Generating money via farming.... realistic to seperate from trade?

[Conan]

Hi guys,

There appears to be 4 main ways of generating income in RTW/EB...

1.Taxes
2.Trade
3.Mining
4.Farming

Now how exactly do we generate money via farming? We don't physically grow the money.

So one presumes that it is generated via selling of surplus crop. Hence wouldn't this simply be classed as trade?

I guess what I'm getting at in the period EB covers was the mass production of foods/crop a major source of income for some empires.

Or is a simple way of adding a bit of variety to generating income?

[Nachtmeister]

It is simply the best way to represent what took place:
If farms were well-developed, they produced market-able surplus.
So that surplus was traded as soon as it was produced.
Building farms to that level thus implies the associated increased trade / income.
This has nothing in particular to do with the other existing trade infrastructure.
It could theoretically be *scaled* by the presence of a simple trader, market, forum - or large forum.
Such scaling seems to be impossible with the current RTW engine, so the existing set-up with farms directly generating some income is the one that approximates the real life effect of surplus agricultural production as closely as possible.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Meh, it is supposed to be a simplification. Diversification is largely impossible, AFAIK.

And heck, following your logic, one can say that mining is also like farming in the sense that you know, you also do not just "take it out of the ground". Really, mining is also about trading, as is farming.

As for myself, I am content with the current system. To take out the game's mining and farming income would only make it more boring.

[A Very Super Market]

Farming is also there to increase pop growth, which no amount of bartering will do. Healthy women lead to healthy babies.