Food and population size should be hugely important in Civ premodern era

[civilizationfanatic2000]

In agrarian economies, the more food you have, the more people you can support. The more people you can support, the more money you have. China, India, and Egypt were the world's wealthiest regions simply because they had a lot of food. A lot.

The amount of 'gold' produced should be linked to the amount of food and people in Civ. To encourage this, population growth should be massively sped up and farms should be built automatically.

Of course, in modern eras, this means less and less.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Agree with the emphasis on growth and population. The richest people in the centuries before 1500 CE were landowners, controlling the production of that land.

I think that game designers would also run into the scaling issue again. Back in 1000BC, agriculture was much less efficient. The population of large ancient cities was measured in tens of thousands, even 100,000. World population has grown significantly, as a result of better tools and more efficient farming. How does one represent the economic impact of 10,000 people in the classical era, in the Renaissance era, up until the Industrial Revolution?

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

i think a way to do this is the denizens idea seen in other threads (and wasn't made by me)

 

[rocksinmypath]

Growth is already very important in Civ, especially early in the game. You get science and culture directly from population. If you want more gold, you can build commercial hubs or harbours, and growing your cities quickly allows you to build these fast. Why does there need to be a stronger correlation between growth and gold, specifically? Gold isn't even the only currency of wealth in Civ. There's production, and there's a very strong correlation between population and production.

Honestly, the balance amongst different yields, including food, is one of the best elements of game design in Civ 6, and I wouldn't really change it much. As disparate as they are in terms of what they do, we can assign value to yields like food, culture and gold. I strongly believe, under normal circumstances in the early- to mid-game, the ratio between the value of 1 production and 1 unit of any other yield is less than 4:

1 production is worth 2.5-3 gold
1 production is worth ~1.5 faith
1 culture is worth 1.25-1.5 production
1 culture is worth 1.5-2 science
1 food is worth ~1.5 production

I find it remarkable that these ratios aren't much greater, especially considering that yields you get from tiles, districts, etc. (before applying modifiers) are usually small integers (1-5), although they can go as low as 0.5 (e.g. Ethiopia's international trade route 0.5 faith per resource in sending city). Obviously a lot of care went into balancing these yields.

 

[AffineConstant]

The amount of gold you can produce is linked the amount of food you can produce. The more food you can produce the more citizens you have, the more citizens you have the more can work gold tiles.