Need some tips for Feudalism civic to boost food.

[mnf]

Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but I just wanted to leave a note that triangles is only the start of boosting food. We shouldn't end at triangles, but instead work towards full patches of farms. This is because while Feudalism bonus is worded like it counts triangles, in actual fact it works like minor district adjacencies; i.e.,

Feudalism: Farms gain +1 food for every 2 adjacent Farms.​

So for example:



None of the farms 1, 2, 3, 5, are in triangle formations, but they still get the +1 bonus from Feudalism because they're each adjacent to another two farms. Farm 7 is adjacent to three farms, but Feudalism only gives +1 food for every two farms, so #7 gets only +1.

But the formation above is a waste because if we fill in the middle, then just as we would with districts, we get:



Farm 4 is adjacent to six farms, hence it gets +3 food bonus. All in all, we're getting 36 food out of these 8 farms. If they were all just separated triangles, then we would have 2 triangles with 4x3+4x3=24 food plus 2x3=6 giving only 30 food; or we could have two sets of four-farm formations, and get 4x4+4x4=32 food.

This is what happens if we take Farm #1 out:



Farm 4 is now only adjacent to five farms, so it only gets +2 food adjacency bonus.

So it would really be best to stop thinking about farming triangles; instead, think about farms in exactly the same way we think about district adjacencies. Obviously, when we only have space for 3 farms, putting them in a triangle maximizes the food yield by letting all three farms get their adjacency bonuses.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I get your point, but there's two other limitations to the "farming hexagon": housing and space

In your configuration, every farm will produce much food, but you get only 1 housing for every 2 farms. Without enough housing, all that food goes to waste. Neighborhoods, which are the effective solution to housing, only comes much later.

And there's also the space limitations. It's unlikely you will have so much space available for farming. First, they might occupy valuable district space. Second, this hexagon tends to leave too much space between cities, reducing Factory and Entertainment District effectiveness.

I like to make farm diamonds; that is, adding one extra farm to the trangle. It's still compact, and the extra farm might be worked by another city.

 

[mnf]

Even if you pack cities 3-tile away, you'll still have enough space to fit this in. Not that you always want to do it, because that'd be stupid. But where suitable, this will be better than having isolated triangles when you're going to have that many farms anyway.

Again, use it where it is suitable. For example you are food poor but have a patch of plains available. Then this will provide you with that few extra points of food you desperately need. Or with a city that has 6-8 hills on the one side and flatland on the other side, it's also perfect. You wouldn't try to do this for every city, that would be silly.

But where suitable, this should be the goal instead of isolated triangles.