Transporting Grain

Hmm, I like this idea.

What if you would rather starve the city than spend the gold?

 

"Let them eat cake"

Sure, let them starve, always an option. I am talking about a mechanism which would let you CHOOSE how you regulate your resources by weighing benefits and disadvantages.

You could maybe use a special type of caravan. It would set up a trade-route that takes X food per turn from the city it was built in to the city it travels to.

I like the idea of moving food but it may not work well in FE. The only scenario I can think of where it would be worth it is if you build a city with lots of food but no other nearby resources, and even then I'm not sure how much cities would require external resources to be useful. You would think you could just transform it into a gold/research city. You can just build outposts near resources anyway and they won't need food. Oh well we will have to wait and see I guess. Possibly it would make cool mod though if you also changed some other stuff around.

I don't care for this idea. It will just create a lot of micro and waste the player's time setting up production chains.

I would like it, and looking back at the legendary 'Internal debates made external' thread, there was quite a bit of support for something like it. To be fair, there was also a lot of support for not doing it.

But I seriously doubt it would be implemented if they haven't done it already; it would take quite a bit of time to get it working and balanced, and make the AI understand how to use it. Too bad though, like DsRaider said, it could make a cool mod...

I am more interested in making buildings and quests. A mod to allow realistic grain trade feels more like something for a late era Cold War game. 

I dunno, I like the elegant simplicity of MOM:

• Engineer to build roads
• As cities connected to the road networks, trade bonuses applied, as long as each city was connected directly via the road network (i.e. a road would have to go around a city hub to allow bonuses to other cities)
• Did not need to micro individual caravans, etc.
• Had direct control over the road layout via the engineers (need to micro the engineers but that's ok, was used to it from Civ series)

Player was incentivized to build roads for 1. logistical troop movement 2. gold bonuses. Part of the reason why I loved playing Dwarves on Myrran, enchanted roads kicked ass.

The caravan mechanic in WOM meant player did not need to micro engineers to build the roads but had to micro the caravans, especially if in danger. If trade routes were always protected, meh, very little micro involved other than making one and sending it on its way. But split empires with dangerous lands inbetween, could be aggravating.

In the end, something has to be micro'd whether a unit to build a road or a caravan to make a route (and automatically create the road). I would prefer an engineer type unit which gives me direct control over the road route. It would be aesthetically pleasing if the road upgraded over time (based on age of road tile) and I could see trade type units traveling around, similar to the little people in the city tiles doing work, etc. A yellow brick road epic upgrade, complete with scarewcrow, tinman, and cowardly lion would be awesome.

It's kinda a pitty that instead of working on some of the flawed but pretty darn awesome parts now that you have the base ready you guys seem to be withdrawing on all fronts to a classic 4x game.

I think food should be a global resource.
I like the idea of caravan food to and the possibility to supply-harass the enemy like some guerilla force.

Just think about ancient Rome. That city grew so large it had to import grain all the way from Egypt. Leaders careers where made or broken on their ability to keep their citizens fed. How would that be any different in a post-apocalyptic world?

Also, why a Cold War era game?

It was a joke about how the soviet economy collapsed due to lack of grain. Just kidding.

It would be nice for trade to allow larger cities where you want them, but it could just as easily be handled with buildings and enchantments. The problem is that the game will not likely be changed, so you have to think of a way to mod this in. The only thing I can think of is making a building called Trader Emporium or something that will give your city extra food. You probably can't take any from other towns, but you can cause it to cost money and not that money as extra crops grown by peasants to sell in a larger city for profit. But that is just my take on it. 

I don't see how this would create a "lot" of micro at all. Even if you have two dozen towns or so, and even if you want to transport food from half of them to the other half, I don't see how, with even a halfway decent UI, you should need to be more bogged down than if you were moving a dozen units. Compared to games in which you need to shuffle scores of units across the board on every turn, moving some food about every now and then should be a piece of cake, and much more of a conscious decision than anything else. And it would keep us from having the ridiculous Civilization-Series town stagnation; it would reward good town building and adminstration, and not merely finding the ideal spot. Yes, it would be less of a "fire and forget" -- but I think that fits to a strategy game.