14-05-2005 08:21									#1
	Strategic Food Routes: A "How To". Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

As it currently stands food routes in Civ2 serve a simple purpose: They move food from City A to City B. This is a simple process where food can be moved from a city with food to one where food is needed. Problem is that food routes have their limits, most notably the fact that food routes are static.


Known Limits:

1) A food route will remain between two cities until the Provider City goes into famine or is destroyed.

2) Only 3 units of food may be moved from a Provider City to another city.

3) Additional food caravans from a Provider City that already has the 3 food route limit will, upon dispersion into an End Route City, add food to the city food stores. No new route is created.


So, what does this mean?

1) Food routes will remain between two cities even if one of the cities is captured by another civ.

2) Cities with a surplus of over 3 food units cannot give away any excess food past the 3 food units that are taken away by an outgoing route.


How does this impact realism in a scenario?

1) Provider Cities will still feed captured cities.

2) Fewer food units and food route options are open to the Provider City owner.


So, how can this problem be avoided?

In a non-empire building scenario where the game board has been laid out beforehand it is entirely possible to create food routes that:

1) Can be cut.

2) Impact the strategic situation of the game.


How's it work?

In a normal food route City A gives food to City B.

A-> 3 food-> B

In a Strategic Food Route City A gives food to City B which then gives food to City C.

A-> 3 food-> B-> 3 food-> C

Thus a food chain is formed. City A will lose 3 food and City C will gain 3 food. City B will gain no food as the act of adding 3 food units and subtracting 3 food units yields a net effect of 0.

To break the food chain City B will have to go into famine or be destroyed. Since destroying a city is accomplished with less effort than starving a city we'll opt to destroy City B. To do so the event engine will have to be used. The CHANGETERRAIN event changes ALL the terrain within its area, destroying units, improvements, and cities when the event is triggered. By using the CHANGETERRAIN event and selecting the area that the city rests on as the area to be changed by the event City B will be destroyed.

When City B is destroyed City A will have no destination for its food. City C will have no departure point for food to come in from. The Civ2 engine will eliminate any trace of the food route upon City B being destroyed.


So how is this strategic?

Using the same Strategic Food Route example let's say that City C had no surplus food production with the food route in place. Even with the 3 extra food units City C could not make enough food to save anything for the next turn. It ate as much as what went in.

Now, pay attention, when the food route is severed City C no longer has 3 extra food units. It now eats more than what goes in. City C's food storage will drop each turn to the point that the city starves or the player brings more food in.

To make the effect of food routes even more exaggerated a desinger can have less End Route Cities than Producer cities. So instead of just 3 food units coming into a large manufacturing city you can have an unlimited amount. You see, a producer city may be limited as to how many food routes it has going out, but an End Route city is not limited in how many food routes come in.


The Full Effect

Food routes now play a crucial part for a human player as a loss of a Producer City will cut off food to other cities in his/her empire. This means that Producer Cities are now strategically important in a game, expecially if they supply food to cities that have a large manufacturing capacity. If the manufacturing cities starve they produce less as population goes down. Growth is halted.


Notes

The neat thing about the Strategic Food Routes is that City B does not have to be set apart from the rest of the empire. It does not have to be set apart from the rest of the map by impassable terrain. The only requirement is that City B has to, at one point, be destroyed. Setting the city apart from the rest of the map is warranted as most cities in a non-empire building scenario do not just raze themselves.

I have not tried this with Civ 2: Test of Time Multimaps. The only testing I have done has involved single Civ2 MGE and Civ2 ToT maps.

Tools used were:

CivCity (To edit the MGE cities)
CivConverter (To convert the MGE scenario to ToT format)

Last edited by Harry Tuttle on 14-05-2005 at 18:57

	14-05-2005 13:48									#2
	Inflate your Upload Space

That's a well thought out idea Harry. By making a "food chain" with a middle city you make foodroutes vulnerable.

I do have a question on how effective this is in practice. Every additional citizen costs 2 food. So at the most you could only a reduce a city size by two (supposing the city has no granary and is already running a small food deficit of -1). Leading to the loss of two city squares.

This would hurt a smaller city (size 6-10) with lots of high production squares far more than a large city (10>).

Attachment: strategic_foodroutes.png
This has been downloaded 87 time(s).

	14-05-2005 15:24									#3
	Full PM-box? Change here!

This is food for thought Harry.
Especially since in the scenario I am designing, I am introducing food imports to mainland Greece from the Black Sea Colonies.
Thanks for the observations, you seem to think outside the box when it comes to designing

	14-05-2005 18:55									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by CapTVK I do have a question on how effective this is in practice. Every additional citizen costs 2 food. So at the most you could only a reduce a city size by two (supposing the city has no granary and is already running a small food deficit of -1). Leading to the loss of two city squares. This would hurt a smaller city (size 6-10) with lots of high production squares far more than a large city (10>).

The way I've used it, there are less End Route Cities than Producer cities. So instead of just 3 food units coming into a large manufacturing city I have 9 or so. You see, a producer city may be limited as to how many food routes it has going out, but an End Route city is not limited in how many food routes come in.

I guess I should put this into the first post, this is really the clincher.

	14-05-2005 18:59									#5
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quote: Originally posted by beingofone This is food for thought Harry. Especially since in the scenario I am designing, I am introducing food imports to mainland Greece from the Black Sea Colonies. Thanks for the observations, you seem to think outside the box when it comes to designing

Thank you, I always try to bring something new to the table when I create scenarios. That's the fun part for me.

	14-05-2005 20:19									#6
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Here's an illustration of the fewer end routes.

Attachment: strategic_foodroutes3.png
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	14-05-2005 23:34									#7
	Remove this text

It's a great idea Harry, the only flaw is that upon recapturing the original city the food route won't be re-established.

	14-05-2005 23:52									#8
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Or, change it so that each citizen eats 1 food and adjust terrain stats accordingly.

	15-05-2005 00:08									#9
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@ourman: That's true, the food route would have to be manually re-established, but the same amount of food could still be re-routed. Since Strategic Food Routes only create the ability for food routes to be destroyed, not more food, it would just be a task to re-supply the food to the End Route Cities, a time, labor, and shield penalty.

@Smiley: You could do that. The value of food routes are directly proportional to the amount of food that is available on the terrain. The less food there is to go around, or the more food that has to be routed in will determine the value of keeping the food routes from being destroyed.

	15-05-2005 04:17									#10
	Inflate your Upload Space

This does interest me a lot, as I've been looking at ways to improve/represent a better supply line style system in Civ, for a number of scenarios (including a Battle of the Atlantic style one I'm toying with) . Unfortunately, I'm on the wrong computer at the minute, so can't really contribute yet...


I think some of the stuff here could prove useful in one of the scenarios you're working on at the moment. I don't have MGE on this computer, so I can't tell whether the map you're using in Highway to Hell contains Sth America, but some of the ideas here could be a good way of representing the Argentinian Front/Contribution to the conflict. The books were littered with references to Argie beef and Grain imports coming into England (and France to a lesser extent) through the South Atlantic and eventually via Dakar. It was supposed to represent the importance of the alternate war at sea. As I don't know the map you're using, I can't really suggest which method you might use if you did actually want (or were able to, I know you're busy!) to represent this supply line, but then it is your scenario, so you're not under any obligations...

	15-05-2005 06:09									#11
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Tigey, I think you're confusing me with Steph or Sarsstock, but I'll post the map from Atomic Eagle II just so you can see how it works. It's in MGE format currently.

Attachment: intermediaryplaced.sav
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