How many farm levels should I build?

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

I read in froggy's guide that building 2 farm levels is enough, because more would lead to a population boost, which automatically means more squalor, but then, why are other farm levels included in the game? BTW, how many farm levels are at all? I ussually build farms immiadiately after I built roads. So what about those farms?

[frogbeastegg]

The farm section has been revised since the original release. The guide should agree with itself throughout the text but updating is fiddly and it's terrifyingly easy to accidentally overlook a single sentence somewhere and end up contradicting yourself. I'll check the guide throguh again as soon as I can to check I'm not contradicting myself.

Basically to get the best effects with population growth and squalor you need to get an 8% population growth figure via a combination of the cities natural growth, farms, and other population growth boosting buildings (markets, health buildings, some temples etc). You don't want to build so many farms you end up with more than this 8%, but you do want enough to combine with the other buildings.

Why 8%? Because at 24,000 people (i.e. the optimal population for a city) squalor inflicts an -8% growth penalty, so it will cancel out your growth and leave your population stationary at 24,000.


http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/pop%20growth.jpg
Note: It is the clumsily circled figure in this screenshot you want to reach exactly 8%, not the number given on the main city information screen, and not the number added up at the end.

Hmm, it took me about a page to cover that in the guide; I get the feeling I've forgotten to include something here ...

[KiOwA]

Personally I never build more than the 1st level of farm upgrades, if I do build them at all.

[Prodigal]

Lets not forget the third option. Build them all, then as soon as you start making a loss on the city & the pleb's become even more revolting than they are naturally, wipe them all out, & watch the cash flow once more. Its not pretty but its effective. :bow:

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Thanks for a clear advice, froggy :bow: , you're a proffesional of this game ~D

[econ21]

8% seems rather a lot from my experience of playing the game - I can only remember Carthage and maybe Patavium effortlessly hitting that. I suspect the 8% benchmark would justify building many levels of farms in most places.

[frogbeastegg]

The 8% is taken from the results of one of the research threads ... the one on squalor, I think. Yes, some cities will hit it effortlessly (the ones on the Nile, for example) and others will really struggle.

Let's see ... if I recall correctly:
1 point of health = +0.5% pop growth
Each level of market = +0.5% pop growth
Each level of farm = +1% pop growth
Each level of the pop boosting temples = +0.5%
It's something like that; it's been a while since I actually played the game, aside from a brief go with the realism mod.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will appear and explain soon ...

[Owen]

I like the way you think on this FBE, but I really don't like the specifics. Unless the city has a really high distance to capital penalty, you should aim for a total of 8.5% or 9% growth before squalor effects. With 8% total, actual growth rates decrease to zero as you approach 24000, and so it takes a very long time to reach the Imperial Palace and the improvements associated with it. Remember that 8.5% gives you double the actual growth rate as you start to approach 24000. I consider that the effects of 5% to 10% decrease in happiness from squalor years down the line are worth putting up with in return for gaining both the Marian reforms and a suite of buildings much earlier, along with increased agricultural income, fewer governors getting the "poor farmer" vice and frequently an earlier reduction in the culture penalty to happiness along the way.

To gain 8.5% or 9% total, I often build to level 3 farms, depending on local production and grain imports, but not until I have built highways, shipwrights, temples, academies, arenas, armourers and at least one military recruitment building, be it a barracks, stables or practice range.

Of course, this advice isn't really applicable to factions who don't have five levels of governor building. ~:)

[frogbeastegg]

I can't take credit for the thinking; I'm repeating other people's research. It's er :blushes: it's all maths to me, and I'm dyslexic. I don't play the game by numbers; going for 8% pop growth is the closest I get to playing to numbers. Going to an extra 0.5% pop growth at the cost of -10% happiness is something I never think about. I play by feel; I also don't really care about losing or gaining a few turns here and there.

[Owen]

I can't take credit for the thinking; I'm repeating other people's research. It's er :blushes: it's all maths to me, and I'm dyslexic. I don't play the game by numbers; going for 8% pop growth is the closest I get to playing to numbers. Going to an extra 0.5% pop growth at the cost of -10% happiness is something I never think about. I play by feel; I also don't really care about losing or gaining a few turns here and there.
Don't worry, I do the same thing, just going by feel means a very quick approximation with the numbers. I mean, I haven't yet tried to work out the exact net present value in denarii of building level three farms in a range of different provinces, though I suppose I might if I ever start to think my life is getting too interesting. ~:)

Hmm. Maybe I'll find that thread and start an argument. Is it somewhere in the Ludus Magna?

[frogbeastegg]

I can't find the thread now, I just spent a few minutes hunting for it. I thought it was in the squalor investigation thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37586) but I can't spot it at a skim through. I can't see any other likely topics just now. It was definitely in one of the squalor threads, but that has been quite a popular subject. This was ... 3 weeks ago, probably more. If the org still had the old, good search engine I might be able to find it but this google one is not helpful.

therother will probably know; I think it was one of his threads.

[Lonewarrior]

I personally build them all, as I had bad experiences with not building all levels of farm in MTW, well It's just better for me to build them all in RTW.

[Owen]

I can't find the thread now, I just spent a few minutes hunting for it. I thought it was in the squalor investigation thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37586) but I can't spot it at a skim through. I can't see any other likely topics just now. It was definitely in one of the squalor threads, but that has been quite a popular subject. This was ... 3 weeks ago, probably more. If the org still had the old, good search engine I might be able to find it but this google one is not helpful.

therother will probably know; I think it was one of his threads.
That's the thread, it's near the bottom of page one. Thanks.

[therother]

Okay, the 8% growth level is the minimum to get to 24,000 by natural means. There are a number of tricks one can do to bump up population artificially, but we won't deal with them here.

If you check the table in the first post of thread frogbeastegg mentions, you will see that squalor will only rise to 8% -- with a large city -- at 24,000 men. This means that at 23,999 you will have 0.5% growth or 120 new men for the next turn. However, the turn after that growth will be zero. So in the case of our 23,999, we should have 24,119 the next turn and, with no outside factors, there it should stay.

There are, of course, various things that will perturb this equilibrium, such as recruiting/disbanding units, or enslaving other cities, but the population should always return to the 24,000 - 25,500 range, assuming you now have a Huge City. It would be 24,000 - 24,750 with a Large City.

I would make a number of points on this:

Bigger cities make more money from trade & taxes, so try to make them as large as is manageable.
Try to put your capital in the middle of your biggest/most profitable cities. This is important for both public order and corruption. Ignore the Income measurement in the game, and look in the settlement details when making this determination.
To minimise the time to reach 24,000, you should increase growth rate using demolish-able buildings. A good example is the fertility temples. Once you reach 24,000, you demolish them and replace them with another temple type.
You only need reach 24,000 for the briefest time (even a part of one turn) to put the next level government building in your queue. Once its there, your population could collapse to 400 and it wouldn't make any difference.
Lastly, but certainly not least, Jerome has said that they are tinkering with squalor for the new patch, details of which should be released shortly. Or so we are led to believe!


Hope this clarifies matters for you.

PS In verifying this, I came across an interesting aberration - grain imports didn't seem to work as advertised i.e. they didn't add to growth. Can anyone confirm this, or was this perhaps just a one off bug?

BTW, it's one pound for a five-minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of ten. ~D

[m4rt14n]

Grain imports do add growth. I had a Scythian town just below the Amazons and they are surely receiving grain imports that adds to production.

[QUOTE] It's something like that; it's been a while since I actually played the game, aside from a brief go with the realism mod [QUOTE]

Gosh... froggy stops playin RTW?? wat has the world gone into :P

[therother]

Grain imports do add growth. I had a Scythian town just below the Amazons and they are surely receiving grain imports that adds to production.It could be that the imports were obstructed, I suppose. I had a city with 23,999 men and a reported 8% growth (including 1.5% from grain imports). I was expecting 24,119 men (+0.5%) the next turn, but I only had 23,759 or -1%.

[Owen]

To minimise the time to reach 24,000, you should increase growth rate using demolish-able buildings. A good example is the fertility temples. Once you reach 24,000, you demolish them and replace them with another temple type.
You only need reach 24,000 for the briefest time (even a part of one turn) to put the next level government building in your queue. Once its there, your population could collapse to 400 and it wouldn't make any difference.
Ah, this I like. Build all the population-increasing buildings you can, but knock them down as soon as you have an Imperial Palace. The best of both worlds. Then again, knocking down temples that have reached level 3 or 4 to completely start from scratch uses up 6 or 10 extra turns, turns that I'd prefer to use building a Pantheon, Urban Barracks, Circus Maximus, Ludus Magna, Siege Engineer or whatever else.

In fact, if your city is close enough to the centre to cope with the hit to happiness from the reduced health bonus, in the long term it may be more profitable to knock down your sewers etc. once you have your Imperial Palace, and build farms up to level 5 to maintain the population level instead. I suspect it depends on the impact of having to lower taxes (if you have to at all) to maintain order versus the extra agricultural income.

[zhuge]

There are, of course, various things that will perturb this equilibrium, such as recruiting/disbanding units, or enslaving other cities, but the population should always return to the 24,000 - 25,500 range, assuming you now have a Huge City. It would be 24,000 - 24,750 with a Large City.


I favour using enslavement to get up to 24000 population for the last couple of thousand people. Vacate all other governors temporarily from towns (except the one that you want to increase its population). That way upon enslavement, half of the population of any newly conquered town goes directly only to the town on its way to reach 24000 population. As Owen mentioned, growth slows down considerably, when population nears 24000 due to squalor. With enslavement you get a quick temporary boost without too much squalor and hopefully absolve the need to demolish any growth promoting buildings.



Bigger cities make more money from trade & taxes, so try to make them as large as is manageable.


While it's true that higher population gives better taxes (mainly), better trade (minimal effect) and slightly better admin with a governor (even more minimal than trade), the increase in income for taxes isn't much at all for high population sizes. High population sizes frequently necessitate large garrisons (to maintain public order) which increases upkeep unless you have a high influence governor to run the city. This can effectively counterbalance the increased income from taxes.

On the other hand, a smaller sized city with a smaller population may be able to hike up tax rates to Very High (a very significant 1.5X increase in tax income) for a smaller garrison. And lets not forget the bug arising from tax rates of tier 2 and tier 3 where a higher population at the start of tier 3 actually yields less tax income than a lower population at the end of tier 2 (though this will probably be corrected in a future patch).

While there are several different factors involved (distance to capital being an important one), I am not thoroughly convinced that having the highest level of governance and a huge population is necessarily best in all cases for finance (availability of higher level buildings and troops being totally another matter of course). Having one Huge City for the highest level buildings, good troops and making it the capital is fine. Having several Huge Cities which are rather widely spaced apart will be difficult to manage and may entail reducing taxes to improve public order, which in turn may defeat the purpose of having larger population to improve cash flow.

[R'as al Ghul]

BTW, it's one pound for a five-minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of ten. ~D

Lol. No it's not and I already told you once! ~D

Sorry, nobody picked this up and I couldn't resist. ~;)
R'as

[therother]

Lol. No it's not and I already told you once! ~D No you haven't. :laugh4:

[R'as al Ghul]

No you haven't. :laugh4:
Yes I did. :laugh4:
Oh, I'm sorry, just one moment. Is this a five minute argument or the full half hour? :grin2: