[Suggestion] No Food from caravans

Tbh I wouldn't mind seeing caravans removed. They're just so boring and feel out of place somehow. Also the roads they make tend to look messy like a spider web made by a retarded spider.

Of course if they could be made more interesting/meaningful I'm all for it.

My caravans always get killed usally long before they get to the places i want them.

Once they are up and running they die pretty fast anyways after.

MageMatthew if you can spare a unit, have him escort the caravan, and then fortify that unit up at a midpoint in the caravan trail.

I have no idea how someone can get their capital to make 300+ food. My food resources always seem to dwindle... Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Research the tech that gives 2 food sources before founding another city. That will spawn em right next to your capital. Maybe you also had a food source from the beginning. Now create caravans in every city you build after and send them to your capital only. Next try to recruit champions that increase food. Basically every new city now produces enough food in the capital to reach level 5 by just sending another caravan there.

I don't think the caravans will be removed... I estimate too much work has been placed inside them.  The question Stardock faces would be how to make them valuable without turning them into a micro-manage painpoint. 

Instead of developer work for these caravans a group of an independent Black Market caravans traveling the map would have been better.  Champions could buy/sell equipment from these moving caravans.  One caravan might sell armor, another might sell maps/scrolls/potions, another might sell weapons, another might sell magical trinkets/rings/amulets, another might sell resources.  Players could also sell stuff here which might be purchased by another player.  For the champions it would be like the icecream truck passing by... and all of them asking the sovereign if they can have money to go buy something good.

The 'logic' behind caravans essentially creating food out of thin air escape me.  If food is too hard to get, there are better ways.

As NTJedi points out, a lot of work went into caravans, and not wanting said work to be wasted, caravans could be required to tie a city into the global food pool.  It's logical and it'd add supply lines -- strategy -- to this strategy game.  Creating, defending, and cutting supply lines would add to the game.

Wow. I'm going to have to give that a shot... Thanks for the suggestion.

I'd agree with this wholeheartedly.  If you needed caravans to supply food for far-flung outposts (for them to grow beyond 10 people), it would make caravans important and add a huge strategic element to city placement and territorial guarding.

That said, if we don't have better feedback on enemy units in our territory and options for guarding/upgrading caravans, this would be a huge micromanagement disaster.  Just thinking about trying to make sure all the caravans to my frontline cities are safe every turn so that I don't lose population gives me the shivers.

My pet theory here is based on observation from GalCiv 1&2. Frogboy is a big believer in free markets. The idea being that the government (your Sovereign) makes an initial investment (the Caravan unit) and then once it arrives "private industry" takes over and somehow generates extra resources out of "nowhere" (presumably by making the whole process more efficient and cost effective than the government can by itself). Whether or not that is valid economic theory I leave for you to decide, but it goes to show how Stardock games are actually subversive training programs for Rebuplican/Conservative economic policy Not that I'm complaining mind you, I keep playing the heck out of everything they release!

I think requiring a city to have a link to the trade network, as it were, is a good idea; either by having overlapping influence or by being connected by road/caravan. Personally I'd rather have road building units like MoM so I can tailor my routes, but that is me.

Here's another take -- you have the rich-in-food freely giving to the poor-in-food, sharing their resources for free (as there is no 'tax' or 'cost' generated when the poor-in-food get the food).  Thus this is a socialistic, perhaps even communistic, system! 

A capitalistic system would charge the poor for the food (ie it would cost gold to caravan food), and the price would vary according to:

-the demand for food in the food-poor city (ie the gap between the food-poor cities' local food production and their pop)

-food supply in the food-rich city

Ah touche! Even distribution to all ensures the growth and prosperity of the workers! The people are the only true capital of society (thus why a caravan only costs 1 population to train), and by ensuring everyone gets the same share regardless of status we raise the productivity of all! All hail the Sovereign's People's Glorious Communist Party of Prosperity!

I hadn't realized Brad had shifted his politics so much