Food sources in Tundra

[Hamish]

As much as I enjoy the new civ 6 Russia, even with legendary start triggered for a new game, Russia never gets far beyond 6 population cap in the city. I'ld like to point out the differences from civ 5 that are creating these limits.

Deer and camps:

Deer now provides +1 production, and +1 gold for building a camp.

so we still only see 1 food for working this tile, compared to civ 5 where we had 3 food (with camp), and possibly 4 with the religion selection. Apart from fish, this is really the only available food source, with the possibility of a luxury resource bringing in a '2 food' resource.

Building Farms in tundra:

So far I've managed about 250 turns each game with Russia before giving up on the capital (as I travel towards the equator for lusher country). So I havn't stumbled apon any technology that allows building farms on tundra tiles. No farms means 1 food per tile everywhere you look.


Now, yes I agree that tundra isn''t supposed to be easy, Russia get +1 production and faith for working a tundra tile, but it's ultimately useless when it comes to competeing with other civs that will be sitting around pop. 12 in their capitals when you have 5 or 6 in Russia (St Petersberg).

There are religious options once again, like temples and shrines providing +1 food, but it's still extremely limiting without a decent +3 or +4 food tile available to help boost the city.

[Dioskouroi]

All you need to do is give tundra cities a bunch of trade routes to get food and production. I had a city in snow because of 2 luxuries. I did the trade routes and it was able to get to pop 10 before i had no more housing

[Griff]

The problem with giving trade routes is the early game, you need the food at the start of turn 1

[Der Dutchman]

The trick to Russia is simply building cities on the edge of the tundra, allowing it to work some tundra tiles for resources and other tiles for food (as well as building things to boost your food output).

The advantage is that population is NOT the end-all that it used to be for civ. If you can get your cities to 6-8 pop that's as high as ANY civs can go until you can build neighborhoods (more or less, Ghandi can get a few extras). Once you hit your housing cap (When you hit -50% growth usually) then I switch to mass-production. Tundra + Hills / woods = winning, as you're generating 1 food + 2 production + 1 faith as a base, which means the mined version will be throwing down 3-4 production by the time you need it per tile.

This will tie into your other strategy, which is what religion beliefs to take. As far as I care there's two or three options here:

1) You take extra housing and extra housing from temples/shrines. This means +3 housing, which means if you DID start with some good food sources, you can grow up to 11+ population in your main city pretty fast and then switch to production mode.

2) You take extra food and growth bonuses. If you know you're going to struggle for food, this is a way to get to that 6-8 pop soft-cap before Neighborhoods in reasonable time.

3) You take more production... because production is king and it never hurts to have more! (generally I think this is the less powerful option)

Keep in mind 1 population is typically something along the lines of 1.5 production .6 science and .3 culture. It's not a huge deal to have lower pop if you can outproduce the above by doing so.

Edit: Also, keep in mind that flat tundra is basically worthless. Use it for districts - especially industrial ones or shrines.

[Hamish]

Thanks for the feedback gentlemen/gentleladies,

However there still seems to be a strong focus external of tundra, I'm talking starting location, especially with a legendary start for the capital. It still appears to be a handi-cap compared to all other civs starting locations.

I would like to see reasonable balance for any civ that makes it's way north, especially Russia, since one of it's primary attributes is tundra based.

I personnally don't mind a challenge or migrating south / north, I just feel it needs reasonable balance.

[Astasia]

Tundra bias is a handicap for Russia and Norway. You can never build farms on tundra, and you can only ever get 5 food from normal buildings, 3 of which come from harbors. There are two other ways to get food, trade routes, and religion, but both options are available to other civs so doesn't make up for the penalty.

For Russia the religion option makes a lot of sense, grab Dance of the Aurora, drop a Lavra deep in the tundra for crazy faith gains, and go for Feed the World and Gurdwaras, that's another +8 food per city. It's free food for 4 pops, which can work tundra tiles for 4 more food meaning 6 extra pop total. With granaries, water mills, maybe a harbor, and some horses, sheep, or fish nearby, you can get up to 10 pop in a city without trade routes. It's a far cry from like 20-30 pop a city with a lot of farms can reach, but it's a playable strategy if you don't mind a handicap.

[Xorane]

Since most of the Game is defined by .xml files, one can easily modify the base game.

Want to be able to build farms on tundra?
Then simply find the Improvements.xml ( yourinstalldir/Base/Assets/Gameplay/Data )
-> open it & search for <Improvement_ValidTerrains>
-> simply add a new row in this category
-> copy & paste a terrain info for grass or anything
-> replace TerrainType="TERRAIN_GRASS" with TerrainType="TERRAIN_TUNDRA"

You may even set a requirement, like a certain lategame Civic or Research.

Heck, you can even change the base yield from Tundra to 10, if you want.
Same goes for any other Terrain.
Like its predecessor, Civ 6 is very modding-friendly.

[brooklyncontrivance]

Originally posted by Der Dutchman:

The trick to Russia is simply building cities on the edge of the tundra, allowing it to work some tundra tiles for resources and other tiles for food (as well as building things to boost your food output).

Totally right.