"Farming Becomes Less Essential"?

[steveg700]

So, it seems that it's part of Civ VI's design that neighborhoods should start to replace farms at some point in the game, or at least so I've heard. Food never stops being important to a civ though, and even though feudalism will give some cities a boost, it still seems odd to rip up sources of food to get more housing. That increases a population cap by removing the means to reach that cap. Is there something I'm missing?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

So, it seems that it's part of Civ VI's design that neighborhoods should start to replace farms at some point in the game, or at least so I've heard. Food never stops being important to a civ though, and even though feudalism will give some cities a boost, it still seems odd to rip up sources of food to get more housing. That increases a population cap by removing the means to reach that cap. Is there something I'm missing?

If you have 4 grassland tiles in a city that has a base of 5 housing
4 early Farms=12 food, 7 housing...
4 Feudalism farms (say 2 food each)= 16 food, 7 housing starting to get slowed
4 Mechanized farms (say 4 food each)= 24 food, 7 housing.... serious slowdown
OR
3 mechanized farms, 1 neighborhood=18 food, 13 housing... more total pop

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Farms and trade routes become more powerful as the game progress while housing problem is solved by neighbourhoods making farms 0.5 housing less valuable.

Citizens get more and more expensive to grow the larger your city population are and at some point you can not build any more districts anyway in the city so going for super large cities are probably not the best thing in the world.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

If you have 4 grassland tiles in a city that has a base of 5 housing
4 early Farms=12 food, 7 housing...
4 Feudalism farms (say 2 food each)= 16 food, 7 housing starting to get slowed
4 Mechanized farms (say 4 food each)= 24 food, 7 housing.... serious slowdown
OR
3 mechanized farms, 1 neighborhood=18 food, 13 housing... more total pop

OR 6 Mechanized farms, 1 neighborhood, 36 food (actually more due to adjacency bonuses getting bigger), 14 housing, faster growth and even more total pop. Replacing farms with neighborhoods is dumb. Just add a neighborhood or two on fringes that wouldn't make good farms in the first place.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The game maybe thinks that all your tiles are basically farms, obviously without the gold card you should probably avoid replacing farms with neighbourhoods if you have empty tiles that are just as good for housing.

An optimal 6 house neighbourhood is worth 12 farms in terms of housing and also have an advantage of giving adjancey bonuses to other districts.

 

[Matthew.]

OR 6 Mechanized farms, 1 neighborhood, 36 food (actually more due to adjacency bonuses getting bigger), 14 housing, faster growth and even more total pop. Replacing farms with neighborhoods is dumb. Just add a neighborhood or two on fringes that wouldn't make good farms in the first place.

Sure, if that is an option. If, instead, you have a bunch of districts, mines, and lumber mills, then replacing a farm is a desirable option. In any case, the purpose of the neighborhood is to greatly increase housing off of a single tile. Whether you have space for it on the fringe of your empire or not doesn't remove that fact.

 

[steveg700]

If you have 4 grassland tiles in a city that has a base of 5 housing
4 early Farms=12 food, 7 housing...
4 Feudalism farms (say 2 food each)= 16 food, 7 housing starting to get slowed
4 Mechanized farms (say 4 food each)= 24 food, 7 housing.... serious slowdown
OR
3 mechanized farms, 1 neighborhood=18 food, 13 housing... more total pop

I guess mechanized farms help it make sense, but they don't come for a while after neighborhoods are available.

Feudalism's bonus is great when you can pull it off a nice section of farmbelt, but not all cities can.

 

[joncnunn]

It's fine that Mechanized farms are after neighborhoods, it's a neighborhood or two in the city that will increase the housing capacity to allow the city to actually take full advantage of the mechanized farms.
But basically a neighborhood is something you build when a city is already at housing capacity; so replacing a farm if there wasn't a suitable empty tile with the same or better appeal is likely to be net positive for food growth.