The Cities Unlimited Archives: Agriculture, Fishing and Food Supplies

With the permission of their orginal author, tr0ub1e, we'll be posting some articles archived from the Cities Unlimited website (along with their respective comment threads) before the boards were closed down. A huge thanks to Metropolis member Ephemeron for his foresight in hanging on to these, and his hard work cleaning up the formatting! The usual Drawing Board disclaimer applies. Note: dark red text indicates links to other pages on the boards that are no longer active.

Concepts Article: Agriculture, Fishing and Food Supplies

A Conceptual article by tr0ub1e

#14642 tr0ub1e

Agriculture / Farming

Agriculture is a fundamental part of all civilisations. Without agriculture there would be no readily available food supplies, and there would be no trade in the food market. There wouldn't be any companies supplying food through local suppliers. Food has to come from somewhere, and that is why farms cover such vast portions of the world's undeveloped land. The land to crops/livestock ratio on farmland is exceedingly low compared to the land to inhabitant ratio in heavily developed areas. This vital part of the human way of life needs to be better incorporated into the game.

If an area is undeveloped and relatively isolated then there wouldn't be any demand other than a small amount for both farmland and cheap small homes. If it is a new region or nation, then the funds available without outside investment would only be enough for a small amount of land to be zoned anyway. Once you start receiving tax money, you will be able to zone for some more farms and homes.

The more farms you zone, the more demand there will be for residential properties. No matter how much cash is available, this will always be the starting process of undeveloped isolated areas.

Importing food would always be an option, but somewhere would always need to be exporting it. There would only be so much food the AI cities or any player's cities could export without it interfering with their own needs. Any city can export food if they have surplus supplies. The further the food has to be transported, the more expensive it would be for businesses to import - whereas having sufficient local farmland provides a constant supply at incredibly cheaper price to businesses. The cost to import food also increases if air or sea travel is required in the transportation.

Demand for farms and the food they provide will always increase with population and you must provide enough farms (and import enough food too, if necessary) otherwise your health ratings would drop as you face food shortages, and residential demand will taper off completely.

Even a municipality in the centre of a huge urban metropolis would need food imported, and demand would be sky-high. There wouldn't be any farmland - so all food will be imported by companies. This will mean that you must have excessive farmland elsewhere (around the city and in most undeveloped areas) to keep supplies up with the demand while keeping import costs lower than importing food from afar.

Although importing and exporting food supplies would be automatically carried out by appropriate commercial businesses in the game; implementing this food supplies simulation in the background will ensure the player keeps a realistic ratio of farmland to developed land, across the entire world. In SimCity it is possible to create an entire civilisation surviving without ever being required to zone for any farms to provide the food. I would like this corrected for CITIES XL.

Fishing

Providing fishing docks and harbours in the game would effectively be the same as having farmland. If the local waters are rich with fish, then this would help contribute a lot towards food supplies (although not entirely removing the need for farming). Where there may be a huge fishing harbour in a good location with incredibly high volumes of fish being caught every day, it could allow that city to become quite rich in some cases if they are supplying excess fish to nations across the entire globe.

#14643 Jasper

Hmmz, I vote a 5!

You hit the mail right on its head! The only thing I would like to add to this is that you should actually be able to see the transportation of the food/good, and than I'm 100% happy! So, if you import food from other cities, I would like to see this food be transported to local warehouses or retailers by cars, trucks, ships, barges, trains, plains etc.

#14646 Ang Kok Heong

I like your idea. Important feature (75%), but unless properly implemented, could result in a total disaster. What do I mean by that? Well, for one, if CU follows real live ratio of farmlands to urban area, I have a feeling at least half of the city map will be farmlands to support any decent sized cities. That would be a tedious exercise in micro management.

Even if we were to discard the realistic "ratio of farmlands to urban area" concept, the player will still be challenged to produce enough food (or at least import them) to fuel an ever-growing metropolis. That again might frustrate some players to no end.

I personally think it will be safest to have an option to enable/disenable such agri/fishing/supplies option to suit individual taste. And to further alleviate the tedium of needing to grow farmlands to support a growing metropolis, I would propose an in game A.I. that will take over the job of growing farmlands so that the player can concentrate on Mayordom. What do I mean by that? Simply said, the A.I. would take the population increase data of CityX over the past 5 years and find its average. It would then automatically propose to the mayor how much new farms are needed in the outskirt of the city. The mayor only need to approve of the plan and the A.I. would automatically build the said farms and zone for enough housing in the outskirt to house the employees needed to till the lands. This doesn't mean that the player have no control over the proposed process. I would envision that the player would still be able to play the outskirt area of CityX and change/rezone it to their liking. Once the City (urban sprawl) have expanded into the outskirt region where the farms are, the A.I. would ask the mayor to redefine the ever-expanding outskirt area of the city so that new farms can be built to replace the ones lost due to urbanisation.

Just my 2 cents on the issue

#14649 tr0ub1e

if CU follows real live ratio of farmlands to urban area, I have a feeling at least half of the city map will be farmlands to support any decent sized cities. That would be a tedious exercise in micro management.

Even if we were to discard the realistic "ratio of farmlands to urban area" concept, the player will still be challenged to produce enough food (or at least import them) to fuel an ever-growing metropolis. That again might frustrate some players to no end.

I personally think it will be safest to have an option to enable/disenable such agri/fishing/supplies option to suit individual taste.

I agree. that's why I think all ideas and concepts should be tied in with Complexity option, so the game can suit different players see here

#14676 aibo

Excellent Idea to take into account.

My view is that I like the idea of being able to choose whether or produce all the food I prefer to import all food or a percentage of them.

If my economics allows me to import food, because my city is such tourist, and my very high standard of living, I can dispense to produce food and focus on the tourism.

I agree that the base is agriculture, but as was commented on another thread, it may be mining, or starting a settlement from fishing or timber, tourism, industry...

I think the game should give us the freedom to choose the model of society we want, and that we want development for our cities,

#14691 ToeJam

4

#14698 The Yeti

3 - Undecided. (50%)

#14759 wisdom_bin

5!!.. let's say if the main general view is just a region view and not the whole planet, we should also be able to import food or anything from outside the region. This will of course be more expensive but that will allow you to concentrate on building the whole region to be concentrated into something else as you can have enough income to import all the food needed. (Singapore, Hong Kong for example).. and this should also be implemented in the background as you suggested. (maybe with some advanced option to help you out in emergency time when economy is dropping badly, you might want to decrease your import)

on the fishing, maybe we can have water pollution affecting the amount of fish?

#14770 tr0ub1e

a little bit of research into what water and geographical conditions are good for water life to thrive would mean that it can easily be implemented into the game so that some areas are rich with fish while others hardly have any. you shouldn't necessarily be able to stick a fishing harbour anywhere and be overwhelmed with food supplies. the natural and man-made conditions of the waters near and accessible from the harbour should determine whether or not the investment would be successful, and to what extent. we should simply be able to "query" any area within any mass of water to see how rich with life it is (as well as seeing other stats, like water pollution level).

it is likely that vast fish supplies in the game would in turn be shipped all over different parts of the nation, or world; rather than having every city or region catching their own supplies. the concentration of fish in the waters varies to a massive degree in different parts of the real world and this should be the case in the game.

#14819 aibo

Yes, I like this idea, the same principle is used for mining and natural resource. (Argument used in other threads)

The game at the beginning play, your random map gives a number of characteristics of natural wealth, the other of them could be fishing.

If you do not have resources? you can install farms fishing industry, I think it is an industry more for your city.

PS. I like cattle, CU be cows? Ranchos? Only Farms is boring

#14880 Jman47

this is a good idea, but I like zoning all my property, not having the AI do it for me, therefore I propose that along with the automatic zoning of farms with mayors approval, there is also an option to have them tell you how much is needed and let you decide where to put it if u want it, for the control freaks out there.

I give it a 4.

#14886 tr0ub1e

sorry if the article mislead, but I do not propose the "automatic" zoning of farms. rather, there would be a REAL NEED for the player to zone them. without them, nothing else could exist. and the demand and ratio of farmland to inhabitants should be realistic. of course, we wouldn't have farms in the middle of a city - but the game should understand this, and food supplies would be purchased by commercial businesses from further reaches of the region, nation, and world. if the player doesn't have enough farms and/or enough commercial businesses bringing food in, then they would face serious problems.

building a city would be a constant cycle. starting with farmland or a fishing harbour would decrease the food demand; and then allow small residential developments, and a small shop or street market selling food produce; which will increase the food demand again meaning the player must zone for further farmland and repeat the process. as developments become larger, the farmland will move further away. but any farmland which is claimed by new residential or other developments, must be replaced elsewhere as food demand would continue to increase further, and available supplies would become lower.

the game needs to simulate this need for readably available food. of course, it should be an option you can turn off, or reduce to a less realistic but easier scale. This is where the feature would tie-in with Complexity Options.

#14903 soltan_gris

Yeah, I vote a 5 for the importance of the issue.

I had played with the same idea (you might have read my post in SCCentral forum), specifically to tie the food production/import with the res. demand. But I don't; it really could become really tedious having to think constantly of the food supply... Of course, an option to turn the dependence off will help; I just don't know if it's possible to differentiate between such basic pieces of the game engine (so ONLY this one could be turned off)...
Well, anyways, I totally agree that farms should be there, along with ranchos and fishing facilities. I have implemented all this in my economic model that I'll post soon.

#15196 aibo

I think it is easy to know how many tons of food needed a city. Another data for the statistics. The game should know that you need a number of truck / train / transport aircraft to the warehouses of the city, if I like the idea to bring the game to maximum realism.
In another thread in this forum, will speak in the space industry, in particular satellites. (CU if you do not have satellites, you can not have intensive farms)
Because to keep large areas of population need to create large agricultural areas.

tr0ub1e I am convinced 5.

#15436 Arthur

Good idea, but it should be implemented with other things such as natural resources as well (lumber, clay for bricks, oil, etc.) I give this a 4/5 if it includes other resources, 5/5.