tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
I'm a little lax-er than @Aabraxan with my farms — but only a little!I understand what you are saying. How many scientists do you have in each city? I am not building anything but I just queue it up and then forget the city (I now know that is a bad idea) until large to add 3-5 scientists per city. Ex. my current unit limit is 160 because of science farms. So: from what you have said 95% corruption don't build anything, but < 90% build ducts and marketplaces then should I build barracks and then produce units?
Farms in fertile country are allowed to grow as far as they can: I expect them to max out at Pop4-5 on railed+irrigated dry Plains, Pop5-6 on railed+irrigated dry Grassland, and Pop10-12 near rivers/lakes. I can usually run around half those pop-points as Specialists: food-bonuses/Floodplains will obviously increase that proportion.
Farms in infertile country (Tundra, Desert, Hill-ranges) will immediately have their first citizen turned into a Specialist, and stay at Pop1.
Small, dry farms will get no buildings, unless they're on the coast. In that case they might build Walls, to boost defence.
Farms directly adjacent to a Fish (i.e. no Cultural expansion required!) will get a Harbour, to allow another Specialist (town-tile + Fish = 5 FPT = 1 fisherman + 1 Specialist + 1 FPT; town-tile + Fish-tile + Harbour = 6 FPT = Pop3 = 1 fisherman + 2 Specialists), in addition to those allowed by any land-tile food-harvests.
It's much cheaper (in terms of Settler- vs. building-shields, and building-maintenance) to build two Pop6-ers than one Pop12-er, for roughly the same beaker/gold return, so I don't build Ducts in any newly-Settled farms. However, in already-watered farms (either those founded on a river/lakeshore, or captured towns which already have a Duct), I will consider putting up Courthouses and Markets to help keep order — especially if Luxes are scarce (which can happen on larger maps; or if your trade-rep has accidentally got broken).
I use CivEngs, Forest-chops and (minimal) cash-rushes to get those few buildings up ASAP, then MM for zero FPT once they hit max. Specialists.
Otherwise, I'll usually set farms to slow-build Settlers/Workers while I still have land to fill/improve, but once I hit 55-60% land (if not going for Domination) and/or max. Specialists per town, I prefer Wealth, because then I don't have to keep adjusting tile-assignments as pop-points get turned into units.
And I never build Culture-buildings anywhere in the farm zone (I don't usually play for 100K), but in a long science-game I will happily accept those free Research_Labs from The_Internet.