Right now, one of my pet peeves is that it is rather hard to deploy defenders in formation outside of a walled city. Set the city stockpile target higher than the current amount, and the defenders outside starve. Set it low, and the city starts shipping food away, until the deployed defenders starve again. Sure, one can rotate them in and out of the city, but this means that one has to constantly recreate the formation, which is micromanagement no one needs. I would like to be able to set up a strong defense, and concentrate on my current campaign.

I think that there is a simple tweak that can go a long way towards improving food flow through the Empire. You know how, once you click on a trade route, you get, in the unit area, icons for the end points of the route? And we already can issue commands in that situation (delete route) It would be pretty easy to allow two more commands: select either of the end points as having priority. Thus, when both ends have more food than their target stockpile, the food will flow in one direction.

It would be quite convenient, because it would allow the player to push food toward the borders of the Empire. It isn't unrealistic because it only comes into play when both cities have an excess of food, and because the amount of food transferred is still limited by the route's capacity. It isn't unbalancing, because for an offensive campaign one would need greater amounts of food, and would be better off using triremes/laborers for transport.

What do you think?

i like it. its not a game-breaking change as u said, but it could help alleviate the frustration of enormous stockpiles where theyre totally useless. something that quite a few ppl have a problem with. this would redistribute the food but only at the speed dictated by the existing supply line rules.

btw... is the problem youre describing in original PoM or Gold? i remember there was a problem in earlier Gold Betas whereas cities would not feed the troops outside their walls until their own stockpile level was reached. from your description it sounds like this is the case. i dont remember if that was inherited from vanilla or not (in othe words i dont remember if vanilla behaved this way). if this is the problem youre describing then its no longer an issue in Gold. cities will feed all units in their radius regardless of whether their stockpile target is met or not.

it could be that you simply mean during winter when the stockpile isnt being replenished the troops outside, as well as the troops inside, would starve because the stockpile was set for the troops inside only. id like to propose that when setting a cities stockpile any troops within the cities radius are factored into the equation. (i'm pretty sure atm it only calculates it on the number of troops inside and i cant be bothered double-checking atm... but i will look a total idiot if it already does what i proposed hehe)

regardless the idea you propose would be helpful and would give one more element of depth and management to the game without becoming a tedious piece of micro-management.

It works the same way in PoM. Until the stockpile is met, no troops outside the city are fed.

I'd like a manual override button that would force a city to feed all troops within its range, no matter what level its stockpile is at. That option to influence which way food flows instead of simply having the trade route idle would also be very nice.