Agriculture advances

[FenrysWulf]

It just occured to me that Civ needs something in it to reflect the advances in farming techniques through the ages. In Civ 2 there was refrigeration, which let you build supermarkets, which made each irrigated square produce one more food. I think it was really the tractor and other types of machinery that vastly increased farm production, so maybe when you get motorized transportation or mass production, or even a new technology, there should be something that increases crop yields. Farmers today feed many more people on much less land, but in civ farms produce the same in 4000 B.C. as in 2000 A.D.

 

[America444]

thats a good idea there could be tractors that come with motorized transportation or a new tech. and a new tech called plantations that increases food output. and terraces, that can come with like engineering or there own tech, that allow you to irrigate on hills.

 

[Ace4nyC]

i miss the farm lands from part 2

 

[Sarevok]

its sounds good, they shoud have those. mabye they should also have something that makes mining more powerful with steam power as well in addition to the railways.

 

[Winston]

Yeah I miss the farms too, it makes sense that agriculture should improve as you research more techs. But there's lots of other techs and developments that aren't represented too; for instance, improvements in communication (e.g. railroads) should reduce corruption and improvements in entertainment (e.g. radio, free artistry, music theory etc) should make people happier - I guess the developers didn't see it as worthwhile putting these things in, maybe they thought it was too nitpickity; who knows?

It seems to me that the only way to represent agricultural developments at the moment is to have extra food bonus resources appear when you discover new techs, but I think it would be better if workers could double irrigate - it would give them something to do instead of planting forests and cutting them down again, which is plain stupid

 

[Dearmad]

I thought the old plant forest cutting them down trick didn't work anymore. Didn't they take that out?

And yeah there are some good ideas in this thread.

 

[FenrysWulf]

Originally posted by Sarevok
its sounds good, they shoud have those. mabye they should also have something that makes mining more powerful with steam power as well in addition to the railways.

Yeah, the mine idea makes sense. I had also considered the fact that modern highways are much better than ancient roads, but railroads replace roads so it's not really a factor.

 

[Hygro]

railroads led to a national food market that led to more food thus I like what railroads do to food. I do agree with you to some extent on the matter of having another farm level

 

[Lyonesse]

I totally I agree, I miss refrigeration...was kinda disappointed to learn it wasn't there anymore.

 

[Dr Tiny]

Certainly in Britain changes in Agriculture started around the time of the Norman conquest. Land was parcelled up and each person had several strips of land, this was all part of the the Feudal system.
There was a proper agricultural revolution some centuries later which coincided with the development of larger cities, such inovations as crop rotation and various agricultural tools were implemented in this time. I seem to remember this about the time that the industrial revolution began, so rail adding food production in CivIII is roughly the right time period if my memory is serving me right.

 

[FenrysWulf]

Also, when machines like the reaper and the cotton gin were invented, they did the work formerly done by many people, and those now unemployed people went to the cities for jobs. This led to the growth in industry but the lowering of wages because of the surplus of labor. I don't really know if any of this needs to be reflected in the game, but it is the way it happened historically.

 

[Speaker]

It seems to me that there is plenty of food to go around once you get railroads. Better mines are also reflected by railroads, and with factories and power plants, the extra shields are multiplied. Any more shields would be overkill.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I liked the look of the farmland in Civ 2 it looked a lot more civilized than a bunch of ditches with water.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I have an interesting idea. The ability to research a technology that will let you build windmills (a terrain improvement) so that you can irrigate cities cut off from fresh water. As windmills were a big part of Westward Expansion in America, as much of the land was too far away from rivers and lakes meaning they had to pump their water out of the ground.