Is it always correct to lead with farms/food?

[snuggleform]

I've decided today I want to ask a somewhat min-maxy question. I don't know the answer. Am I supposed to overall lead/prefer to build farms? I understand QUITE WELL that you should not build only farms, and this has a lot to do with the "boosting" effect, so please don't rush to type out how boosting works, I'm going to smack you across the face if you choose to do that. I also understand the basic logic of you have to work with what you got, so if you can't build farms then the answer is no.

Here is my current hypothesis, and it is yes that you generally should lead with farms/food, and it's a tricky one because food in and of itself doesn't give you any particular resource (research/production/gold/mana/etc). And in fact - not only does it not give you any particular resource, but if you overpopulate, your happiness will tank and it will negatively affect all your other income. But the reason why I think you should lead with farms/food OTHER THAN THE BOOSTING EFFECT, is that it lets you grab more real estate, and you can convert the farms to better real estate (could be as simple as basic quarries, or cool special provinces) down the line.

Now here's the pushback against my hypothesis - the opportunity cost of you building farms/food could have been put into gathering research or mana points instead. For example if I'm so laser focused on leading with farms, all that time could have been put into building a research or mana building and gathering that resource from it which has much more immediate use and impact on my battles and force projection on the map.

What do you guys think?

[Seswatha]

Generally food is the slowest ROI resource, you invest into food if you think you'll have quite a bit of time for the investment to pay off; however if you see some more beneficial short term investments (e.g. I build draft, create a 2nd stack and clear that tasty wonder over there) these might be more attractive.

In the end resources that you do need to win the game are gold/mana/research/imperium, the other resources are just a slow multi step way of getting the resources above.

In Planetfall food generally was the worst resource to get except Kir'ko. Here I feel like it is better due to the boost mechanic but not by a huge margin.

[Pyro Penguin]

i almost always start with a farm to boost workshop, then a forester to boost granary, usually i will rush population a few times early on and grab a mine or two while those are in production, then make vendor, and get town hall 2 as soon as i hit 5 pop, then make a 2nd farm and build the 2nd and 3rd tier gold and production buildings

i might be delaying mana and research a bit too long but most of the time i'm able to catch up pretty quickly on them since i have so much gold and production going already

[MEATSHED]

Generally focusing on farms and expanding your domain is pretty good but I wouldn't do it unless you have some additional farm effects (for example going order and feudal gives you 3 seperate buildings with farm adjacent bonuses, the levy camp, tithe collector and Abbey), other wise you probably want some quarries to get some town buildings faster (as there isn't a lot of ways to improve draft via domain expanding.) In addition foresters add production and food for a bit more balanced growth of domain and buildings and lead into draft buildings for faster stacks.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Generally food is the slowest ROI resource, you invest into food if you think you'll have quite a bit of time for the investment to pay off; however if you see some more beneficial short term investments (e.g. I build draft, create a 2nd stack and clear that tasty wonder over there) these might be more attractive.

In the end resources that you do need to win the game are gold/mana/research/imperium, the other resources are just a slow multi step way of getting the resources above.

In Planetfall food generally was the worst resource to get except Kir'ko. Here I feel like it is better due to the boost mechanic but not by a huge margin.

I love the feedback, I also played a lot of planetfall and was super quizzical about the ROI on food.

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

i almost always start with a farm to boost workshop, then a forester to boost granary, usually i will rush population a few times early on and grab a mine or two while those are in production, then make vendor, and get town hall 2 as soon as i hit 5 pop, then make a 2nd farm and build the 2nd and 3rd tier gold and production buildings

i might be delaying mana and research a bit too long but most of the time i'm able to catch up pretty quickly on them since i have so much gold and production going already

Good practical advice. I like it. Your way forward is a focus on food/gold to start off with.

Originally posted by MEATSHED:

Generally focusing on farms and expanding your domain is pretty good but I wouldn't do it unless you have some additional farm effects (for example going order and feudal gives you 3 seperate buildings with farm adjacent bonuses, the levy camp, tithe collector and Abbey), other wise you probably want some quarries to get some town buildings faster (as there isn't a lot of ways to improve draft via domain expanding.) In addition foresters add production and food for a bit more balanced growth of domain and buildings and lead into draft buildings for faster stacks.

I love this advice too - one huge gap of ignorance I have is in using special provinces. I'm vaguely aware they exist and sometimes I build one or two, but I haven't delved into which cultures and which tomes unlock the min-maxy best answers to resource collection.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Sometimes I lead with quaries for production, but I don't know if either is better than the other.

[Wlerin]

Aside from boosting it almost doesn't matter, because the bonuses from resource nodes are so much more powerful than basic province improvements, and those mostly don't care what you build on them. Certain tiles should have specific improvements, e.g. farms on river tiles, and once you get further into the game there are other synergies to consider (e.g. Materium giving stability for adjacent provinces of the same type, bonus food from farms from Nature) but in general when starting out I usually just go with whatever I need for the next boost.

One thing to note about food, the Imperium cost for rushing the next pop is based on turns left, not the total food needed (unlike rushing buildings/units). So if you have a huge food income rushing will be relatively cheap.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Chthonic Guardian:

Sometimes I lead with quaries for production, but I don't know if either is better than the other.

Yeah I've been experimenting with food first v quarry first v forester first, I can't really tell. They do feel a bit different for sure like with food you have to be careful with your population and if you don't do food you sometimes feel like you aren't grabbing land fast enough but you do get the other resources faster.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Wlerin:

Aside from boosting it almost doesn't matter, because the bonuses from resource nodes are so much more powerful than basic province improvements, and those mostly don't care what you build on them. Certain tiles should have specific improvements, e.g. farms on river tiles, and once you get further into the game there are other synergies to consider (e.g. Materium giving stability for adjacent provinces of the same type, bonus food from farms from Nature) but in general when starting out I usually just go with whatever I need for the next boost.

One thing to note about food, the Imperium cost for rushing the next pop is based on turns left, not the total food needed (unlike rushing buildings/units). So if you have a huge food income rushing will be relatively cheap.

Wait what? I thought rushing our units is also based on production/turns left, not merely total cost. That is, if I rush out an archer when it only has 1 turn left it costs less than if the archer takes 4 turns left to build.

[Wlerin]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Wait what? I thought rushing our units is also based on production/turns left, not merely total cost. That is, if I rush out an archer when it only has 1 turn left it costs less than if the archer takes 4 turns left to build.

Sorry, not original total cost, the total remaining cost. Which is not the same as turns left.

[sandman25dcsss]

If you want to find optimal way, I recommend playing with Slow or Super Slow (from mod) speed to better understand the whole picture. When your first building is constructed during 12 turns, you are forced to play optimally. I found I use whatever is needed for boosting despite it may look silly (farm on golden mine, quarry on mana node etc.). That's because if you reduced construction cost of a building by 200, you basically saved 50 gold.

[ACS36]

No, not always. Depends on traits, starting area and some other factors. YOU can build pop really quickly in the early game without having farms.

Use your head. It's a turn based game.

[Wlerin]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

When your first building is constructed during 12 turns...

Could just take Perfectionist Artisans instead of using a mod lol. Although that does require a few pantheon points.