Quote Originally Posted by Red Harvest
While I like the squalor feature, the way it works is completely counter intuitive to me. Here is why:

Not having decent farms should cause squalor--counter to the game. They should make it possible for the province to make food available in the settlement at an affordable price. They also should tend to shift population from the city to the countryside...not the reverse. Why? Because extensive farming should provide employment/way of life for many *outside* the settlement.
No, I think you have it wrong. Decent farms mean more food can be grown with less people, hence fewer jobs in the country, which means people move to the cities looking for work. In addition, I think specifically one of the farm improvements is the a larger farm owned by the wealthy and farmed by slaves, which started historically to do away with smaller family owned plots, which again led the rural poor to move the city.

Grifman