Many games have incorporated food mechanics into them, but I do still miss this feature, which was very important for a long time for many big cities. Stockpiles don't really touch on this, because they depend from production, favouring those cities, which have the highest rate of production, not of food.

Well production does make sense in the way of the costs of the shipping, using either an overland route or an oversea route. Maybe we could build resource transporting units though? That way, the industry cost would be handled from a city with good production, and then you move the units to your food producing city where they load and transport food to your other cities. This could also be balanced with some additional dust and production costs per trip, as well as upkeep and the science requirement to research the tech.

The ability to dedicate a certain % of food a city produces to be transfered to another city would be incredibly helpful, yes.

If you gave a certain percentage of food produced in a city to another city, that could get out of control fairly easily with an increasing number of food being siphoned out of your food city as its food production increases, slowing down the whole city's native population increase as the food cost increases but the city produces less food. I propose a flat amount of food per turn, which I believe could be a lot more controlled.

If you recall was removed from Trade Routes before release.



I'm looking at those screenshots and I see turn 490something. Not sure what settings your playing on but that's pretty deep into the game.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
Well production does make sense in the way of the costs of the shipping, using either an overland route or an oversea route. Maybe we could build resource transporting units though? That way, the industry cost would be handled from a city with good production, and then you move the units to your food producing city where they load and transport food to your other cities. This could also be balanced with some additional dust and production costs per trip, as well as upkeep and the science requirement to research the tech.

You have a point, however we would still be back on the main problem, which is production to be good for everything. In my vision cities and especially those in more hostiles environments, should ony be able to grow very large populations,only if you would concentrate about 75% of it on food production (like it was typical for medieval societies). However if you wish those cities to specialize for e.g production or science, food should be brought to them from more fertile regions. This isn´t so much a problem until Age III, where population remains relatively low, but after Age IV population explodes and it´s then, when this supply system should become important. High risk, but also high reward.



On the matter of Transport units, I believe many people would see it as unecessary micromanagement. I would prefer to select one city and draw a connection to another, which could have a visual represantation (like in Total war, where you can see small wagons driving along the roads) and could perhaps also be raided.



I agree that solid number would be clearer than percentages.

Propbuddha wrote:
If you recall was removed from Trade Routes before release.



I'm looking at those screenshots and I see turn 490something. Not sure what settings your playing on but that's pretty deep into the game.

Yes, those were taking from after I had won the game. I just wanted to complete some of my cities for some good screenshots. However the population and size isn´t very different from when I finished the game.



I do not recall food from trade routes, but that is also not what I had in mind. This food, like the dust or science is generated from thin air, so to speak, but I mean for the food to be actually subtracted from one of your cities. Could also be a potential diplomatic action.