questions about gp farms

[merockstar]

Ok so I've been doing some reading and experimenting with GP farms. In my first successful GP farm experiment I took, with the help of this forum, a greek civ on noble to a cultural victory.

I've since progressed to Prince and played a space race victory out with a german civ (for the philosophical trait), in which I used a GP farm to make super fast sciences.

I need some clarification though.

I really love GP farms, but is one really necessary for every civ (beyond a OCC)?

What do you do if you don't have a city that has enough food output to warrant a GP farm? Is it worth sacrificing studying what you want to get windmills and biology and whatnot to try and increase food output in a city? I've seen a couple games where the only city worthy of a gp farm was my capitol, so I moved my palace. If a civ isn't philosophical, and you feel like "hey this is obviously a commerce/production city, not a gp farm" is it ok to just skip or too detrimental to the game?

Is there any real cut and dry way of looking at a city (pre-improvements) and being able to tell "hey this would make a great spot for a GP farm!" I know that flood plains would produce an awful lot of food if farmed but oftentimes those don't have any like corn or seafood around them. My ideal GP farm would be a city on a coast with like 5 things of seafood and 3 or 4 land food resources with a river (lol). Sometimes I'll build a city thinking "gee, this looks like a pretty nice spot for a gp farm, i've seen better but not bad" then near end game some other less nice looking city somehow ends up having better food output. I don't know how I manage to do this.

With regard to flood plains and deciding whether to make a city a gp farm or not, is there any extra benefit at all to making a flood plains square a cottage-->town? Or are those just the desert's gift to food output?

Finally, what would be the most optimal map settings to creating a world conducive to GP farming?

Any other tips you can offer me as I continue to master this craft of city specialization?

Thanks for your opinions.

 

[drlake]

What you need for a GP farm is lots of food. It doesn't matter where you get it, but FP and food resources are certainly better than grasslands.

You don't need a GP farm for every game, and in fact there is a rationale for having multiple cities that are less focused on GPs than one "GP farm", because you can generate multiple GPs in quick succession during the earlier portion of the game. It is only when the GP cost gets up there that having a single specialized GP farm really is "necessary".

 

[Gumbolt]

A GP farm will be a city with perhaps 2-3+ food resurces. The idea being you could run 3-4 scientists, build national epic and maybe great library and churn out a few great people. (great scientists). This in turn allows you to build an academy in capital, bulb philosophy, education and grab liberalism early.

Come biology the main effects of great people will have worn off anyway. by that stage I am already planning how I will have won the game.

Flood plains I like to cottage due to additional commerce and the 3 food. Perhaps if I was philosophical I might farm them if using a specialist economy and it was in my GP farm.

I think most games would find a GP farm useful early on. It does push up your early science once acadmey is in and it helps in the lib race. On maps filled with lots of plains it is harder to find a great GP site.

Post a game if you want proper GP advice. A save around 1500bc would be useful to advice sites.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I really love GP farms, but is one really necessary for every civ (beyond a OCC)?

Nothing is necessary - it's all choices and compromises.

What do you do if you don't have a city that has enough food output to warrant a GP farm?

(a) Go take a capital away from a neighbor
(b) punt

Is there any real cut and dry way of looking at a city (pre-improvements) and being able to tell "hey this would make a great spot for a GP farm!"

Spiky food (corn, pigs), rather than smeared food (floodplains, sugars).
Enough production to get going (which might be a couple of hills, or trees to mow)
Cheap health
Irrigation for fast growth

This is your traditional specialist farm approach. The point about spikey food is important, because what you are trying to do is maximize the number of specialists you can run at any given happy cap ~ your primary driver is always to try to get the next GP as quickly as you can, so you want to get on with it.

A totally viable alternative is a wonderworks - you still want the spiky food, but you want more production so that you can cram in wonders.

With regard to flood plains and deciding whether to make a city a gp farm or not, is there any extra benefit at all to making a flood plains square a cottage-->town? Or are those just the desert's gift to food output?

Not sure which question you are asking here. Floodplains are partway between riverside grassland and sugar - where they fall depends on where you are relative to your health cap.

Because they are good tiles, you want to be working them more often than not. Farming a floodplain often means leaving it unworked (because of cap space), which is something of a minus, where popping a cottage on it gives you reason to work that tile more often.

There's also the side issue that the cottage helps throttle your growth rate (compared to a farm), which bounces the health problem a little bit further down the road.

Finally, what would be the most optimal map settings to creating a world conducive to GP farming?

Pangaea, when the plan is to take a capital from the AI and farm it.

Oddly enough, Archipelago may be a good choice. You tend to get lots of fish, and since you can't build cottages on the ocean anyway, the opportunity costs are lower.

Donut, especially with a Standard center, is pretty lush. Boreal and Rainforest are similar. The downside of each of these is that with so much flat green turf that you could cottage, the opportunity costs aren't so great.

 

[merockstar]

Thanks guys! I'll keep checking in.

I'll start a game and post a save too.

 

[WCH]

What does "spiky food" mean?

 

[merockstar]

I think spiky food means corn and wheat, and not things that share half happy like sugar.


I started a game with Monty, I have a great start, but most of the rest of the map looks like crap.

I have both stone and marble, and quite a few food resources. This save is a perfect example of the type of feeling that started this post, would this capital make a very good gp farm early on if I switch my palace to a commerce city and run bureaucracy?

Other than my capital it doesn't look like there are any very good GP farm spots around me.

Also, to explain my teching, if the civ I randomly pick has mysticism as a starting tech, I tend to attempt to found a religion, which in this case was successful, so that I can farm me up a prophet, build some missionaries and have tons of cash. Should I not always try to do this? This basically forces me to do something that produces some great prophet points, even if I don't choose to make a GP farm. It also makes my worker wait out a couple of techs to start doing stuff, which totally sucks.

How do you guys think I should go about this?

 

[Wreck]

"spiky" means the most concentrated tiles, those give 6 and 5. They are corn and wheat, fish, pigs, etc. Such tiles are fairly rare, and it is quite rare to get 3 within the same BFC.

"smeared" food is tiles with excess food, but not a huge amount per tile, but nonetheless via more numerous tiles. Thus, you can get the same amount of extra food from 4 floodplains as you can from 2 corn farms. The problem for GP farms is it takes pop to do that, and you need the pop as specialists to fit under a finite happy-cap.

Both of those are neologisms I've never seen before this thread.

 

[sakhmet]

Neologisms can actually be a symptom of schizofrenia!!!!

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Neologisms can actually be a symptom of schizofrenia!!!!

We resent the implications of that remark.


ps - yo, merockstar: post a picture (resource bubbles on) if you actually want commentary.

 

[drlake]

ps - yo, merockstar: post a picture (resource bubbles on) if you actually want commentary.

Agreed. Many of us will look at screenies, far fewer will download and open saves. Make sure you have resource bubbles on, and are at an appropriate level of zoom to see the stuff that is useful to see.

 

[DooMeeR]

The pig and corn near the river at the west is your best GP farm spot I think. Easy to farm and irrigate the corn. With just the pig and corn you can run 5 specialists at size 7, which is optimal. With farms you add 1 specialist for every 3 population, which is much less optimal. It can have up to three hills for production, which is good because there are things such as, say, the Great Library or of course National Epic that are great additions to a GP farm.

Problem is this spot would also be nice for a commerce city, but, well, you can't have everything.

 

[drlake]

Problem is this spot would also be nice for a commerce city, but, well, you can't have everything.

That seems to be a pretty common problem. The only GP farms I run that wouldn't also be good commerce cities are seafood based, and even then they can be OK as commerce cities.

 

[Feyaria]

There are 3 types of GP-farms:

1) A city with lots of food running a lot of specialists.

2) A city with very good production spamming wonders.

3) A city with lots of forests and National Park. This city comes late, but with 10 to 15 or more forests, the GPs will come very fast and can be used for multiple Golden Ages while building the spaceship parts.

 

[DooMeeR]

That seems to be a pretty common problem. The only GP farms I run that wouldn't also be good commerce cities are seafood based, and even then they can be OK as commerce cities.

I guess you could work cottages and use the food overflow to run specialists. You'll be building science multipliers anyway and having to work 2 farms for each additional specialist is costly.

It would produce less GP, but the number of life-changing GPs is not that high:
- one scientist for an academy;
- one or two scientists to bulb during the liberalism race;
- one more GP for a cheap golden age.
IMO the other GPs are less important and are on par with cottages.

 

[Mutineer]

take a look on this game.
A few turn from now I think capital was doing 800 Reseach/turn.

It is a gp farm.

 

[Dr.Null]

If you do go for multiple GP farms in the early game, you can turn one of them into your Globe Theater draft city in the mid game. All that city needs is Nationalism, lots of food, and the Globe Theater.