Farms and Plantations

[Ramesses]

Personally, it's always bugged me how the Farm and the Plantation are different improvements in Civ IV, and it seems they're doing it again in Civ V. I just don't see why they have to distinguish between the two. As far as I understand it, the only real difference is in its size, which would necessarily mean that a plantation IS a farm, only more so.

While it's true that plantations are also used for forestry in the real world, in Civ IV the only way you could farm trees was by building a Lumbermill, so there's even more separation.

I suppose the only reason for the Plantation improvement is to prevent you from gaining access to the luxury resources. But if that's the case, then for the sake of simplicity, I think the following should occur in Civ V: Farms provide access to luxury resources, but the resources simply don't appear until the Calendar technology is researched, just like how many strategic resources behave.

If it's too difficult to implement at this stage of development, then I really hope the mod tools that they've been hyping up are capable of implementing this sort of thing.

 

[Ahriman]

Plantations in Civ are mostly for cash-crops (commerce/gold) not food.

Makes plenty of sense to keep them separate.

 

[King Jason]

A more elegeant solution would simply allow for farms to produce the extra yield/bring in the resource once the specific tech is researched as opposed to hiding the luxuries on the map. That way you could build a farm on say, wine, but it would produce it's full output and bring the resource to you until the concept of wineries were actually discovered.

That said, they're probably separated because they wanted Plantations cost more to build than farms. In terms of turns to build. They likely wanted them to be a bigger investment. In civ5, it's possible that different improvements have different gold costs too, which could further merit the distinction.

I like having the different improvements, personally.

 

[Shurdus]

It is mostly a semantic difference, and maybe something that mimics history only if one forcefully looks for examples. It is like saying that people always farmed food, so farms are available in classic era's. People only had cotton plantations however once it was no longer needed to work the land for your own food. PLantations are therefore a sign of more sophistication, therefore they come later. It matters not that they are essentialy the same thing for a different product.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

According to Wiki,

A plantation is a large farm or estate, usually in a tropical or subtropical country, where crops are grown for sale in distant markets, rather than for local consumption. The term plantation is informal and not precisely defined.

Personally, though it's obviously a matter of semantics, it's enough of a difference for two separate improvements for me.

 

[Polobo]

Size does matter however; since cost is related to size and thus the improvemetn should cost more to build (maintain?)

 

[Calouste]

Plantations take longer to build in Civ4 than Farms, don't they? 5 turns instead of 4 on normal speed I think.

 

[Ramesses]

Well then, I would at least like to see Farms be "upgradable" to Plantations. I.E., if you build a farm with a worker, you can later send a worker over to that same tile and build it into a plantation in one turn.

 

[KenBoy]

Well I have the opposite problem. I want to "downgrade" from a plantation to a farm.

I recently conquered an enemy city with two already improved cotton resources on plains.

I chose to create a puppet state as I didn't need/want another core city. However the city only has a population of 2, and the "puppet AI" chooses to work both cotton resourses, so the city won't grow.

How can I get the city to grow? The AI chooses the tiles that generate the most wealth, even if growth stalls. I can't pillage in my own territory and my workers don't have the option to build a farm on the already built plantation. Do I have any options to make the city grow, other than taking it over as one of my core cities, which I don't want to do.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[lemming3k]

It's probably more of a historically semantic thing - farms tend to be seen as producing food sources almost entirely for the purpose of consuming them, whereas plantations are often used for more luxurious items that are also heavily sought aftre and traded.
You'd have a "farm" for Maize, Sheep, Pigs etc - items everyone has access to.
You'd have a "plantation" for Cotton, Sugar, Bananas etc - items that were fought for, mostly in the new world to make a more "civilized" empire.

They don't really require any tangible tech difference, but just from a gameplay and historical point of view they should be seen as different things.

 

[hudders]

I chose to create a puppet state as I didn't need/want another core city. However the city only has a population of 2, and the "puppet AI" chooses to work both cotton resourses, so the city won't grow.

Because puppet cities are always set to "gold focus".

I can't pillage in my own territory and my workers don't have the option to build a farm on the already built plantation. Do I have any options to make the city grow, other than taking it over as one of my core cities, which I don't want to do.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Would building forts on the plantations work? Building a fort should remove the current improvement and also provide no benefit to the city for working the tile.

 

[eris]

Well I have the opposite problem. I want to "downgrade" from a plantation to a farm.

I recently conquered an enemy city with two already improved cotton resources on plains.

I chose to create a puppet state as I didn't need/want another core city. However the city only has a population of 2, and the "puppet AI" chooses to work both cotton resourses, so the city won't grow.

How can I get the city to grow? The AI chooses the tiles that generate the most wealth, even if growth stalls. I can't pillage in my own territory and my workers don't have the option to build a farm on the already built plantation. Do I have any options to make the city grow, other than taking it over as one of my core cities, which I don't want to do.

Any advice would be appreciated.

When that happens to me, I prioritize investment/quests for maritime City States. Unless the surrounding terrain has nothing but zero food big wealth tiles, that seems to get some growth cycle going.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The civlopedia do say something that a plantation is just basicly a different name for farm. They porbably decide to have another inprovement because they do not want you to be able to improve all the plantation lux in the begining.