damn FOOD managment!

hated when my city would grow and my people would starve! Make them stop growing if the food intake is 0!!!

And how do they grow if the food rate is 0? Do you mean the resultant food rate? Well then, that is rather realistic (cities outgrowing their food supply happens!) and should stay in.

[The Mad Monk]

Just watch your high-pop cities, and when they get to one food (with no available squares), survey the situation:

Can you improve food production?

If so, is it practical and desirable to do so?

If it isnt't, Can you stop woking one square now, to arrest population growth? This is an easier choice If there's a nearby city that can take the square.

For that matter, is another city holding a resource that will serve this city better? If you own the other city, weigh the benefits for each; if you don't...just park one of your units on that square .

If none of the above applies, is it practical to send a food caravan?

I think that covers the options.

[The Mad Monk]

Oops! I was half asleep and forgot which forum I was in when I posted this...sorry!

[tniem]

I would like to see more sharing of resources between cities in my nation. I believe that I should be able to regionalize and share my wealth so that I can have areas that dominate certain areas of my empire. For example in the U.S. today, the Great Plains grow most of the food, regions such as California produce most of the tech research, and New York/Hollywood produce most of the entertainment for the rest of the nation.

I should be able to asign cities 1 to 6 to produce enough food for the rest of the country. Cities 7 and 8 will concentrate on science. City 9 will provide the luxuries for the nation. City 10 through 15 will provide the resources for my nation. Cities 16 through 25 will be primarily factories and industrial centers. There will have to be balance, but every city should not function the same.

[Grumbold]

I'd like to see that sort of flexibility too, provided it was not done by having to build food caravans and move them across the map (I like to macro manage my micro management wherever possible.) After all, a low industry high food production centre is the place least capable of building caravans or trucks to shift the food it has in abundance.

Since ancient Egypt and Rome were able to transport vast quantities of food to the required sites it needs to be practical and desirable before the advent of modern farming methods, railroads and trucks. However perhaps it should be limited to flowing into the capitol until those inventions arrive. A well researched post somewhere on this forum showed how virtually no non-capital cities exceeded 40,000 population until industrialisation. Food flow to the capitol could be set by controlling a nationwide limit of how many surplus food units would be held locally per turn before the excess was shipped. Unfortunately this would mean that the happiness rules would need to be adjusted because the current Civ model would just make your vast capital city a sinkhole of unproductive misery and rebellion.

[tniem]

Good point Grumbold. Happiness should be revamped. I do not see how taking away resources you make someone happy. Sure they do not have to work in the fields but that does not mean there is more money to make people wealthy. I never did understand exactly how Sid figured the happiness rate.