Size of your farms?

[vorlon_mi]

One advantage of getting a farm above size 6, especially if running republic is the increased unit support, sometimes for stategic reason at the time because of trade options etc you may not be at war, so aqueducts can be a neat solution, particularly after replaceable parts, the answer to aqueducts or not is often the same answer to alot of these things, it depends on your goals and stratergy

Good point; just by increasing the size from 6 to 7, the unit support for that city goes up from 1 to 3. Having multiple farms like that could greatly affect the gold per turn I'm spending to maintain my military.

If I pack the farm cities together, using CxC spacing as shown in Spoonwood's screen shots, then it will be difficult to get very many towns to grow into cities. It will depend on the terrain (grassland vs. plains) and the presence of food specials.

 

[Raliuven]

Good point; just by increasing the size from 6 to 7, the unit support for that city goes up from 1 to 3. Having multiple farms like that could greatly affect the gold per turn I'm spending to maintain my military.

If I pack the farm cities together, using CxC spacing as shown in Spoonwood's screen shots, then it will be difficult to get very many towns to grow into cities. It will depend on the terrain (grassland vs. plains) and the presence of food specials.

Only problem with this reasoning is that if I plant a new city I immediately get one additional support for the city itself. Then I turn the citizen into a taxman and I get two gold to support the other unit. Of course I would rather grow the city so that I have three taxmen given me +6gpt (or kicking out the next settler). And if the city is turned to wealth I get +1gpt on top of that (and +1gpt for wealth from the city that spawn the settler rather than making the duct).

Your size 7 city can turn additional citizens to taxmen too, but at a much slower growth rate. The +1gpt for the duct washes out the +1gpt for wealth. Right there the two cities are up +2gpt over your larger city and they are growing twice as fast (but also accepting that the size 7 city may be immediately supporting more taxman that the two smaller cities combined). In this case, the faster growth is what will settle the race in the end. Any benefit of the size 7 city will be enjoyed for the first 10 turns and then no more (if there even is a benefit).

This assumes, however, that there is space available that you want to expand into (and have the means to do so).

 

[vorlon_mi]

Raliuven, that's an angle I hadn't considered. My reasoning was: I want to plant a bunch of towns, with the plan to grow them (over some N turns) to size 6 and turn some fraction of them (1, 2, 3 citizens) into scientists, to get additional beakers. Once they're full grown, I set them to produce wealth. With all the surrounding terrain irrigated and railed, this works pretty well. A secondary benefit is that the city supports one unit, and with +1 gpt from wealth, effectively supports a second unit. [Edit: I never really counted the turns it took to get them full grown. The growth rate of my farms was not as important as just getting a lot of them planted.]

Now, considering the cost/benefits of building a 'duct... If I build no other improvements in the city, the +1 gpt from wealth will pay for the duct. I may or may not be able to get more scientists from the size 7 or 8 city, depending on the food nearby. If the city is pretty corrupt, I may not get many gpt or bpt from the non-specialists. The secondary benefit is saving 2 more gpt, from the additional unit support under Republic.

I never gave much thought to running taxmen instead of scientists specialists. Obviously, getting gpt from specialists in the farms will reimburse me for maint costs for units or improvements in other cities, and I can run the science slider higher. Or use the additional gpt to push the happiness slider higher, to compensate for a scarcity of lux resources. I've always been fixated on the uncorrupted beakers that scientists provide, as the most important means for accelerating my spaceship launch date. Have to think about this some more ...