Farms Farms Farms!

Halfway into my first campaign and it seems to me that building farms as early, and as fast possible is very beneficial. Population booms, so you can tech fast, and rake in the taxes. Anyone else doing this?

Can't say I've tried it- however, if squalor is significantly lower than in RTW, it might be a good idea.

I have been building the two first farms in all of my settlements asap after dirt roads and ports. Seems to be working well, as the English I have a good income even as I command the largest armies and I have taken about half of France. Although the largest armies may be because I am always garrisoning the max amount of free units per city (AI does not do this).

Thie first thing I did with each city is tech up to communal farms. It worked so well that I think I may go straight to crop rotation next round. Crop rotation is 2400 florins a pop so It may not be so easy to tech to them so early. Communal farms are doable tho.

That's what I've been doing in all TW games since Shogun, or try to do, but with some factions you just can't.

For example, I've tried (and failed) many many times to play the HRE in MTW, and again failed in M2, because early on you just don't have the cash to upgrade all your provinces' farms, and since "farming up" is pretty much built into the way I play and I have a hard time dealing with the concept of building anything before my farms are at least level 2, I quickly get squished :)

I'm more of a "farm, trade, deal, who cares about soldiers if you can get the money some other way" type of player I guess, and this kind of strat (as it did for the Italians in MTW) still works a charm for the Venetians, which is the faction I play most of the time. Factions requiring aggressive play are still outside the realm of my competence :)

Actually I have found early you get admin bonuses building farms as well as improving population growth and taxes. adding to the mix is building churches as high as you can pay for as it improves the governor of the province. it was hard to get the idea that pius general is more inteligent but in game world is:dizzy2:

I haven't build any farms yet in my game. The cities seem to grow fast enought. I have rarely had problems with money. I can build enought upgrades to cities before they are ready to upgrade. Squalor is not a problem yet. Playing with h/h.

That's my usual way of playing, but I just can't do it ! I started the Turks, h/vh, and I'm broke. I've always thought of farms as income from crops, but didn't thought about income through population growth + taxes ! On the other hand, this also means increased cost since I'll have to upgrade walls, while I need to buy more troops to fight these bloody byzantines. Horse archers are nice, but not when it's the only troops available...

I find the ports first and then farms helps more ... but trade is more my gameplay angle. Farms are good for your 'base' income and don't dissappear at times of war as ports being blockaded can cause seriuos cashflow problems. But I find I need a large trade income to upgrade my farming output.

I think all of my regions have upto crop rotation (normally 2400 florins) but the expense of building irrigation (normally 4800 florins) sometimes is not quite benificial for the outlay cost.

Obviously trade income is limited to landlocked countries.

Interesting....the accepted wisdom in RTW was never, ever build farms unless you were dealing with a province in the desert that had no population growth to speak of. Maybe CA has recognized that as a shortcoming in their plans; that could be why the squalor effect is limited sharply from RTW (as I understand it---haven't had enough time in the game to get up to it being a problem, in any event).

Both squalor and distance-to-capitol penalties have been reduced from RTW. I might be wrong about this, but it seems to me from first glance that farming income might be up as well. I haven't been building farms, just because I seem to always have more important things to spend money on, but squalor hasn't been nearly the problem it used to be.

City management is a snap in this game compared to R:TW. That makes farms much more attractive, despite the population growth.

Farms are especially attractive for Castles, which don't have the money-grubbing capacity of cities.

Frankly, I put my settings on "Manage all cities." Then I put my taxes on "low." The game practically flies on autopilot.

Actually I don´t focus at all on farms initially. I build ports, roads, mines markets and merchant warfs etc unless I have a stagnant growthrate in a settlement then I upgrade the farms. The general problem with pop.growth in all TW-games are that they outgrow you and you can´t keep up - buildingwise. So when I capture one from the enemy I almost always sack or x-terminate them in order to get the pop down to a managable level.

I like to tech up fast, so I dont have to waste money on the crappy starting units. You cant upgrade to a fortress till the population is high enough, so farms are great for that. They also provide great income.You rake in income from the actual crops, and from the extra taxes your new population will pay. My ideal build order is now: crop rotation >> port >> roads...