Optimal Farming

[InquisitorIsaac]

I'm new to playing CiV5 and im trying to beat each lvl of difficulty (curently stuck on Warlord), and recently I've run into a bit of a dilemma regarding Farm placement and research improvements (ie Civil Service and Fertilizer).

Based on what I've read from the culture of posts on this forum, the optimal tiles for farms are by rivers, which produce +2 Food and +1 Gold. Coupled with Civil Service, each hex would recieve an additional +1 Food. Anything other than that was meant for Trading Posts.

However, when I look up the Civilopedia ingame, it says that grasslands and floodplains are the optimal tiles because they produce +2 Food exclusively. Coupled with Fertilizer later in game, those hex's recieve another +1 Food. Trading Posts were recommended being built on Rivers because of its +1 Gold output, which then increases to +3 with the improvement.

My first question is: Which is better?

Secondly, I''ve been trying to find a steady Food rate for all my cities so I don't over-improve on farms and keep the population on a steady, managable rise. There was a guide that mentioned +2 Food in a city was the bare minimum rate for population growth and that +4 was a 'really' fast.

The second question is: Is a +2 Food/Growth in a city efficient for someone not trying make a population boom?

Thirdly (and finally), Figuring out spacing between expanding cities. THIS is my main problem. I've adopted some advice from the forum saying that the best way to expand is by placing cities five to six hexes apart, however, I get to about three cities before either hitting up against another Civ or City State, where I tend to stagnate from a lack of resource improvements because my cities were too small to either buy or culture them.

So, the third and most daunting question: How far apart to Cities need to be without one potentially crippling the other in order to grap sufficient resource improvements?

 

[Paeanblack]

It's simpler than you are making it out to be:

Grass, Plains, & Floodplains can be farmed
Hills next to a river can be farmed
Any tile with Wheat can be farmed

All farms yield +1 food on top of what the tile gives
After Civil Service, all farms next to a River, Oasis, or Lake yield +2 food instead of +1
After Fertilizer, all farms regardless of location yield +2 food instead of +1


If you ever start near a tile with sheep, make sure you farm it BEFORE researching Animal Husbandry.

 

[nodule]

+2 surplus food is exceptionally small--your cities won't be growing much beyond size 10. If you're okay with that, then it's a good rate.

note that it doesn't matter what the base yield of a tile is when planning its improvements. It isn't more advantageous to make a "super food" tile than a bunch of more balanced tiles, generally. The exception is if you have specific goals that require lots of a certain resource (like running tons of specialist).

In fact, diverse tiles are usually better due to golden ages. I would never farm a non-riverside grassland or plain because the yield of the tile won't increase during a GA. This is also why plains and forests are so awesome. It's so easy to add a trading post (if not already riverside) and get +1prod/+1gold for the tile during a GA, which is usually a 33-50% increase in yield.

 

[Aldor]

Grass, Plains, & Floodplains can be farmed
Hills next to a river can be farmed
Any tile with Wheat can be farmed

All farms yield +1 food on top of what the tile gives
After Civil Service, all farms next to a River, Oasis, or Lake yield +2 food instead of +1
After Fertilizer, all farms regardless of location yield +2 food instead of +1

Are you sure on that (bold part)? I thought fertilizer only improves non-river / non-lake farms?

 

[aimlessgun]

The reason you farm river tiles is because the farms get to +2 food much faster than a non-river farm (in most cases Civil Service comes before Fertilizer, though this is not always true).

Ideally you want a combination of hammer, commerce and food tiles you can swap around to fit the moment. Work high food until your happy cap, then switch to hamer tiles or whatever.

Thirdly (and finally), Figuring out spacing between expanding cities. THIS is my main problem. I've adopted some advice from the forum saying that the best way to expand is by placing cities five to six hexes apart, however, I get to about three cities before either hitting up against another Civ or City State, where I tend to stagnate from a lack of resource improvements because my cities were too small to either buy or culture them.

So, the third and most daunting question: How far apart to Cities need to be without one potentially crippling the other in order to grap sufficient resource improvements?

First off, I think just playing more will give you a more intuitive sense via trial and error.

It depends on so many factors. Not all your cities have to be allstars, and there are strategies which pack in large numbers of mediocre cities (ICS). But let's ignore ICS seeing as you're a beginner.

When founding cities, first look to get access to these 2 things:
-Luxury resources
-Strategic resources

Past that, there are usually 3 things you want out of your cities:

-gold (land mostly irrelevant except rivers and luxury resources)
-production to make things (hammer tiles: hills, forests)
-science (mostly population, so food)

Not every city has to have ALL of these things. But it needs to be able to do at least one of these things, and the more things it can do, the better (or if it can do one thing REALLY well).

Now that you have some objectives for your cities, you can look at your land and figure out placement. The next question for spacing becomes "how many of the tiles around my city will it be working and thus unavailable for a nearby city?"

In this case it is probably best to optimize for the near future, rather than for an endgame where cities are very large. IMO that means plan for your cities to be working 10-12 tiles.

But look: nobody actually counts out the tiles and maps it out in Civ5. Just do it intuitively and use common sense. If there are tons of good tiles around, found cities closer together. If you're in a barren wasteland with few good tiles, found them farther apart.

 

[Sumorex]

If you ever start near a tile with sheep, make sure you farm it BEFORE researching Animal Husbandry.

How are you farming sheep? That isn't an option in the UI. Only pasture and road are available but grayed out because of the lack of the proper technology. The hotkey "I" doesn't issue that order either.

 

[aimlessgun]

Would it be an option for riverside sheep pre-husbandry? Never done it though, great idea if it works.

 

[Pantastic]

Are you sure on that (bold part)? I thought fertilizer only improves non-river / non-lake farms?

Civil Service is a prereq to Fertilizer. CS gives you the bonus on fresh water farms, Fertilizer adds all non-fresh-water farms to the fresh water farms you've already got, making the bonus the same everywhere.

 

[Lyoncet]

How are you farming sheep? That isn't an option in the UI. Only pasture and road are available but grayed out because of the lack of the proper technology. The hotkey "I" doesn't issue that order either.

I'm going to assume it's an option until you get animal husbandry. Which of course gives you a bigger boost eventually than building a pasture. Bit of an oversight there.

 

[Paeanblack]

But look: nobody actually counts out the tiles and maps it out in Civ5.

I definitely do. I'm pretty sure players like alpaca, Sullla, pi-r8, luddite, etc. also map their expansion plans in advance.

 

[aimlessgun]

Civil Service is a prereq to Fertilizer.

For some reason, it actually isn't. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense ><

I definitely do. I'm pretty sure players like alpaca, Sullla, pi-r8, luddite, etc. also map their expansion plans in advance.

If you're doing ICS or some city packing strategem of course. But if you were to just found cities 'normally' and just focusing on grabbing good land/resources, the large number of workable tiles vs available population will make such exact calculations irrelevant until lategame.

 

[Sumorex]

I'm going to assume it's an option until you get animal husbandry. Which of course gives you a bigger boost eventually than building a pasture. Bit of an oversight there.

That is what I thought, but I've been unable to issue the order to build a farm to the worker. Issuing the order to farm a sheep hex isn't even an inaccessible option like you see with an improvement you lack the tech to build (plantation before calendar).

This is before Animal Husbandry.

So still just wondering if I'm missing something simple, or if some other tech might be necessary (still without grabbing Animal Husbandry) to farm a sheep square like suggested in a previous post.

 

[Nunya]

Based on what I've read from the culture of posts on this forum, the optimal tiles for farms are by rivers, which produce +2 Food and +1 Gold. Coupled with Civil Service, each hex would recieve an additional +1 Food. Anything other than that was meant for Trading Posts.

However, when I look up the Civilopedia ingame, it says that grasslands and floodplains are the optimal tiles because they produce +2 Food exclusively. Coupled with Fertilizer later in game, those hex's recieve another +1 Food. Trading Posts were recommended being built on Rivers because of its +1 Gold output, which then increases to +3 with the improvement.

My first question is: Which is better?

The forum advice is better. A river/lake farm will give +2 food with Civil Service, compared to +1 food from other tiles. So farms on river tiles are more effective than farms on non-river tiles. A trading posts on the other hand will give you +2 gold regardless where you place it. From there it follows that if you build a farm, you'll want to build it on a tile with fresh water.

Another thing is that you don't really need all that many farms anyway because it's generally more effective to build more trading posts and use the extra gold to bribe a maritime city state into allying with you. Because of maritime city states it's also not worth building Granaries and Watermills (although if you are playing Azecs it's still worth building their unique Watermill replacment because it gives a 15% bonus to all food).

And as a sidenote, floodplain tiles alwas have a river so asking whether to build farms on floodplains or on rivers is a bit silly.

The second question is: Is a +2 Food/Growth in a city efficient for someone not trying make a population boom?

I think that's actually pretty slow growth.

So, the third and most daunting question: How far apart to Cities need to be without one potentially crippling the other in order to grap sufficient resource improvements?

Somewhere around size 12 city growth will slow down to a crawl until you build a Hospital. The city will then grow a bit more, but you'll have to build a Medical Lab in order to bring it beyond size 18 or so. Size 18 is just enough to work all tiles in a 2 hex radius.

So cities without Hospitals can be built 3 hexes apart without harm. Cities with Hospitals but without Medical Labs can be built 4 hexes apart without harm. And a city with both a Hospital and a Medical Lab can probably employ any surplus citizens as specialists so 4 hexes is again enough.

To sum up 3-4 hexes is a sufficent distance that cities won't cripple each other.

 

[Pantastic]

Because of maritime city states it's also not worth building Granaries and Watermills (although if you are playing Azecs it's still worth building their unique Watermill replacment because it gives a 15% bonus to all food).

That was a HUGE sink of hammers and maintenance for me in my early games. I was used to civ4, and in Civ4, any building that gives extra food is just great since city growth always helps you - if your city gets unhappy, break out the whip and get a free unit or improvement, if you can't whip just accumulate unhappy citizens who serve to slow city growth but don't otherwise hurt you (unless you're really troubled by the happiness % in demographics).

They are still useful for the occasional city that you really want to grow a lot (like a capital or wonder farm), but probably 95% of the time you don't to build them (or keep them in a captured city).

 

[gareththegeek]

Civil Service is a prereq to Fertilizer. CS gives you the bonus on fresh water farms, Fertilizer adds all non-fresh-water farms to the fresh water farms you've already got, making the bonus the same everywhere.

Its not; I actually had a game where I got fertilizer first so my farms were less effective if they were near a river crazy