[GS] Why I don’t build Farms [Are Farms and Food too Local?]

[lotrmith]

I've long wished that you could build farms — but only farms, not districts or wonders — outside of the three-tile radius and still reap the benefits from them.

But you do? Farms in 4th ring buff adjacent farms in 3rd ring, and farms in 4th and 5th rings provide housing.

 

[acluewithout]

The Farm adjacency thing keeps coming up in this thread.

Just to be clear - yes, the Farm Feudalism Adjacency thing is awesome. Indeed, obliquely referenced this in the OP when I mentioned Farms have cools stuff with Adjacencies.

Sharing Farms between Cities to leverage the adjacency is Super cool (even works with Farms owned by other Civs), and you can often do cool stuff like have quite a few Farms, but only needing to work a few Farm tiles because the adjacencies create some ridiculous Food tiles, particularly if you can also leverage Bonus Resources, Volcanos and or Flooding, even more so because you don’t need to work Farms for their housing. And Farm tiles are very handy to flip around between Cities to micro growth.

Watermills are also Super cool if you have the bonus resources. You can really end up with stonking food and growth.

And, if you get Earth Goddess (Sorry, I called it Divine Goddess or something earlier), then you can end up with Farms that generate Faith and this crazy loop of faith and food, growth, more faith and food.

But everything remains basically local. And unless you have Earth Goddess, lots of Farms and lots of Food is pretty useless unless you have something else for you Population to do or your slotting Pingala.

 

[The googles do nothing]

But more to the point, how does the abstract nature of mines correlates to not wanting to build farms? If you have a mine on anything but grasslands, your mining pops will be starving as they need two food.

Few farms because I feel i'm getting much more benefit from Mines then farms because Civ has abstracted away one of the big downsides of mines. Include having mines run out would make the cost-benefit of mines feel to me similar to farms.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I also tend to not make many farms, unless there's a lot of farm bonus luxuries around.

Honestly, I think a big problem is I don't want to be making builders all game. I think making improvements on tiles without a resource should only take half a charge.

Ironically some of the cities I end up with the most farms in tend to be really hills ones that have basically zero flat tiles, so they have maybe 4 pop by the time I unlock hill farms, by which point a small triangle of hill farms can grow the city pretty quickly.

 

[Sostratus]

Ironically some of the cities I end up with the most farms in tend to be really hills ones that have basically zero flat tiles, so they have maybe 4 pop by the time I unlock hill farms, by which point a small triangle of hill farms can grow the city pretty quickly.

Perhaps the change that hills no longer reduce food on the tile is part of the culprit. We can get a lot of food from hills, especially grassy ones. So the pressure to generate more food isn’t as strong when miners can get you partway there.

 

[AriochIV]

It does seem a bit sad that I can have a massive food surplus in one city while a neighbouring city can literally be starving to death. Maybe a city project to donate food to a communal foodbank would be an idea.

Food transfer between cities is partially modeled with internal trade routes.

 

[acluewithout]

Food transfer between cities is partially modeled with internal trade routes.

Except not really.

High Production Cities in principle provide more Hammers for Internal Trade Routes. It's a bit indirect, but if City A has high production, it can build Harbours, Commercial Hubs, Encampments and Industrial Zones which in turn provide Hammers for Internal Trade Routes.

High Food Cities - as in Cities with lots of flat land and farms - provide.... not much. To provide Food, they'd need to build Campuses, Theatre Squares, Holy Sites and Entertainment Complexes. But how are they going to do that when by definition they have low production and so struggle to build districts generally. Actually, you're more likely to get food from High Production Cities, because they're more likely to have Districts that provide Food.

I guess where High Food / High Pop Cities would sort of work is where they have just lots of Districts, and so provide more yields because more districts. But again you come back to the problem of High Food often means low Production. Yes, they have the Population for lots of Districts. But they lack the resources to build the flipping things.

Perhaps the change that hills no longer reduce food on the tile is part of the culprit.

I didn't realise previous versions of Civ had Mines reduce Food. How did that play like? Would something like that work for Civ 6?

 

[Sostratus]

I didn't realise previous versions of Civ had Mines reduce Food. How did that play like? Would something like that work for Civ 6?

In Civ4, a hill tile gave +1 production but -1 food. This made grass hills 1/1 and plains hills 0/2; desert, tundra and snow hills were 1 production.
In civ5, all hills anywhere gave 2 production and no food.
In both cases this really changed things up since working a mine meant a huge sacrifice to growth, and you looked for a mix of flat and hill to settle. All hills = no farms = few pops = can’t work all the mines.

in Civ6 hills just slap +1 prod into the tile and we can build farms on them eventually even without freshwater. And farms can give more than +2 food, also important. AND we have internal trade routes galore.

I don’t mind the current hills but it feels wrong to me that hills can natively give +3 yield when flat land only gives 2. Its like there is no trade off- hills are just better.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Personal note: last day of overnights (Yeah!) so hopefully my posts will return to a better level of coherency...

My brain is more fixated on solving the effectiveness of farms than some of the other tangential topics this thread addresses (which, don't get me wrong, definitely justify attention.) So a few thoughts:

1.) To me, it seems the underlying issue is the value of the food yield compared to that of the other various yields.
1a.) Perhaps growth rate can be determined by something other than excess local food. I don't know, I'm no historian or economist, but it seems the baby-boomer generation seems to indicate that you could implement a correlation between the economy and population growth? Or early in the game, when food is sparse, food determines growth but later, when food is abundant, the economy determines city growth? Couple this with excess food being converted into something else that's more effective, perhaps at first with very low efficiency but later (ahem... corporations) spiking to very high yields? This could lead to very important decisions if the "remove improvement" option is removed...
1b.) Perhaps the value of food is so low is because of how available food is in this game. Previous iterations of the game had a reduction in the food output of a tile that was more-or-less intended to be mined (Can't recall if it was that a hill reduces the food output by 1 or if the mine reduced the food output by 1.) Re-instate this or double-down on it (hill=-1F and mine=-1F), remove food output from internal trade routes entirely - always thought, of the food-generating districts, that campuses should increase science, theaters should increase culture (and locally to sender), holy sites should increase faith, and entertainment should increase amenities. While amenities are more valuable than the other yields, entertainment districts are less common due to necessities and AoE rules dictating placement for coverage rather than total quantity, This would de-value external trade routes, so we'd have to compensate by re-instating a baseline mega-bonus to gold from external TRs (and reducing the availability of gold, one of those tangential notions of this thread that deserves further attention) would help, altogether with adding some other big food disadvantage - off the top of my head something like making the food requirement for each population point 3 instead of 2 (which needs further attention as that would KILL the early game,)

2.) SMAC and the solar converter - one of the greatest (best?) entries to this franchise that never included the word "civilization" was Alpha Centauri, which added a unique and interesting option that never seemed to re-surface: a square (tile) that was improved could add another sub-improvement (possibly for the cost of 2 charges in this game) that added another bonus. Bring this back, but make it exclusive to tiles that are farmed (again, this would add to the levity if the "remove improvement" option was removed, and maybe make it so that hills could be farmed without an advanced tech requirement- after all, early game hammers are rare and obscenely important whereas early food production is not as limited,)Some of the farmed-tile sub-improvements provide an extra hammer, some of them provide a couple gold, etc. While the food adjacency of the original farm remains the same, adjacency of the sub-improvement adds nearly unlimited potential..

3,) population bonuses -simple. Hammers are, by far, the most important resource in the game. And the current state of the game has population size and potential being relatively inconsequential to hammer-potential of a city. But if the basic science and culture output of a city was increased back to it's original glory (1 per pop point instead of 0.7) and added a nominal production bonus of 0.5 hammers per pop point (more people can make more stuff, right?) then the potential total output of any city needs to decide between the great yields of going BIG (a whole lot more of everthing at the cost of needing more amenities and housing) or staying small and efficient (less total yields, but

 

[ShakaKhan]

less civilization wide support neeeded,

 

[kaspergm]

Food transfer between cities is partially modeled with internal trade routes.

This is one of my pet peeves with Civ5 and Civ6: I hate how the internal "trade" system has zero to do with yields at origin, but literally creates food and production out of nothing. I understand and even acknowledge that are more detailed system could easily end up in a micromanagement nightmare, but I do feel it would be much more rewarding if the food/production system was disconnected from the trade system or at least not as hardly limited as it currently is, and instead was actually about transferring resources from one city to another.

If they wanted less micromanagement, they could make sort of an hybrid between the current system and a fully customizable system by making it so that traders can transfer either food or production (like in Civ5), and the yield will be 1 food or 1 production for each appropriate tile improvement at source (i.e. 1 food for each farm, plantation, fishing boat, etc., and 1 production for each mine, quarry and lumbermill), but never so much that source city goes into starvation. The yield numbers could go up with the same techs that increase improvement yields. And of course railroads should give a big yield bonus.

 

[acluewithout]

--snip--

Thanks for that. I guess based on your description, I wouldn't really want to go back to -1 Food for Mines. Just seems a bit blunt. But completely agree bare Hills are just way too overpowered. I don't think anything major is needed, but there should be maybe be some tweak.

... Perhaps growth rate can be determined by something other than excess local food. I don't know, I'm no historian or economist, but it seems the baby-boomer generation seems to indicate that you could implement a correlation between the economy and population growth?

I think Happiness is meant to get at this a little. If your Empire is producing lots of Amenities, then your Citizens are Happy, and if your Citizens are Happy, they get more Growth.

The rub is that Happiness is not hard to achieve and ultimately doesn't do that much, and on top of that High Pop isn't so valuable. Again, I think the mechanics are all basically okay, but some rebalancing is needed.

This is one of my pet peeves with Civ5 and Civ6: I hate how the internal "trade" system has zero to do with yields at origin, but literally creates food and production out of nothing. I understand and even acknowledge that are more detailed system could easily end up in a micromanagement nightmare, but I do feel it would be much more rewarding if the food/production system was disconnected from the trade system or at least not as hardly limited as it currently is, and instead was actually about transferring resources from one city to another.

If they wanted less micromanagement, they could make sort of an hybrid between the current system and a fully customizable system by making it so that traders can transfer either food or production (like in Civ5), and the yield will be 1 food or 1 production for each appropriate tile improvement at source (i.e. 1 food for each farm, plantation, fishing boat, etc., and 1 production for each mine, quarry and lumbermill), but never so much that source city goes into starvation. The yield numbers could go up with the same techs that increase improvement yields. And of course railroads should give a big yield bonus.

I'm sort of in the middle of this. I prefer the current approach of Trade Routes creating yields from "nothing". First, because I think it captures a bit of the idea of trade genuinely creating something from nothing by increasing demand and therefore increasing supply. But, second, I think this is just easier to implement and play with compared to Trade Routes debiting yields from one City and adding them to another.

But I also think linking yields to Districts is a bit problematic. Maybe some yields should be, but I think it all needs a good hard look. Certainly I don't think linking Food yields to Districts makes any sense.

 

[SharTeel]

I think the problems lies with tile yields. In civ5 you needed farms to work those mines. Now? A grassland hill produces enough food for the citizen working it. You don't really NEED tiles that produce excess food unless you want to use specialist...oh wait, they're bad (I think I only use them as a way of birth control...)

 

[kaspergm]

I think the problems lies with tile yields. In civ5 you needed farms to work those mines. Now? A grassland hill produces enough food for the citizen working it. You don't really NEED tiles that produce excess food unless you want to use specialist...oh wait, they're bad (I think I only use them as a way of birth control...)

Good point, come to think of it, this may be why I also like using farms, I play with a mod that makes hills and features work same as Civ5, i.e. a hill will be +1 production but -1 food. So no self-supporting grassland hills.

 

[tedhebert]

Very interesting thread once again CivFans ;-)

to respond to the OP directly, I almost never build farms. If I do, it's becaus it's a wheat/Rice tile, and will sometimes then try and make it a triangle farm for the later yields, if the maps permits it.

the problem, as many have mentioned, is the fact that hammers (and so, mines) are so much more important in this version of civ than food. I have NEVER ever built a farm on a hill (Inca Excluded), because I almost always prioritize production over most everything else

I don't know the right answer to fix this fact, there are a lot of interesting thoughts on this in here, but it seems clear that for balance, something should be done to tip the balance a little more in the food direction

 

[Bangau]

something else for you Population

Maybe someone said it before, but haven't seen it being mentioned: population gives yields of its own (science and culture), so there's always that benefit. If I'm trying to be efficient, I only build farms if there seems to be a direct benefit (getting to pop 10, or getting that extra district e.g.). I will even try for the feudalism boost if I haven't got a lot of other tiles to boost and have the builders to 'spare'. If I'm playing more of a leisure game I'll spam those farms all around. More pop is more districts, I love getting those big cities and 8 districts per city... Especially with civs like the Inca, Japan and Wilhelmina.

 

[UWHabs]

Haven't read the whole thread so maybe this was brought up before, but the flaw is that high pop doesn't really matter. There's very little gain in taking a city from 10 pop to 20 pop, and due to the exponential nature of the growth formula, it costs you a ton to do that.

I mean, once you get to like a size 14 or 15 city, you can be getting like +20 food per turn and it still takes a long time to grow to the next pop level. And what do you get? like 1/2 a science point and 1/2 a culture (or so), and a new citizen that you work either another farm, or maybe he gets thrown into a campus for +2 science. But half the time, it costs you an amenity, which if it drops you from +1 to 0, suddenly you lose that 5% boost to all yields. So now while your new citizen himself gives you 3 points of yield, that 5% lost is probably costing you 1 science, 1 culture, 1 faith, a little production.

I mean, I still like building my cities big, because they're fun. And there are levels where it helps you - if you have a bunch of hills and mines around, and luxuries coming out the wazoo, then you can make high population cities work. So they're not completely useless. But I really do think that once neighbourhoods come online around urbanization, that's a golden time for the game to change and find a way to let you benefit from larger cities. Let me start building a second copy of each district around my new neighbourhoods, or give me some serious yields for citizens working on district tiles, or ways to grow my cities larger, and then suddenly those farm belts will be a lot more appealing to work to feed these new citizens.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Maybe someone said it before, but haven't seen it being mentioned: population gives yields of its own (science and culture), so there's always that benefit.

No one really brought it up in this thread because I think the forum has pretty much reached consensus that this is a nominal and ineffective method of generating these yields. While any little boost is nice and can make the difference between keeping your head above water or not, the 0.7 (unless it changed in some patch or update I don't have) addition to beakers and culture you get per pop point is pretty insignificant, almost to the point where you can disregard it, compared to the addition of a new city and creating yet another campus or theater square district, which provides much more solid numbers from two different sources, adjacency and it's buildings, both of which can be doubled further through cards, and further bonuses added (and doubled) from city-state 3/6 emvoy level bonuses.Even some of the situational and non-traditional methods of generating these yields, such as for culture suzereinity of Antanabanana, Nan Midol, or Kumasi produce quantities of the yield that just dwarf 0.7 per pop point.

But now that you got my brain thinking in that direction, it gave me an idea for an interesting new civ that could come out in a DLC. To avoid straying way off topic, I'll start a new thread. Don't know if I'll finish it tonight.

 

[Sostratus]

the 0.7 (unless it changed in some patch or update I don't have)

I believe in one of the expansions it was changed to be 0.5 tech and culture per pop instead of 0.7 tech and 0.5 culture.
But regardless, just building a meagre +2 campus and a library is worth eight pops of science. A university is another eight. Fulfilling half of rationalism is worth 6 more. These are insane numbers.
Compared to a yield like production, where one pop can work a mine or lumber mill for 3-4, but an IZ at +8 (which is not difficult to achieve but much more effort than a +2 campus) is only worth 2 pops. The workshop and (powered) factory are only another 2, and there's no rationalism equivalent.
This makes science via any source but pops a huge bargain- one farm might provide food for 2 pops, but they also need 2 housing and an amenity, all so you can squeeze out 1 science and culture.

 

[steveg700]

I believe in one of the expansions it was changed to be 0.5 tech and culture per pop instead of 0.7 tech and 0.5 culture.
But regardless, just building a meagre +2 campus and a library is worth eight pops of science. A university is another eight. Fulfilling half of rationalism is worth 6 more. These are insane numbers.
Compared to a yield like production, where one pop can work a mine or lumber mill for 3-4, but an IZ at +8 (which is not difficult to achieve but much more effort than a +2 campus) is only worth 2 pops. The workshop and (powered) factory are only another 2, and there's no rationalism equivalent.
This makes science via any source but pops a huge bargain- one farm might provide food for 2 pops, but they also need 2 housing and an amenity, all so you can squeeze out 1 science and culture.

Workshop got bumped to +3, factoriy is +6 with power.