Hmm, I like this idea.

"Let them eat cake"

You could maybe use a special type of caravan. It would set up a trade-route that takes X food per turn from the city it was built in to the city it travels to.

I like the idea of moving food but it may not work well in FE. The only scenario I can think of where it would be worth it is if you build a city with lots of food but no other nearby resources, and even then I'm not sure how much cities would require external resources to be useful. You would think you could just transform it into a gold/research city. You can just build outposts near resources anyway and they won't need food. Oh well we will have to wait and see I guess. Possibly it would make cool mod though if you also changed some other stuff around.

I would like it, and looking back at the legendary 'Internal debates made external' thread, there was quite a bit of support for something like it. To be fair, there was also a lot of support for not doing it.

But I seriously doubt it would be implemented if they haven't done it already; it would take quite a bit of time to get it working and balanced, and make the AI understand how to use it. Too bad though, like DsRaider said, it could make a cool mod...

I dunno, I like the elegant simplicity of MOM:

• Engineer to build roads
• As cities connected to the road networks, trade bonuses applied, as long as each city was connected directly via the road network (i.e. a road would have to go around a city hub to allow bonuses to other cities)
• Did not need to micro individual caravans, etc.
• Had direct control over the road layout via the engineers (need to micro the engineers but that's ok, was used to it from Civ series)

Player was incentivized to build roads for 1. logistical troop movement 2. gold bonuses. Part of the reason why I loved playing Dwarves on Myrran, enchanted roads kicked ass.

The caravan mechanic in WOM meant player did not need to micro engineers to build the roads but had to micro the caravans, especially if in danger. If trade routes were always protected, meh, very little micro involved other than making one and sending it on its way. But split empires with dangerous lands inbetween, could be aggravating.

In the end, something has to be micro'd whether a unit to build a road or a caravan to make a route (and automatically create the road). I would prefer an engineer type unit which gives me direct control over the road route. It would be aesthetically pleasing if the road upgraded over time (based on age of road tile) and I could see trade type units traveling around, similar to the little people in the city tiles doing work, etc. A yellow brick road epic upgrade, complete with scarewcrow, tinman, and cowardly lion would be awesome.

Also, why a Cold War era game?

I don't see how this would create a "lot" of micro at all. Even if you have two dozen towns or so, and even if you want to transport food from half of them to the other half, I don't see how, with even a halfway decent UI, you should need to be more bogged down than if you were moving a dozen units. Compared to games in which you need to shuffle scores of units across the board on every turn, moving some food about every now and then should be a piece of cake, and much more of a conscious decision than anything else. And it would keep us from having the ridiculous Civilization-Series town stagnation; it would reward good town building and adminstration, and not merely finding the ideal spot. Yes, it would be less of a "fire and forget" -- but I think that fits to a strategy game.