Why do I want farms?

[MyOtherName]

Farms increase your food, letting you grow your city. However:

• The larger the city, the more expensive it is to grow another point
• Growing a larger city requires spending resources to increase housing
• Growing a larger city consumes amenities, of which you have a finite quantity
• Often, growing another population point gives you an extra citizen which... could work more food

If a city has nice tiles to work, growth is great -- place the farms it needs to get to the size where it can work all of its nice tiles (although note that you usually want to start working the nice tiles rather than farms as you near your optimum size).

However, I feel like the usual case is that growing cities consumes a lot of resources for little to no benefit. It's better to instead divert your citizens to cog producing tiles (or culture/science/faith yields, if available!) rather than food. Use those cogs to develop your infrastructure, or expand, or conquer your neighbor.

What, if anything, am I missing?

 

[Roxlimn]

You don't always want or need farms. It's one way to grow a population to a decent size (about 10-16). There are other ways.

 

[manu-fan]

Umm don't farms give +.5 housing? Also, eureka for 6 farms.

 

[Sogno di Volare]

I guess if your cities are growing / you have enough housing without farms... awesome.

 

[chazzycat]

you need to grow to certain thresholds to get new districts, so there's that.

in general I do agree growth is far less important than civ5. especially if you are going to be housing/amenity capped

 

[toptech]

Food focus until you reach housing cap or amenities -1, then stagnant growth and work strongest non food tiles available

 

[MyOtherName]

Food focus until you reach housing cap or amenities -1, then stagnant growth and work strongest non food tiles available

The thing is, it's not clear I even want that much. Once I'm past 4 cities, each amenity this city consumes is an amenity some other city doesn't get. At first glance, it sounds much better to let the small city grow, not the big one.

I suppose your advice holds if I don't do anything to increase housing, since 2 pop and 4 pop both seems to be natural points to stagnate at.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think it depends on what you think the growth is for. If you think that you should put all your pop in one city because multipliers - well, this Civ doesn't have that so no. A new city can make new Districts, which drive growth and output, so it's not bad to just keep plunking them down if you have the Amenities. The main problem is that that new city is going to suck for a very long time because it's not working enough tiles to have enough native production to make anything. It's one thing if it's within the radius of your Factories. That's something else. But outside? It's going to suck a lot of trade Routes that could be going into direct outputs.

So what would you like a city to have anyway?

Commercial Hub
Harbor
Encampment
Industrial Zone

possibly Campus, Holy Site, Theater, Aerodome

So about 19-20 pop is your breakpoint. Sub Spaceport or whatever. 8 Districts of 12 is enough for any city, so you want it to grow to about 20 and then nix the food for good.

 

[civplay]

I've really been exclusively using farms for housing supply pre urbanization.

 

[Jarms48]

If you have the spare production available spamming workers to build farms can grow your city very quickly, every 2 farms can also support an additional population. I've managed to get cities to 20 population pre-urbanization.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I pretty much agree with OP. Building a bunch of farms and trying to grow very tall seems unnecessary. Work production tiles like mines and resources instead. You can use internal trade routes or various other game mechanisms to get your food if you want to grow tall, but really, growing tall isn't that needed.

The typical Civ growth scale really encourages more, smaller cities, as does the limit of one type of district per city. A wide empire will be able to build more of the really good districts.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

For some reason no one itt has mentioned yet that population still results in Science. If you want to play optimally you should always keep growing as much as your amenities let you.

Though I do agree that food is less of a priority, hammers give the best value out of all yields by far in my opinion.

I pretty much agree with OP. Building a bunch of farms and trying to grow very tall seems unnecessary. Work production tiles like mines and resources instead. You can use internal trade routes or various other game mechanisms to get your food if you want to grow tall, but really, growing tall isn't that needed.

The typical Civ growth scale really encourages more, smaller cities, as does the limit of one type of district per city. A wide empire will be able to build more of the really good districts.

Tall and Wide are not mutually exclusive. The ideal option would be a tall and wide empire. In my recent Immortal game I managed to get a 12 city empire where every city had 14+ population upon finishing the game, with the capital at 22. (~T165 on Quick).

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Tall and Wide are not mutually exclusive. The ideal option would be a tall and wide empire. In my recent Immortal game I managed to get a 12 city empire where every city had 14+ population upon finishing the game, with the capital at 22. (~T165 on Quick).

Oh yeah, that's definitely true. The Amenities limit is currently soft enough that you can get pretty crazy. But having a lot of cities up and running and with decent production in the first place is the important thing. Grow them later if you want.

 

[Jarms48]

For some reason no one it has mentioned yet that population still results in Science. If you want to play optimally you should always keep growing as much as your amenities let you.

I had a game where all I did was spam settlers in the capital; had the +50% production policy, and spam builders in all my other cities; with +30% production policy. I was actually bouncing between 1st and 2nd in science without any campus districts. I only built buildings and districts by chopping down trees and harvesting stone, whilst my builders rapidly improved every tile.

 

[ddd123]

• The larger the city, the more expensive it is to grow another point
• Growing a larger city requires spending resources to increase housing
• Growing a larger city consumes amenities, of which you have a finite quantity
• Often, growing another population point gives you an extra citizen which... could work more food

If a city has nice tiles to work, growth is great -- place the farms it needs to get to the size where it can work all of its nice tiles (although note that you usually want to start working the nice tiles rather than farms as you near your optimum size).

However, I feel like the usual case is that growing cities consumes a lot of resources for little to no benefit. It's better to instead divert your citizens to cog producing tiles (or culture/science/faith yields, if available!) rather than food. Use those cogs to develop your infrastructure, or expand, or conquer your neighbor.

What, if anything, am I missing?

A lot of things...in order:

1) this is pure nonsense, its like saying "when you win, victory conditions are not balanced" well... yeah... once your city has reached the top its hard to go further, who cares?
2) in 80% of the game you dont really care about housing, you get the passive bonuses, also the good thing in civ6 is more buildings are less specialized unlke civ where you built a military building and did only that, now you have everything multipurpose so you get housing from harbor for example etc et
3) yeah but again point 1) soooo ? The only point of amenities is pumping cities...once they allowed that, they "won"
4) no... at some point you focus all extra into production, gold, whatever you want

5) no because unless you have super powerful tiles population in civ6 is super op since it gives everything and at a too much higher rate (both for research and culture) AND on top of that you get more citizen you can pick more tiles, easy math.... population x with your tile setup gives less than population x+1 even if that +1 is a food only tile (but it isnt necessary)

 

[MyOtherName]

1) this is pure nonsense, its like saying "when you win, victory conditions are not balanced" well... yeah... once your city has reached the top its hard to go further, who cares?

I can't make sense of the analogy.

But why would I bother reaching "the top"? It's expensive and unrewarding.

2) in 80% of the game you dont really care about housing, you get the passive bonuses, also the good thing in civ6 is more buildings are less specialized unlke civ where you built a military building and did only that, now you have everything multipurpose so you get housing from harbor for example etc et

I have no trouble reaching the housing cap *shrug*.

3) yeah but again point 1) soooo ? The only point of amenities is pumping cities...once they allowed that, they "won"

And why would I spend extra effort to grow large cities whose growth is expensive and unrewarding when I could instead pump smaller cities which have no trouble growing on their own without much effort?

4) no... at some point you focus all extra into production, gold, whatever you want

Unfortunately, that swath of flat farmed grassland doesn't offer production, gold, or whatever I want.

5) no because unless you have super powerful tiles population in civ6 is super op since it gives everything and at a too much higher rate (both for research and culture) AND on top of that you get more citizen you can pick more tiles, easy math.... population x with your tile setup gives less than population x+1 even if that +1 is a food only tile (but it isnt necessary)

Great. I'll get my overpowered population points at a cheap rate in cities where I don't even have to spend the effort to get growth.

 

[ddd123]

Again cause growing is not the end, growing is the medium to reach to end which is a big city, having your cities growing means they are incomplete, not functionaly which is about the same for every living being, its like saying "oh cool look watch that apple how cool it is that it is growing, i stop giving the plant water so it will grow forever!!!" no, an apple growing is an incomplete apple like your cities in civ6, a ripe apple is an apple that STOP GROWING but has reached its end, like cities in civ6, who cares if your ripe apple cant grow anymore, the goal was reaching that point, not keeping the apple growing forever.

So the analogy is the same, you complain that you cant develop anymore your means not understanding that they are just means to and end which what all the game is about.

 

[MyOtherName]

So the analogy is the same, you complain that you cant develop anymore your means not understanding that they are just means to and end which what all the game is about.

My end is not big cities, my end is victory. This thread was not intended to be relevant to people playing builder for its own sake.

 

[Camste]

The farm triangle usually can free up other citizens working lesser food tiles. You can then put them into districts or better tiles. Especially a bit later when you get the double bonus for adjacent farms. Just because you are producing more food doesn't mean you have to grow quickly, it just means you can assign citizens elsewhere. I certainly don't prioritize farms early, but they are definitely useful.

 

[aimlessgun]

The farm triangle usually can free up other citizens working lesser food tiles. You can then put them into districts or better tiles. Especially a bit later when you get the double bonus for adjacent farms. Just because you are producing more food doesn't mean you have to grow quickly, it just means you can assign citizens elsewhere. I certainly don't prioritize farms early, but they are definitely useful.

Yeah farms are useful even when you're not working all of them. They give housing and improve other farm tiles.

I definitely made too many farms in my first playthrough though. Got too carried away with the adjacency bonuses and next thing you know you have a rice tile with 10 food.