RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice

[Praetor Rick]

So, in effect, it gives an extra number of people 'free' without the public order/pop. growth penalties of squalor?

That's the general effect, yes. If your settlement is stable in population and public order without a sewer, it will be similarly stable after the sewer (once population growth is done) only at a higher population. If your settlement is having public order problems without a sewer, the sewer won't fix them except in the short term - and if the public order problems are because of squalor, it will be a very short term indeed. Squalor tends to only be a problem in big cities, and 0.5% population growth from a sewer upgrade is a whole lot of people every turn when applied to a city with 30,000 souls or so.

Personally, I like to build sewers as my second choice if my city needs to grow more. First is trade buildings, of course - can't beat a trader or forum if all you need is 0.5 or 1% population growth and you don't already have one. But after that, I choose sewers. Only if trade and sewers aren't enough will I turn to farms.

[Guyus Germanicus]

The original advice given about farms may have been correct. I can't speak to that as I have always played the game at R1.5 level. I do know one thing for sure. If you avoid building farms, you only put off your squalor problems. And you pay for it by reduced income from farming in that city. I have literally starved my factions of income upon occasion by putting off building farms. I don't do that anymore.

Also, your faction members suffer from putting off farm development as well. If you avoid building farms in a city for fear of squalor, your faction member/governor may develop the 'poor farmer' trait. The worse he gets in his attitude to farming by your choosing not to build farms the more his bad trait hurts your farm profits in whatever city he's posted. He may be a boon to your city's public order, but he's killing your city's profitability.

I used to avoid building farms when I first started playing the game. But now I consider them an integral part of my economic development. Those of you who have played the Seleucids - have you noticed how fast your profits pile up in the early going? There's two reasons for that: (1) the Seleucids start out with 6 cities, and (2) they have the Hanging Gardens wonder which increases farm profits big time. (This is also why the city of Seleucus is so important to your Parthian faction's early survival. They are a cash poor faction and need the Hanging Gardens wonder to boost their profits.)

The bottomline, I feel, is you can't avoid squalor problems in the end. And, I've found that what often drives your city over the brink into Riotsville is usually a combination of factors - squalor + distance from your capital + temple choice, et al.

I guess the bottom bottomline is - if you don't build farms, you will pay for it a couple times over. Farms are denari in your faction's coffers. And farm friendly governors put extra profits onto a city's credit ledger.

I have also noticed that not all fast-growing cities behave equally. Some fast growing cities bottom out in growth after squalor reaches a certain level and then they stop growing. But then there are others - the Egyptian cities in particular - that don't seem to stop growing no matter what. If you're playing the Scipii and you own Egypt, you have to move your capital farther east to mitigate the riot factor.

Anyway . . . that's my two cents.

[Quirinus]

The original advice given about farms may have been correct. I can't speak to that as I have always played the game at R1.5 level. I do know one thing for sure. If you avoid building farms, you only put off your squalor problems. And you pay for it by reduced income from farming in that city. I have literally starved my factions of income upon occasion by putting off building farms. I don't do that anymore.

Also, your faction members suffer from putting off farm development as well. If you avoid building farms in a city for fear of squalor, your faction member/governor may develop the 'poor farmer' trait. The worse he gets in his attitude to farming by your choosing not to build farms the more his bad trait hurts your farm profits in whatever city he's posted. He may be a boon to your city's public order, but he's killing your city's profitability.

I used to avoid building farms when I first started playing the game. But now I consider them an integral part of my economic development. Those of you who have played the Seleucids - have you noticed how fast your profits pile up in the early going? There's two reasons for that: (1) the Seleucids start out with 6 cities, and (2) they have the Hanging Gardens wonder which increases farm profits big time. (This is also why the city of Seleucus is so important to your Parthian faction's early survival. They are a cash poor faction and need the Hanging Gardens wonder to boost their profits.)

The bottomline, I feel, is you can't avoid squalor problems in the end. And, I've found that what often drives your city over the brink into Riotsville is usually a combination of factors - squalor + distance from your capital + temple choice, et al.

I guess the bottom bottomline is - if you don't build farms, you will pay for it a couple times over. Farms are denari in your faction's coffers. And farm friendly governors put extra profits onto a city's credit ledger.

I have also noticed that not all fast-growing cities behave equally. Some fast growing cities bottom out in growth after squalor reaches a certain level and then they stop growing. But then there are others - the Egyptian cities in particular - that don't seem to stop growing no matter what. If you're playing the Scipii and you own Egypt, you have to move your capital farther east to mitigate the riot factor.

Anyway . . . that's my two cents.

I disagree. The point of avoiding farms is not 'just' to prevent mass runaway squalor later in the game-- proper management of pop. growth buildings mean that you can have 0% (or +0.5%) pop. growth in your core cities later in the game when cities start to get truly gigantic. That's generally much harder to do with farms, as they can't be destroyed.

True, cities like Carthage or Patavium or Alexandria almost always have runaway squalor problems anyway, but for 'normal' cities such as, say, Sparta or Antioch or Kydonia, it is possible to level off after 24000 pop. with proper management.

Farming is important to income, true, but trade also makes up a large chunk of it, or it should.

Building farms to avoid the 'Bad Farmer' trait isn't sensible, IMO. There is only one line of farm improvements. Once you're done with building them, all those turns building academies or military barracks or ports still gives a chance of getting that trait. You only avoid getting that trait for the duration of building the farm improvements, which is, what, eight turns at most?

[RLucid]

Surely it only makes sense to avoid farms in very fertile areas with strong pop. growth, which are going to prove troublesome to invaders eg) Carthage, but not Patavium for Julii where there's little culture problems later on, nor is it going to very distant from capitol (even after you move it). Other factions are going to benefit or suffer from farm improvements in other places.

The poor farmer trait governors should have high influence, and govern the explosive growth rate cities, like Carthage; where the -ve trait becomes a growth dampener slowing the onset of the problem.

The good point about Guyus's post is that he realises you do give something up in short/medium term, if you try to avoid long term problems. It may be much more important to develop rapidly and tech up earlier in the game, than having a city rebel later on, when you have conquered 1/4 of the map or so and have plenty of other well developed settlements.

Being simplistic and saying farm upgrades are always unwise, or always beneficical is not getting out the whole story.

[Quirinus]

There are simply better, more non-permanent ways of getting population growth-- for example, as the Julii, to tech up fast early-game, stuff your cities with Ceres temples, and then demolish them in favour of Jupiter or Bacchus later. Or, build sewers. Or build markets. Etc, etc. Just saying that farm upgrades should be the last choice.

[RLucid]

Somewhere like Segestica, you won't get a chance to build temple of ceres, sewers or any such, for ages unless you do the farm upgrades because it's base fertility is so poor. It is a struggle to get it to 3% growth rate on a small starting population, with shrine of ceres alone (farming boost retainers prob are one possibility). You could get insta growth by having a governor there and in few other towns, when you go capture & enslave somewhere large like Carthage, but that pop boost is likely to be spread around as it's needed elsewhere.

There's loads of place relatively underpopulated, and not that fertile, which really can use the upgrades.

[Praetor Rick]

Somewhere like Segestica, you won't get a chance to build temple of ceres, sewers or any such, for ages unless you do the farm upgrades because it's base fertility is so poor. It is a struggle to get it to 3% growth rate on a small starting population, with shrine of ceres alone (farming boost retainers prob are one possibility). You could get insta growth by having a governor there and in few other towns, when you go capture & enslave somewhere large like Carthage, but that pop boost is likely to be spread around as it's needed elsewhere.

There's loads of place relatively underpopulated, and not that fertile, which really can use the upgrades.

True. I don't like farms, but it's quite rare that I will leave farms completely unbuilt - unless the settlement is Patavium or Carthage or something, I'll usually do at least a Land Clearance.

The thing is, a small settlement is still helpful - it generates income, albeit not all that much. It's easy to keep control even with a very small garrison. It draws enemy attacks and stalls their invasions for a turn or two, letting you muster a defensive force to drive them away.

A large settlement, on the other hand, can be an active detriment. You can often have to spend 2000 denarii per turn in garrison costs if you use peasants or town watch. Even at that, you're still not getting the full 80% garrison bonus. If things go as badly as they sometimes do, the large settlement may have a distance-to-capital penalty larger than its garrison bonus, and that's ugly. This is especially bad if the settlement has a base unrest level, or an un-fixable culture penalty from a tier 5 government building, walls, or roads. Even with up to date temples and government buildings, you may need to run games, races, or in extreme cases both, just to maintain public order, and that's more expense. In theory, it's good for recruiting advanced units, but a city like Patavium or Carthage can easily grow so fast you can't actually build much in the way of military infrastructure. In general, it's a huge pain in the neck, until the AI decides to besiege it, infiltrate a spy, or do something else to cause more unrest, and suddenly it rebels and you have an enemy city in your heartland.

In other words, as long as you have some cities that grow well, a few cities that don't grow much doesn't hurt you appreciably, even in very hard difficulty campaigns. By contrast, no matter how many cities you have with population growth under control, a city that grows so fast you can't hold it is always bad. *THAT* is the key reason why I don't like farms. That said, you have made a good case for selective farm building. The problem is, when talking rule-of-thumb style, "never build farms" is better advice than "always build farms" for most factions, and specifically for all three Roman factions, which are the only ones you can by default play without having won at least one campaign and gained (one hopes) your own understanding of population growth and why farms should be built selectively.

The best advice is to learn to understand population growth so you can judge for yourself. The problem is, if you're reading guides and looking for advice on whether something is worth building or not, you probably lack that understanding, and without that understanding, you are very likely to build more farms than you need, often enough farms to be an active detriment.

[Quirinus]

Somewhere like Segestica, you won't get a chance to build temple of ceres, sewers or any such, for ages unless you do the farm upgrades because it's base fertility is so poor. It is a struggle to get it to 3% growth rate on a small starting population, with shrine of ceres alone (farming boost retainers prob are one possibility). You could get insta growth by having a governor there and in few other towns, when you go capture & enslave somewhere large like Carthage, but that pop boost is likely to be spread around as it's needed elsewhere.

There's loads of place relatively underpopulated, and not that fertile, which really can use the upgrades.

True.... I do build one or two levels of farms in low-growth places, especially as Julii in the barbarian lands. But I never do that for Ariminium or Arretium or Massilia, if you get what I mean.

I don't understand why ppl are so focussed on "trouble" cities later in the game, at a point where their waves of expansion, must mean they're not dependant on these key cities.

Surely you can afford to write some places off to the rebel faction if necessary?

Yes..... though for role-play reasons I'd rather not have to exterminate a core city every ten years. It might be more financially viable, but it doesn't sit well with me. That's all.

You said above that "The point of avoiding farms is not 'just' to prevent mass runaway squalor later in the game--" If you're not worried about squalor, why are you not building farms? But for squalor, the size of your city after it passes 24,000 is irrelevant. It's squalor that impacts your public order.

I don't doubt that you can probably manage some cities into a no growth or slow growth pace. But there are trade-offs in doing that too. But again, why would you do that if you're not worried about squalor?

I think perhaps you are missing my point here.... I meant that runaway squalor is indeed a problem. But I don't do that just to reduce the net population growth once a city reaches 24000-- if Antioch still has 3% growth past 24000, it's going to go into the same kind of runaway squalor problem as if it had 6%, only slower. But if Antioch has 0% growth by the time it reaches 24000, you wouldn't need to worry about runaway squalor problems, and it remains a steady cash cow.

Wait, am I making sense?

I don't build farms simply to avoid the 'bad farmer' trait. I'm simply saying that if your faction member has the bad farmer trait, or worse, it will cut into your profits. You can often avoid that by building farms at the earliest opportunity. I can't speak to whether or not it's possible to get bad farmer traits when there are no farms available for construction in your governor's city. That may be. The game is quirky at times, and that may indeed be one of the quirks.

Wait.... if I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying that 'Bad Farmer' traits are less likely to occur once you've built a farm? AFAIK you are only immune from it in the duration you're building a farm. Meaning, if you're building land clearance, you will be immune from getting 'Poor Farmer' for three turns. After which the 'Bad Farmer' traits have the same possibility of occuring as before you began building the farm.

I can say, I speak from experience, AKA, that I have literally starved the faction I was playing of income because, though I had markets aplenty and ports, I was avoiding farms superstitiously because I thought it would give me out-of-control squalor issues. And my income shortage was not because I had over-recruited soldiers. I am very aware of the trade income sources & benefits - from trader/markets/ports/etc., not to mention those temple series that support trade profits like Milqart, Mercury, etc. If you doubt my point, try monitoring the income/trade screen of some of your key cities and see what they are making in terms of farm profits. Or check your faction's financial summary screen for turn by turn income totals. I think you'll be surprised. It has simply been my perception that many RTW players underestimate the income contribution of farms.

I'm not doubting that farming does contribute a lot to a faction's profits, but do farming upgrades add so much to that total? IMO the extra few hundred every turn is not worth the management headaches late-game.

I was avoiding farms superstitiously because I thought it would give me out-of-control squalor issues.

Did you encounter runaway squalor later on?


I'm not saying that farm upgrades are bad per se, but as I said, there are just better, more non-permanent ways of getting population growth.

[Guyus Germanicus]

I disagree. The point of avoiding farms is not 'just' to prevent mass runaway squalor later in the game-- proper management of pop. growth buildings mean that you can have 0% (or +0.5%) pop. growth in your core cities later in the game when cities start to get truly gigantic. That's generally much harder to do with farms, as they can't be destroyed.

True, cities like Carthage or Patavium or Alexandria almost always have runaway squalor problems anyway, but for 'normal' cities such as, say, Sparta or Antioch or Kydonia, it is possible to level off after 24000 pop. with proper management.

Farming is important to income, true, but trade also makes up a large chunk of it, or it should.

Building farms to avoid the 'Bad Farmer' trait isn't sensible, IMO. There is only one line of farm improvements. Once you're done with building them, all those turns building academies or military barracks or ports still gives a chance of getting that trait. You only avoid getting that trait for the duration of building the farm improvements, which is, what, eight turns at most?

Well, Q, I'm not trying to be contrary. I can't say as I'm understanding everything you're saying here. You're undoubtedly an experienced player who has a game style that fits well for you. I do think that there has been a common understanding among RTW players that farms were to be avoided because they produced squalor from excessive population growth. I know I got that perception myself from reading some of the old player guides in this forum.

I can say, I speak from experience, AKA, that I have literally starved the faction I was playing of income because, though I had markets aplenty and ports, I was avoiding farms superstitiously because I thought it would give me out-of-control squalor issues. And my income shortage was not because I had over-recruited soldiers. I am very aware of the trade income sources & benefits - from trader/markets/ports/etc., not to mention those temple series that support trade profits like Milqart, Mercury, etc. If you doubt my point, try monitoring the income/trade screen of some of your key cities and see what they are making in terms of farm profits. Or check your faction's financial summary screen for turn by turn income totals. I think you'll be surprised. It has simply been my perception that many RTW players underestimate the income contribution of farms.

I don't build farms simply to avoid the 'bad farmer' trait. I'm simply saying that if your faction member has the bad farmer trait, or worse, it will cut into your profits. You can often avoid that by building farms at the earliest opportunity. I can't speak to whether or not it's possible to get bad farmer traits when there are no farms available for construction in your governor's city. That may be. The game is quirky at times, and that may indeed be one of the quirks.

Naturally, if you have of necessity a different building priority for your city other than farms, say, because of the need for some military building or temple, then you will certainly want to build those higher priority items first. And that may mean tolerating having your faction member develop a bad trait.

You said above that "The point of avoiding farms is not 'just' to prevent mass runaway squalor later in the game--" If you're not worried about squalor, why are you not building farms? But for squalor, the size of your city after it passes 24,000 is irrelevant. It's squalor that impacts your public order.

I don't doubt that you can probably manage some cities into a no growth or slow growth pace. But there are trade-offs in doing that too. But again, why would you do that if you're not worried about squalor?

I will say it is certainly possible to acquire compensating traits or retinue members for your governor that may mitigate somewhat his bad farmer traits if he does acquire them. But, some of those traits or retinue members can have other offsetting drawbacks as well, say, to public order. That's the way the game 'bounces.'

Little things can add up over the length of the game. If you're careless, as I used to be, about what traits your governor acquires by your choice of building priorities, there are consequences. And they can add up. The choice, of course, is the player's.

As for me, I used to avoid building farms. I don't anymore.

Best wishes and 'good hunting', Guyus

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I personally believe that each farm should be constructed on its merits. If the settlement is comparable to Nepte (that little desert settlement in the far south), then farms are essential to actually get in anywhere. From the other extreme angle the settlements of Egypt don't really need it for initial growth.

I do, personally, prefer not to build them unless they are a necessity and if the effects of squalor are going to be less of a problem later on.

By this I mean negation primarily through the lack of other penalties and the addition of extra bonuses. Alone squalor is nothing but a slight annoyance - it's only if it's combined with distance to capital penalty or similar issues when it's truly problematic.

[RLucid]

May be the fast grower settlements are best viewed as "consumables", you use them early in the game to tech up, and churn out units, as well as the enslavement pop. growth bonus for key cities.

I don't understand why ppl are so focussed on "trouble" cities later in the game, at a point where their waves of expansion, must mean they're not dependant on these key cities.

Surely you can afford to write some places off to the rebel faction if necessary?

Think Guyus's point that purely thinking about the long term has a cost, and may be medium term benefits, outweigh a long term loss; because the resources become available at critical moments, in time, rather than too late.