Are farms worth it?

[yung.carl.jung]

I generally have one massive farm city and it makes a good internal trade route city since i can build most districts in it. It's also a pleasant area to look at on the map. Other than that, it entirely depends on the resources of the city and what I need.

But I also like my high pop cities even though it's not optimal due to Civ VI math. So I'm a bit biased in favor of them.

I used to play like that in vanilla, have one city with insane growth that had as many districts as humanly possible, then pair this with wonders and great merchants for additional TR bonuses. sadly I do not think it's really worth anymore, too many ressources invested when you can just abuse all the bonuses you get from having TRs with allies. They also just bring in that much more gold.

adding a city, no matter how crappy, is universally a positive in this game.
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that's obviously true, but the real question is whether producing a settler is always worth it, not whether settling more cities is worth. that's not the question the player is confronted with, sicne he has to actively decide whether or not to build a settler.

and the answer is very complicated. I think almost anyone would agree that if you're about to win a cultural/science victory in the next 10-20 turns it is not worth it to build a settler. but when exactly does it become "not worth"?

If you're interested I have recently played a Greece game where I peacefully settled 21 (I think) cities, basically I built settlers up until t110, and I think that might just be the exact treshold for how many cities are worth building (not conquering!). I finished t195 I think so stopping to settle around t110 was definitely necessary. Generally I don't believe building settlers past t120-t130 (standard) is worth it unless it's for a highly specific purpose (upgrading units, chopping space projects) or you're simply not expecting to finish before the early 200s. It is likely that it would have been more optimal to stay with 16-18 cities and develop them earlier, instead of building ~30 turn settlers. Settler costs escalate pretty quickly. You can find the game I referenced in the t100 benchmark thread on the strategy subforum if you care