farms?

what the verdict on farms?
should we build them or not? (i know there was a problem they caused in RTW)

Some citys grow to fast and are hard to keep in control if you keep building farms there, its good to have them sometimes cause when youre at war with say your trade partners your income will go down alot and if you had some farms already i guess you would get some extra cash that would be needed. I mostly build them in castle regions though and in citys that dont realy grow that big.

At the moment it seems like they are not needed in most places. When i first got the game i was building farms everywhere in an attempt to tech my cities up quickly. I found though that shortage of cash and time are much more constraining on growth then city population. Last game i played i only built level one farms and still couldnt' afford to upgrade all my cities on time.

Did run across a few cities with seemingly low pop growth rates that did require more than one farm though.

From my observation all farms increases farm revenuse by 50 florins no matter what the quality of the farmland and what level farm you are building. So the first 2 levels seem well worth the return you get from it after that, you have to factor in wether you want the extra population or not.

I'm not afraid of farms and don't see what the big scare is with them. In RTW 40,000 population was'nt to hard to handle(most cities) and came with a huge trade income.

A city with 20,000 people and very high tax rate(usually requires a full garrison) is less profitable than a city on Normal tax rate and will have 23,000 people in it due to the tax bonus allowing a population growth of 3000 more. On top of this you need 4-8 units to garrison the city to keep it happy on normal. I'd shoot for low taxes but its nice to have that emergency buffer.

Now very high taxes is a boost of a max 1000 tax income probably less so to keep it on very high you have to pay an extra 125 florins per unit with the minimum being an extra 12 units. So 12 X 125 = 1500 florins. So to be on very high taxes actually costs you more than a city on normal. plus on normal taxes you will get more trade income, due to the bit of extra population.

Now Granted if my warring stack is taking a vacation in a city -wich the residents seem to hate- I'm going to stick them with high taxes, might as well make them pay for that border guard while I'm there. But I only make normal taxes a priority with very high taxes being a bonus.

Early in the game when you dont have an extensive trade network set up yet farms can be your largest source of income. Once your settlements are trading amongst themselves over sea then farms make up less and less of your income.