Lets talk about farms

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Civilization VI treat farms a bit differently from civilization V.

Farms can only be built on flatland grassland, plains and floodplains at first but with civil engineering they can be built on hills as well.

Farms give +1 food to the tile and 0.5 housing to the city who control the farm tile.

With feudalism farms get +0.5 food per adjacent farm tile
With replaceable parts farms get +1 food per adjacent farm tile (feudalism bonus become obsolete).

In the early game farms are maybe as important for their extra housing as they are for their extra food. Pre feudalism is going to be a rather food poor time if you do not have alot of bonus resources or other food sources.

Feudalism is likely going to be a boom time for population growth, excess food can be put into working district tiles and mines. A perfect feudalism farm can produce +4 food thus a plain tile can be a +5 food +1 production and a grassland tile can be a +6 food tile. A farm itself can produce the food needed to support 2 people.

The problem during this time is going to be housing, while food may be plenty housing is not easy to get.

At replaceable parts you get mechanized agriculture which can give as much as +7 food per farm thus able to support 3.5 population. Here you should be able to build the neighbourhood to house a large population.

In all cases you want a large area which are just farms, you do not want to spread out your farms becase isolated farms are terrible. The optimal farm is adjacent to 6 farms. This farm provide huge amount of food but only need a single worker thus it give the most food for the least amount of effort.

Do not underestimate the housing farms can give you. 0.5 may not be much but if you have 10 farms, that is 5 extra housing which is a huge deal in the early game and could mean the extra population you need for districts. Also then you get neighbourhood you can pick a card called "public transportation" which give you gold thenever you replace a farm with a neighbourhood.

 

[MadDjinn]

keeping in mind that +1 food for 2 adjacent is not +0.5 per adjacent (because the game doesn't do 1/2 yields on the map that I've seen), feudalism requires very specific planning.

but otherwise, that does seem to be the progression of it.

farms for more housing early and a little food -> boosted food (feudalism) -> less farms worked (more districts viable, and most districts have a building or two that give housing) -> more food again -> start replacing farms with neighbourhoods for housing -> more districts viable.

 

[MarcoFurio]

Unstacking cities will make a huge difference in city planing.
It won't be easy to put 3 or 4 farms adjacent without losing good spots for districts or wonders.
From what I've seen so far, bonus resources are abundant so this could help city growth. Anyway, it will be hard to spread wonders and districts if you want to work your tiles. Better play wide, than tall?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Yes there are competition between districts and farms but I would say I would probably in most case go farms because food is so important, you do not want your whole population stuck as farmers, districts I can place in a cluster which atleast give some adjacency bonus.

In most cases farms do not compete with districts because they have very different optimal areas.

Tall and wide are more or less obsolete in civilization VI. The goal is to have as many cities with as large population as possible.

 

[StrideColossus]

Q - do the adjacency bonuses work for improvements belonging to other cities? As a couple of posters have pointed out it might be tricky to exploit the farm bonus without gimping districts, wonder, etc. but perhaps it would be easier to group a bunch of farm at an 'intersection' between cities?

 

[Siptah]

Q - do the adjacency bonuses work for improvements belonging to other cities? As a couple of posters have pointed out it might be tricky to exploit the farm bonus without gimping districts, wonder, etc. but perhaps it would be easier to group a bunch of farm at an 'intersection' between cities?

They do. Even from allied city states.

 

[thecrazyscot]

City intersections are certainly going to be valuable real estate, given that certain districts extend their effects to a certain tile radius, making placing them in city intersections optimal.

Overall it seems that maximizing farm bonuses will be very difficult to do while simultaneously balancing other yields.

 

[juanpavo]

... with civil engineering they can be built on hills as well.

Nice, did not know that. This will help as district construction forces farms to be later moved.

 

[George Abitbol]

City intersections are certainly going to be valuable real estate...

They also make good targets for nukes with devastating effects!

 

[Seek]

Has anyone seen a player maximize farm benefits? (Ie, make use of huge food output and rely on farm housing) I'm intrigued by this but I've only really watched FilthyRobot's streams so far and he has mostly stuck to a similar tech order in all the games I've seen (rush to neighborhoods).

I'm also curious if any players have focused on early science districts while ignoring Eurekas, though that's not really on topic here.

 

[Magil]

Farm triangles/diamonds were a thing in Vox Populi so I was already kinda used to placing them like that, and it seems like it will be especially optimal to group your farms around farmable resources, resources and districts permitting. In some cases it may even be worth harvesting other resources to make more room for farms. Of course, this is assuming that ICS isn't a hugely successful strategy, but I don't think that's going to work well given how high production costs get later on.

 

[joncnunn]

As long as you aren't required to work the farm to get the housing bonus, I'm already planning on planting the farms well in advance of when the city "needs" it for production; other than the granary and for a non-fresh water city aqueduct, it's one of the cheapest ways to increase housing limits and it's necessarily to have a +2 surplus to avoid suffering the 50% growth penalty from being at +1.
I see the triangle thing as something more to be concerned with when converting some farms over to district tiles, but the districts own adjacency bonuses also work in this direction.