Roman Dependancy on Foreign Grain

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Would be nice if when Italy, or any other part of the world gets overly urbanized and overpopulated that they would get dependant on foreign grain. This was a major problem historically as Rome often suffered starvation when foreign or civil war powers blocked their grain imports, an example of this is how Marcus Antonious and Cleopatra used this as a weapon in the Roman civil war.

Would be a great late game challenge to deal with food crises for an overpopulated empire that has not secured its food supply

[DavidtheDuke]

Would be nice if when Italy, or any other part of the world gets overly urbanized and overpopulated that they would get dependant on foreign grain. This was a major problem historically as Rome often suffered starvation when foreign or civil war powers blocked their grain imports, an example of this is how Marcus Antonious and Cleopatra used this as a weapon in the Roman civil war.

Would be a great late game challenge to deal with food crises for an overpopulated empire that has not secured its food supply

Well, Shogun 2 did utilize a food system, I don't see, especially with mods that this couldn't be implemented. You could curtail it by investing in agriculture back home, to sidestep history, as it were.

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Well, Shogun 2 did utilize a food system, I don't see, especially with mods that this couldn't be implemented. You could curtail it by investing in agriculture back home, to sidestep history, as it were.

But it should be deeper, expanding your cities should have the side effect of increasing the food need and reduce agricultural output per person.

[DavidtheDuke]

But it should be deeper, expanding your cities should have the side effect of increasing the food need and reduce agricultural output per person.

Sure, but you could say this was a lack of foresight of Rome. You should have the option of urbanizing while having a ample food supply (it should not be easy and should take longer). Besides, to be honest, a Roman AI even if CA works fairly hard at it will still probably not comprehend it has to take Egypt.

Still, Egypt should have large food bonuses naturally. But I don't believe in not having the ability to (reasonably) rewrite history with a more food-conscious empire.

[Grimbold]

Yes it would be nice to impose a blockade on Ptolemaic ports so that we could starve those roman dogs

[boxleitnerb]

Didn't Italy have enough agriculture? Why was this such a problem?

[Julio-Claudian]

Didn't Italy have enough agriculture? Why was this such a problem?

Over time, as the land ended up with the rich and was all being turned into vineyards et cetera, Rome became more and more dependant on grain from places like Sicily, Egypt, North Africa etc.
There were often severe shortages of grain that caused unrest.

[Dewy]

Didn't Italy have enough agriculture? Why was this such a problem?

Basically, rich people bought up land from poor land owners and public land (google latifundia) as Rome started to expand. Making grapes was more profitable than grain so they started to mass produce grapes and other profitable crops. This meant that there wasn't enough grain in Italy to support its population so they relied on imports. Athens had a similar problem where they relied on grain from the black sea.

[DAVIDE]

Didn't Italy have enough agriculture? Why was this such a problem?

Apart Sicily, Sardinia and Campania, the Italian land mass produced goods like vegetables, fruit, olive oil and wine,. Of course when those areas were not occupied by aristocratic villas or gardens .

[Lord Baal]

Apart Sicily, Sardinia and Campania, the Italian land mass produced goods like vegetables, fruit, olive oil and wine,. Of course when those areas were not occupied by aristocratic villas or gardens .

The point exactly. Depending on how you encourage the use of the arable land you could end up with regions that produce more food than what they eat while others would eat more food than what they produce. In the game this would mean the building of certain buildings over others (like grape fields instead of wheat ones), development of certain techs (oh I hope not) or some kind of incentive like in sim city 3, or a scroll bar at the province level that slides between food and wealth or something along those lines.

[AgentGB]

Roma surrectum 2 had grain exporting/importing buildings which helped boost growth and allowed bigger populations in whatever citys you choose to build the import (e.g Rome) The mechanics of the mod are very deep, so not sure how it worked fully, but grain was a resource, every region produced it, but some historical vertile regions would have this as a main resource. Im not sure if the export actually help trade more then supply grain to other citys, so if your port was blocked, yu the lost the income, with upkeep cost for import with a given population growth bonus. I think this is how it was represented in RS2, but im not sure, its been a while since ive played.

But Shogun 2 did represent this pretty well to. come to think of it.

[G3NUINE chief]

that would make for some iteresting strategy, imagine playing a smaller state vying to stay independent, so you block food supplies destabilizing rome and sending her into caos, giving you time to bolster your armies and make a mad dash to secure your self apointed rights of freedom.

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Plus it would make playing great agricultural states like Carthage and Egypt more interesting.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Maybe have some sort of food production and consumption tab of some sort.
If your faction consumed more than it produced, then population growth would diminish and your people become more rebellious.
And if you're unable to fix the issue, you can trade some food from other factions (just like you can demand and offer denarii, you can demand and offer food).

[neoptolemos]

Rome was dependant on foreign grain to grow and her growth made her dependant on the grain

[AMW]

That is why Eygpt was called the bread basket of Rome.

[The Juggernaut]

If they added a grain exportation system, I would jump for joy!

[Ichon]

Some type of food system that reflects importance of grain especially for large cities would be nice though it probably can't be as important in the game as it was in history simply due to game mechanic and AI limitations. Also before and after Egypt being the breadbasket, N Africa, Crimea, and Hispania were important sources of grain. Egypt was important because it most often had the largest surplus and it could be gathered cheaply while those other regions could have droughts or other supply interruptions and also couldn't compete with Egypt's low cost since it took more money just to gather up the grain and ship it to another destination. The cost/demand aspect would be very difficult to show in a game like TW. Rome had the arable land within Italy to provide most of its grain needs but much of the land was put to use for vineyards, olives, fruits, and meat which was more profitable.

[Lord Baal]

It fairly simple, make a food resource for the game. Food production on each region is directly affected by the natural fertility, the farm output, the population and the trade.

- Natural fertility could depend on the season and the size of the arable land in the province. Giving penalties or bonuses to farm output. So it could add or rest to the amount of food produced.

- Farm output should depend on the amount of farms in the province, that would depend on the size of the rural population* of the province, the amount of money spend, laws or incentives made by the state(you) to improve agriculture and the competition of luxury plantations as grapes. Certain agricultural developments and techniques depending on the faction, location and date of the game would affect farm output too. This output adds to the quantity of food produced.

- The population of the province eats away the food production, ideally the amount consumed should be inferior to the amount produced.

- In either case trade comes in. If there's surplus of food then it could be traded automatically with other provinces of your empire that do not produce enough food. If there's a lack of food then the province should import automatically from other province of your empire depending on distance and state of the roads/ports.

- Any food your province don't trade away gets stored on specialized buildings (silos). This buildings would intercept any surplus of food produced or received by the province.

- Once the silos are full the exceeding food could be traded away with other empires. Whatever amount of food is not consumed, stored or traded away in a turn is converted into X amount of money, bonus population growth a happiness bonus or any combination of those.

- On the other hand, if overall your empire do not produce enough food you will be forced to either trade with other empires or conquer more land (on this regard you can make the AI to aim for the most fertile, sufficient undefended and near enemy or neutral provinces).

What do you think? I find this not overly complicated at all. And factions like the Gauls would be even simpler to feed.

*Yeah, there should be several types of population. I for one propose, slaves and commoners, divided in rural and urban populations and assorted influential rich people like land owners.

[Ichon]

That is going too much to Paradox style which is fine in its own realm but I can't see getting quite that many factors in TW game.

There must be a simpler way to achieve good results- I'd go for something that also affects military performance but not something quite as important to overall game as in Shogun 2. Shortage of food should make military supplies cost more firstly and affect production of all other resources but not so immediately impact the state. In Rome and many other societies of the time starvation of the poor elements of society would have little affect on those above in any immediate way. Starvation would hit the poor and debtors first, then the slaves, then middle class, and lastly the military and wealthy. A little starvation might even be a good thing initially increasing manpower pool etc as more people try to military while long term starvation has gradually worsening consequences.