Power of Farms

[North2]

I thought I made it clear that cottage spamming is still the way to go in the very beginning. I mentioned several times that commerce is king and production is worthless early game. It still makes no difference at diety/immortal difficulty, it just takes longer to get size 10 cities.

As for VoiceOfUnreason's post and the posts following it, I have no idea how that has anything to do with my post. I never even discussed the use of farms in order to have a city grow faster. You need farms for hammers, that's it. It helps a commerce city because you can get all those buildings built a lot faster. As I said, it's not of much use early game due to the low number of buildings available. However, mid-game cities should always open up with a mine as soon as possible in order to get those buildings built. That's why you should start with 2 farms and a mine, and it's assuming that you're farming 2 grasslands and not a floodplains.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I thought I made it clear that cottage spamming is still the way to go in the very beginning. I mentioned several times that commerce is king and production is worthless early game.

The fact that you mentioned it several times doesn't mean that I'll get it more than once ( Part of the problem is that I haven't really explored cottage spamming... I know, I know, I haven't really lived; I did, you'll note, admit that I didn't get it.)

So, trying again. You aren't really talking about the city in it's stable configuration, so much as what the city looks like as it is growing from size 1 to the happiness limit.

The target you are working toward is being able to work the useful production tiles while maintaining a healthy growth rate. This lets you build the commerce multipliers more quickly, and also allows you to build the happiness/health buildings more quickly [for instance, you may need a Forge and Market to reach your theoretical happycap].

The point to farming the floodplains is that +6 food at size two is better than +6 food at size 4; partly because you grow to size four more quickly, partly because you are getting more production at size 4 if you farm the flood plains, but most of all because it gives you a better production/population ratio.

So the improvement sequence looks like food/production then commerce, which is reverse from what it would be in the early part of the game.

That all makes sense to me - does it have anything to do with your point?

 

[Tzi]

lots of reading there...

Just a question though.
If you only have farms and lots of lots of food, wouldn't that make the city extremly populated which = many specialists?

suure we get a happiness and health issue there, maybe the wonder that takes away unhappiness and lots of resources would make such a city work... would it be worth it?

i myself mostly go 50/50 on all cities with very few specialised ones...
But recently i played against montezuma and realised he didn't have a sigle cottage/mine (except resource spots like iron/copper) it was about 500-1500 AD

oops gtg - work, cant elaborate more.

 

[malekithe]

I thought I made it clear that cottage spamming is still the way to go in the very beginning. I mentioned several times that commerce is king and production is worthless early game. It still makes no difference at diety/immortal difficulty, it just takes longer to get size 10 cities.

Hammers are anything but worthless. Absent forests, there are only three ways to build settlers, workers, or even military; bonus resources, mines, and pop-rushing. Both mines and pop-rushing require food. If anything, food (behing bonus resources) is king in the early game, not commerce. Food is king specifically because it leads to both more commerce and more hammers. Ignoring the effects of food supply on the early-game is folly.

Population growth in the early game can serve two purposes. It can be used to directly produce hammers in the case of workers, settlers, or pop-rushing. Or it can be used to fuel growth, indirectly producing hammers and commerce. If you're using it for the former, you want as much of it as you can get. If you're using it for the latter, you need a moderate amount; too much is a waste.

To be clear, if you choose to work a farm instead of a cottage or mine in the beginning, assuming the other tiles available to the city are useful (grassland or hills), you will come out with a net gain in either hammers or commerce, in most cases. The amount gained will depend upon the change in surplus food garnered by working the farm (or food resource), the larger the relative change, the more you stand to gain. Moving from 1 to 2 food surplus is nearly always beneficial. Moving from 2 to 3 is slightly more questionable, but likely to be useful. Moving from 3 to 4 has a decent chance of not being worthwhile, depending on how many units of population you need to grow.

There are a handful of reasons not to work an extra farm in a particular city. If you have a high time-preference for output now vs. output later, farming is not useful (unless you're pop-rushing). If there are sufficient food resources to fuel growth, then adding an extra farm is often not useful. If you're only growing one or maybe two additional population, there's a reasonable chance farming isn't useful, especially in a commerce city.

The unique thing about the early game is that you tend to have a higher time preference than any other period in the game. You need to get your empire up and running and you need to do it now. That is why chopping is so appealing in the early game. However, in this same period, because the terrain is not well-developed and cottages haven't grown, there is a much smaller short term sacrifice in letting the first or second citizen work a farm; making that 3rd, 4th, and 5th citizen appear much sooner. This sacrifice is felt more acutely, as you have fewer cities, but in the end you often come out ahead because of it.

If you have forests, maybe farms aren't nearly as important to you. You have an easily available source of hammers that are specifically design to quell short-term desires. But, what are you going to do when your starting city has only 1 or 2 forests nearby? Reload, build farms, or wait until well after 2000 BC to really get your empire started? In Civ4, land is power; all things in the game derive directly from the tiles contained within your empire. But, without sufficient population, that land is worthless. Farms, and food in general, allow you to more quickly utilize the land at your disposal.

 

[North2]

malekithe..are you agreeing or disagreeing with me because that's all reiterating what I said.

 

[malekithe]

I suppose some of it is a reiteration of what you pointed out originally. My argument is with your lack of emphasis on farms dedicated to growth. You talk at length, and articulate well, the importance of farming for the purpose of working bonus resources. However, you dismiss, or at least ignore, the idea of farming for the purpose of working cottages (or mines) sooner than you otherwise would.

If you meant to imply that this was beneficial, I suppose you should be aware that after three times over the original post, I still didn't get it. In your example city, for instance, it's quite obvious that, in order to work the gold and horses and have food left over to grow, you're going to need to plop down some farms. But, did you consider the case where you only have the gold, and no horses (or vice versa)? Now you don't need to farm in order to maintain growth, but it may still be beneficial. You talk about how to plan for enough food to reach an equilibirum point between population, food supply, and happiness, but you don't mention the path to that equilibrium point.

So while, yes, I agreee with most of the original post, I don't think it goes far enough in displaying the worth of farms in the early game. If you can bear the short-term loss, farming, solely for the purpose of faster growth, may be the thing to do.

I also took issue with your statement that prouction was worthless and commerce was king in the early game. My last paragraph was mostly meant to address that statement by pointing out that hammers are only worthless in the situation where you have a heavily wooded area (or plan to pop-rush, hence increasing the value of farms).

 

[cabert]

Hammers are anything but worthless. Absent forests, there are only three ways to build settlers, workers, or even military; bonus resources, mines, and pop-rushing. Both mines and pop-rushing require food. If anything, food (behing bonus resources) is king in the early game, not commerce. Food is king specifically because it leads to both more commerce and more hammers. Ignoring the effects of food supply on the early-game is folly.

just to point out a fact : you can build settlers and workers with food alone! no need for hammers or pop rushing every extra food equals a hammer. This making food even more beneficial (although it's easier to have 4 hammers on a mine than 4 food on a farm ).
Of course, for military, you need either hammers or pop rushing...

 

[Mutineer]

Building setlers and workers with food alone is not efficient.

Food building of setlers and workers provide 1-1 conversion foot to hammers.
Whipping size 4 city for 2 population convers 1 food to 2.5 hammers. (If granary present)

 

[cabert]

Building setlers and workers with food alone is not efficient.

Food building of setlers and workers provide 1-1 conversion foot to hammers.
Whipping size 4 city for 2 population convers 1 food to 2.5 hammers. (If granary present)

true enough
i just pointed out that food is a possible way of building those. I didn't say it was a good one
However i use food to build settlers and workers in my GP farm.

 

[North2]

Indeed, I didn't really want to get in detail about farming just for growth. This is because it is pointless due to the use of farms to get more hammers. Comparatively, having a library, university, observatory, granary, etc. up faster makes much better use of farms than by having more cottages up faster. Tested and true.

For a commerce city, you have to build granary, library/forge (forge is optional...sort of. Only if I'm really starving for health), all the science buildings, then health/happiness buildings. It is very close to debatable of the benefits of having those universities faster because an extra cottage or two faster will have the same benefit and those cottages get a head start on growth. The real bottleneck comes from the happiness buildings. The problem with farming for growth is that when you reach your happiness limit, you need to have those happiness buildings to work more tiles. Guess what? My hammer-farmed city will beat your cottage-farmed city by a long shot, because now I have more buildings AND the same amount of cottages, if not more.

 

[InFlux5]

Several people have mentioned the dimishing marginal utility of farms; i.e. going from 1 to 2 food has the most value, 2 to 3 food a little less, and very little value for increasing a square beyond 3. Can someone explain why this is?

 

[malekithe]

Several people have mentioned the dimishing marginal utility of farms; i.e. going from 1 to 2 food has the most value, 2 to 3 food a little less, and very little value for increasing a square beyond 3. Can someone explain why this is?

It stems from the diminshing effect on growth rate. Going from 1 to 2 doubles your growth rate. From 2 to 3 Increases it by 50%. From 3 to 4 increases it by 33%. Increasing surplus food from 1 to 2, is about the same as increasing from 2 to 4. Both have the same marginal effect on population growth.

 

[Beamup]

It's pretty simple. Going from 1 to 2 food cuts the time needed for the next growth in half. Going from 2 to 3 cuts it by a third, 3 to 4 by a quarter, and so on.

More generally, and more mathematically, the turns required to accumulate a total of T starting with a surplus of S will be T/S. If you add a farm, that drops to T/(S+1). That's a difference of T/S(S+1) turns. So the advantage you gain decreases approximately by the square of the surplus you already have - double the current surplus, and another farm will give you about a quarter the benefit.

 

[Vox Dei]

I think this is the kind of thing you had in mind NORTH2; the rest of the tiles can be cottaged.

 

[Alraun]

To me, pop rushing is of very limited use. I've experimented quite a bit with it. My conclusion is that I need at least 2 food resources in one city to use it as the main source of hammers.

Then you need to experiment with it more, cause you're severely underestimating it.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Hm, this sounds very overcomplicated. In early game, we are indeed working towards happiness size. Once we reach it, we will have to start reallocation. Until then, maximum growth is usually adviseable.

When you reach maximum size, move farmers to plain-cots to cut food surplus to 0. This is a commerce city.

When you reach maximum size, move farmers to plain-mines to cut food surplus to 0. This is a production city.

When you reach maximum size, move farmers to specialists. GPFarm.

Or, build a worker/settler and delay the growth. Unhappy citizens cost 2HammersPT when building worker/settler.


Another good point is: when you start hitting happiness limit - usually very early - focus everything you do on accumulating more happiness. Plan for it even earlier if you want to be good. Religion (1-2 Happiness, depending on temple), Heriditary rule and resources are the key. Look at what resources you have - if they are gold, silver and gems, get forges! If they are sugar, furs, silk and ivory, get markets!

 

[Andraeianus I]

Couldn't one simply say that in the early game your economy is essentially food-based, in the middle game production-based and in the late game commerce-based?

Grow, build, buy.

 

[macrobot]

I have found myself building farms in locations that I expect to build watermills. THis serve the purpose fo giving me flexibility in my economy as well as not leaving a choice square unimproved fro 1000 years. With a philosophical leader this is especially useful because you can support extra specialists earlier. THere is no overall loss because the alternative was to let that farm sit until I get machinery which can be a ways away.