Can you have too much food?

[Mesix]

After just afew regenerations of the map, this baby came.

Now, theres like FOOD all over the place. What you think, irrigate it all or maybe cottage the floodplains for some hybrid economy?

I always cottage my floodplains. That way I get commerce and food out of each tile.

 

[Stylesrj]

Farm the floodplains. Faster growth leads to faster specialists who'll get you more cash than cottages, hopefully.
That's what I do, but I usually don't run a SE.
In fact, my cities are not really specialised. My capital is always my production city... it just happens to be...

 

[DigitalBoy]

You could go for full blown specialist economy. You have tons of food, stone for the pyramids, charismatic to help support larger cities, and philosophical for faster great people.