How many farms do I need

[midnighttoker13]

Hey there

Im having trouble with the count to determine how many farms i need according to the +1 -1 theory by wreck. According to my count on this map with a farm I will have +5, therefore I do not need to create a single farm aside from on the corn resource. Am I correct?

 

[Um the Muse]

Yes, according to the way Wreck suggested tiles should be counted, you don't even need the farm on the corn resource.

One implication of this is that you can share the food resources with another city without costing your capital too much.

 

[midnighttoker13]

Thanks

Im trying to get better so I can dominate prince as Noble is just too easy. IM trying to get the finer points of the production city as well. lots of learning to do

 

[Htadus]

It is too bad that you did not settled where the settler likely spowned. 1N of the capital. That would have made a truly powerful Burocrecy Capital after Civil Service.

BTW, I am ignorent of wreck, however 2 of your 5 food from the corn will be taken up by the -2 unhealthy from FP's. So you would stand to benefit from at least 1 floodplain farm to speed up growth and settler/worker builds. The rest I would cottage and farm the dye(if needed) untill Calander show up. BTW, I do odd things with multiple resources. One is building cottages on dye. The eventual output is much more than typical improvement or typical mature cottage (town). just saying.

BTW, this start begs you to head to calander asap if not sooner than possible. Also pottary for health from granary, fast growth and cottages. But you knew that.

As for a production city, the best is the nearby AI capital. If they are near enough to rush. They usually have all the requirements.

So, for a good production city for ancient era, you need 1 or two food sources. Wet corn and a cow are great and then several hills/stone/marble where you can build a mine. You can quary the resources later. Think happy limit. Say 5 happy. Two pop work food tiles and others hammer. A city can make 12 hammers each turn easily at size 5 and build an Axeman every 3 turns. It will need a grainary and a monument (if not creative) as a minimum and a barracks if not rushing. Thats it. Later you can build a forge and perhaps a CH to help with maintanance and espy points. When not building units, it is a great worker and settler pump. And after Alpha and Currency, this city can build science or wealth as time demands it.

Hope this help.

 

[midnighttoker13]

It does thank-you.
AS i was saying this is a hard game to master. I have founded 2 more cities. I was going to use the one bottom left to become a production and the one on the right to be a great person farm. IM running into issues with health and happyness right now. And the AI is not close at all

 

[Htadus]

I would switch the build in the capital and whip a worker or settler. Then let the city grow while finishing the library.

BTW you should have at least 4 cities by now or better yet 5. 7 cities by 0 AD is a resonable goal.

Also if you care to micro manage, you can shut down science until Library is done and reset it to 100%. The gain is significant in the early game. Also nect time make the Lib a priority and buid it much earlier.

 

[Seraiel]

I just wanna say, counting the tiles is not necessary at all. Wreck may have a good point that an "ideal city" has size 20 and no surplus , but I would argue against it. You have to consider what "you need atm" . If you're running Slavery i. e. (as you probably will for most of the game) you'll want a good surplus to speed up production. Once you have your cities set up you still might want to need that production to produce military units, but it might also already be the time when Civil Service comes in reach, so you'll maybe wanna build some Cottages so those get multiplied. You might wanna do that even earlier, because they need time to grow and your expansion force you into building them.

Therefor I stick with these rules:

Improve the first, after that, decide which specialization the city will get.
-> Military city: Build Farms
-> Military city with HE: Improve Mines
-> Commercial city with surplus greater than 4: Build Cottages
-> Commercial city with surplus smaller than 4: Build some Farms to speed up growth
-> GP Farm: Build all Farms

If you are still very early in the game and your cap is low, improve the mines before building too much farms, given you improved the and have a decent surplus for the city to grow.

Remember: A "real city" will never reach size 20 in a decent amount of time, it will stay small and "work only the best tiles" . I. e. your capital has an "ideal size" of 15. You will first want to improve the Corn, that gives you a surplus of 5, which is ok, but not ideal for the beginning. Therefor you'll want to farm 3 FPs to produce fast Settlers at size 4. When your cap rises, you'll want to cottage those FPs and you'll want to mine those hills, as both will get multiplied by CS. The extra from the Bananas aswell as the extra from the dyes will come in handy shortly before that. You'll end up with all FPs + riverside grasslands cottaged, a surplus of 6 (3 from the Corn, 3 from the Bananas, 2 from the initial tile and -2 from the grassland hills) , so that city will have quite good , is a little low on but makes up for that because of the good surplus of 6, so prepare to whip most of the Infrastructure it'll need, but don't whip away good tiles. As it's a Capital, actually only whip the granary and the Library and the initial Settlers, after that let it grow because you'll want it to be size 13-15 asap.

If you got questions about how "real cities work" , post screens of the cities and state the situation, you can follow the rules above and you'll have a better outcome than you'd ever had, if you'd blindly follow the rules about the farms and size 20 you have learned, they lead to "first build all the farms" and "win too late" .

Regards, Sera

 

[Um the Muse]

I agree with Sera that just because you can have up to 20 tiles to improve, that doesn't mean that you should grow your city to size 20; growing that large is ridiculous for almost any reason.

However, I do use the count to ballpark how tightly I can pack cities. That is how I knew that I could afford to give away the food resources to another city.

In your next cities, you ran into trouble because you trusted that +1/-1 system. Check out how long it'll take you to build your cities up. There are several issues that are keeping the cities small for really long periods of time, but the biggest issue is that they don't have a food resource. Floodplains and grassland tiles are great for maintaining your population, but not so great at growing larger, especially pre-granaries.

In fact, a very good rule of thumb is that every city needs at least one food resource from the moment that you build the city. I would argue that you also should have a couple of food neutral or better tiles to help you get up to speed + the tiles that you will actually work (these can be the same tiles if you're building farms or cottages or might be grass hill mines for production). There are possible exceptions to this (a city might be better off just working a gold mine, for example), but most of my cities follow this rule.

 

[coanda]

"Count up food so you have exactly enough for size-20" is a red herring that you shouldn't be following. You have workers; you can replace old farms when you no longer need them. You don't need to worry about size-20 for a long time, you may not want to grow to size-20 ever (or you may want to grow beyond size-20 for specialists), and you can use workers to swap farms into other improvements or vice versa anyways.

What you usually want is to be maintaining a decent rate of growth up to happy cap, then swap to working exactly enough food to support your population. This might mean simply changing what tiles the city is working, or it might mean actually replacing farms with other improvements using your workers.

Later in the game, you want to try to grow up to the point where growing further would not contribute to that city's specialization. Don't try to grow a GP farm further if it won't let you work more specialists, commerce city further if it won't get you more commerce, or production city further if it won't get you more hammers. This doesn't mean you'll never grow beyond that point, just that you won't actively try to. If, working no farms and all production tiles, your production city grows anyways... that's fine.

Edit: One last thought. Particularly early in the game, having a decent food surplus even at happy cap is a good thing; it lets you whip production, or can contribute to making settlers/workers.

 

[Silv Something]

Can someone please direct me to Wreck's +1 -1 theory of food? I'm confused reading this.

 

[coanda]

Can someone please direct me to Wreck's +1 -1 theory of food? I'm confused reading this.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158482
(the Feeding your City subsection)

To clarify: that post is a slight misrepresentation of Wreck's actual point (which is a reasonable one). His point is that when a city is not trying to grow, you don't want a food surplus; he provides a method for estimating in advance how many farms you will want at that point. In fact, he explicitly states himself that you may well cottage/workshop over farms only after you're done growing, and also that you need not grow to work every tile in the city radius - just as many good tiles as you can. I don't find his method in pure form that useful (as it doesn't advise what improvements you'll want for the 95% of the game where your cities are growing, drafting, or whipping, and doesn't address how you judge which tiles are worth growing onto and when; how many farms you need when not working every tile will vary based on which tiles you choose to work, and so forth). But it's not particularly objectionable; it'll give you perfectly reasonable advice in the narrow set of circumstances that it is applicable.

Unfortunately, because that post I linked to is one of the strategy articles in the War Academy, what it recommends has been tied with Wreck's name for all time despite not being what he advised. And what it recommends is always making exactly enough farms the grow to work every tile in your city radius, which is just bad.

 

[Silv Something]

Thanks!