Build Farm - Do You Assume Biology?

[br_casino]

When you are improving the land around your cities in the beginning of the game, do you assume that farms give +2 (with biology they will) or +1 (which they do until biology)?

Lets assume that this is one of your first cities. You have 20 workable tiles around your city. Lets further assume that you have 15 grassland tiles (2 food each) and 5 plains/hills (0 each food) and no resources that on there own or when improved give more than 2 food.

To have all tiles worked, you will need 10 additional food. You do not have biology or machinery. Do you build 10 farms or 5 farms?

 

[Ruler]

For me I don't think Biolygy at the beginning only if I'm running SE and only because I don't want to forget it. All what comes from Biology are extra and are used for specialist even if I'm running CE. Extra food is always useful ie drafting I try to keep 3 specialist per city at minimun even more later part of a game.

 

[CivMonger]

if we're talking just at the start of the game I tend to build more farms than needed to grow my cities quickly to their limits, and cottage the remaining tiles. Normally you can do both, and swap workers around from the food tiles to the cottages so they don't overgrow. Later on in the game when they can grow a lot bigger and biology is around the corner I will slack off a bit and just change for when biology comes around, but I normally have the workers to micromanage a bit anyways.

 

[lilnev]

I build 2 or 3 farms, so that the city can bring in +4 or +5 food while it's growing onto all those cottages. At some point I might windmill a hill or two, but mostly a city without food is going to be miserably low production anyway. Once Biology comes in, a few more hills will get windmills.

Did you have to build a city without any food-positive tiles? Sometimes you do have to, but I'll try pretty hard to avoid it. Often my dotmaps are based around allocating food specials so that each city gets at least one. In general, don't worry about what the end state will look like some day. Rapid early growth is more important.

peace,
lilnev

 

[svv]

If it's a military/production city or a religion/money/gp farm city - 10 farms. You can always just hire some specialists after biology.

On my commerce cities, I usually just build my cottages on the grassland so they can support themselves, with a few farms to help the pop grow.

 

[Elandal]

I don't really think about cities of size 20 pre-biology. I would think about what kind of city it would be early game, midgame - but it's unlikely to have happiness for size 20 much before biology.
That said, I do try to found cities based on food-positive tiles (whether food resources or floodplains). I find pre-biology non-resource farms to be one of the worst tiles to work - FP=3 just won't cut it for me, it's worked out of necessity not love.

 

[Galileo44]

Biology comes very late in the game to be thinking about with first 5-10 cities. I will build farms assuming +1 food either to feed specialists in a GP Farm or to get extra food for my produciton cities to work mines. As someone said, you can just add specialists or change the improvements once biology comes in. Plus, on Emperor and above, thinking about size 20 cities is a joke in 2000BC when the happy and health caps are at 3-4. You only can support that much later with civics and resources and buildings.

 

[shadow2k]

Biology is so far down the line...no, I don't even give it a second thought. Some games never even get that far. The initial development/growth is what's going to determine where you're at when you hit Biology, and very likely the game may already be decided...so that's what you should worry about.

If you're hindering your cities optimal setup in the hopes that it will be perfect when you hit Biology...ugh. Seriously? No way would I ever do that. Not to mention that you'll have other things that possibly change your "perfect setup" you came up with in 2000BC, like when your lone source of coal/oil/uranium/aluminum pops under one of your improvements that throws everything out of whack.

This game is all about being able to adjust to your current situation. And while you do want to plan ahead...I think planning for Biology's +1 in the BC's is way too far ahead. Now if you were talking about getting ready for Biology once you've hit Education or something, that's a different story.

 

[jerVL/kg]

I plan my cities with an even number of farms so the Biology bonus doesn't throw the food supply out of whack, but that's all the thought I give to it in the BC years.

 

[trundle]

I think the answer depends pretty much entirely on how much you're willing to micromanage and replace old improvements. The 'optimal' setup is to improve your terrain as if biology didn't exist until shortly before you research it.

This doesn't necessarily mean planning for a city of size 20, however. In your opening example, for instance, you may only want a couple farms so you can work 2 hills (don't forget the two free food from the city space) and the rest cottages when you've got a low happiness cap. Or if you're trying to build a wonder, you'll probably want to retool and go for even more hills.

If you don't want to go back and retool improvements for each city (I admit I'm usually too lazy to do it for more than a handful of key cities), I recommend planning without biology in mind: having extra specialists on hand is better than not hitting your growth cap, I think (plus, the pop is worth points).

 

[br_casino]

I've been playing assuming the biology bonus as I want to start growing those cottages as soon as possible. Next game I will try out building with the +1 instead of the +2. I don't know how I feel about that as I think my research will suffer. I guess that I'll have to throw in more scientists.

 

[trundle]

I don't understand -- if you're counting on biology for food, won't you have less food and thus less population to work cottages or make scientists out of until it shows up?

If you can grow/have grown to your max population (as determined by happiness and to a much lesser degree health limits), why make any farms at all? If not, consider more farms and replace them with cottages later: you won't be working extra cottages early if you don't have the food for them.

 

[cabert]

the food count is cool, but it's highly static
what you need to check is the ability of a city to grow enough
But it's only about checking, not improving.
If you try to improve in 3000BC the tiles how you want them in 2000 AD, you'll be hurting growth a lot!

 

[futurehermit]

I read once on these forums some very good advice. It was something like this: "Don't think of early farms as a means to get you to a break-even point at size 20, think of them as a means to get you to a break-even point at whatever your happiness limit is". Of course, it is often advantageous/desirable to have food surplus, but you get the idea. Don't worry about later in the game. Worry about NOW!