Help promote world hunger!

[Terser]

Build "Longevity" today!

Question: where are supermarkets and double irrigation? We have all these redundant technologies in late game that boost shield production--offshore platforms and the alphabet soup of plants: Coal plant, hydro plant, solar plant, nuclear plant, manufacturing plant, Robert Plant, pitcher plant, etc., etc., etc. Yet, we have nothing that leads to higher food production, so my highly developed fully industrialized society typically has a small but significant number of its' citizensdying of starvation every turn. If I'm stupid enough to build Longevity, then I simply end up with more people available to die of hunger. Even those cities that don't suffer such routine losses teeter on the edge--the first time they suffer a spot of untreated pollution people start dropping like flies...

If the Firaxians could not or would not provide food-boosting city or terrain improvement(s) than they might have at least provided a system similar to "wealth." Something like "Commercial Agriculture" where a cities shield production would be converted to food at a four to one or eight to one ratio. It wouldn't be a permenant solution (in fact, it would probably only delay the inevitable) but you could at least try to keep your people alive rather than making them continuously live in the world like the one from Soylent Green.

[Nadexander]

And why is that cities dont eat up the food in your granary before starving?? ive never seen my granary deplete even when the population was dying of hunger.

[Frito]

The only food change I'd like to see is the ability to make a food trade route again.

[Nadexander]

And does anyone else find it odd that there is almost no increase in productivity of cities between the early industrial age(factory/coal plant) and the late modern age?? Isnt that the period in which the productive power (in terms of manufactured goods and "trade") increased the most?? It would be nice if by the modern age, because of improved food production, most of your citizens were not working the fields and were instead bringing in gold/production as laborers/businessmen/people working in the various service industies. As it is, there is hardly a point in increasing a city beyond size 20. Did the agricultural revolution just never happpen in the civ universe?

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Frito
The only food change I'd like to see is the ability to make a food trade route again.

I think it would be even better if people somehow gravitated to the cities with the most production/commerce and food was distibuted to all cities connected to the trade network. But maybe this belongs is the civ4 list...

[Cavalier_13]

Better yet, how about a "food bank" that diverts the overproduced food from one city to a city that is not producing.... not to make it grow faster, but to at least prevent starvation.....

Until I get Sanitation and Ecology and have Mass Transit in my cities, I do not build a Hospital so as to "cap" my pop at 12.... but I still get like 4 - 8 over produced food per turn.

An option to redistribute it would be nice, even if it was 2:1 or 3:1.

Cavalier

[player1]

Originally posted by Terser
Build "Longevity" today!

Question: where are supermarkets and double irrigation? We have all these redundant technologies in late game that boost shield production--offshore platforms and the alphabet soup of plants: Coal plant, hydro plant, solar plant, nuclear plant, manufacturing plant, Robert Plant, pitcher plant, etc., etc., etc. Yet, we have nothing that leads to higher food production, so my highly developed fully industrialized society typically has a small but significant number of its' citizensdying of starvation every turn. If I'm stupid enough to build Longevity, then I simply end up with more people available to die of hunger. Even those cities that don't suffer such routine losses teeter on the edge--the first time they suffer a spot of untreated pollution people start dropping like flies...

If the Firaxians could not or would not provide food-boosting city or terrain improvement(s) than they might have at least provided a system similar to "wealth." Something like "Commercial Agriculture" where a cities shield production would be converted to food at a four to one or eight to one ratio. It wouldn't be a permenant solution (in fact, it would probably only delay the inevitable) but you could at least try to keep your people alive rather than making them continuously live in the world like the one from Soylent Green.

Just make conscript (draft) or worker.
They don't need food.

[sophist]

Good point. Or maybe, rather than a strict increase in productivity, it could be a small increase in productivity coupled with a reduction in pollution. That would be tied to a new discovery or perhaps a new improvement.

With regards to food... Hydroponics? There would be an (expensive) improvement that grows food without using land. Presumably there could be an improvement that creates productivity without using land as well (like the satellites in SMAC).

Originally posted by Nadexander
And does anyone else find it odd that there is almost no increase in productivity of cities between the early industrial age(factory/coal plant) and the late modern age?? Isnt that the period in which the productive power (in terms of manufactured goods and "trade") increased the most?? It would be nice if by the modern age, because of improved food production, most of your citizens were not working the fields and were instead bringing in gold/production as laborers/businessmen/people working in the various service industies. As it is, there is hardly a point in increasing a city beyond size 20. Did the agricultural revolution just never happpen in the civ universe?

[LaRusso]

hm, odd bit of realism....i also found my biggest cities starving after i built longevity.....but boy that comes in handy if there is a mobilization...as player 1 pointed out

if we had any food boosting improvement, cities would easily break through the 30+ barrier...and i reckon you can always convert that mined plain into an irrigated one...

[sophist]

I guess I just like the idea of super metropolises. Like Tokyo or New York City or Sao Paulo (sp?). Even a 40 population city has only 8 million people while the aforementioned real cities have significantly more. There need to be ways

1) to get more food into a city to support such a large population
2) to make those extra workers worth something in terms of trade and production (beyond the current entertainer/tax(wo)man/scientist model which is clearly not sufficient).

It just seems like it would be more fun that way, especially considering how Longevity basically sucks.

Originally posted by LaRusso
hm, odd bit of realism....i also found my biggest cities starving after i built longevity.....but boy that comes in handy if there is a mobilization...as player 1 pointed out

if we had any food boosting improvement, cities would easily break through the 30+ barrier...and i reckon you can always convert that mined plain into an irrigated one...

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by sophist
I guess I just like the idea of super metropolises. Like Tokyo or New York City or Sao Paulo (sp?).

well 1/3 of SP population is constantly underfed they die of hunger, mudslides, etc. but yes, longevity seems an option only for pop depleted civ (democracy starved during a long war, etc.)

[David Murray]

It just makes no sense for large cities in a rich nation to be starving.

I mean, are any of us here, at this very moment in time, starving? How many of us *don't* have dozens of supermarkets in our cities, competing to sell us ultra-cheap food?

If anything, big Civilizations should have TOO MUCH food, and should be able to sell that or donate it to those countries that are starving. I think the food system in Civ2 was better. There, you could trade food between cities simply using a caravan. Even with other Civ's cities. (So if you were a generous soul, you could stop world poverty. Cool. )

Bring back trading food!

[Andrew_Jay]

It would be really great if under a democracy (or even under any government type, but I'm saying dem for now because there has never been a major famine under a representative democracy in the real world) if you were able to simply mobilise your agricultural industry to distribute your food evenly over your cities. There could be a few choices, to distribute enough to avoid starvation, completely even distribution so maybe every city can grow a bit, or distribution to promote growth (at the possible risk of some starvation).
However, I don't think new technologies that allow for more food production would be the answer, as then you could just stick down even more of those stupid mines on grassland and the such.
Trading food would be great too, perhaps if democracies got some kind of food advantage (as above, or something else) they would be able to sell it, like the west would do with the USSR back in the 80's.

[Dr. Nick]

It's funny how Firaxis ignored food production changes in history and avoided them, considering that many times the technical advances, such as the industrial revolution, were sparked and geared by a change in the farming methods to produce more food. It's worrying that they ignored the various agricultural revolutions in history.

[sophist]

What would be so bad about that? I mean, it would help reflect the increased productivity since the industrial age...

One thing that isn't really reflected in the game are the vast open areas of the Midwestern United States, Western Canada, Russia, and so forth that have colossal farms that export their food. Nobody in the industrial world really grows much food locally anymore. Maybe that's good maybe it's bad, but it's certainly unrealistic.

Originally posted by Andrew_Jay
However, I don't think new technologies that allow for more food production would be the answer, as then you could just stick down even more of those stupid mines on grassland and the such.

[MisterMuppet]

Is it just me or does Longevity appear too late in the game. It just feels as if it is in the wrong place. Would it not make more sense if it became available to build with Mass Production, or even earlier around Industrialisation. It feels as if it has just been put in for something to build in the late game. By the time you can build it, Longevity's impact is reduced because your empire is already developed.