I see you are aware of Influence and other bonuses from population. I would argue that those bonuses, especially Science, are more valuable than Money generated by merchants. I usually prioritize workers and scientists, then farmers.

I would also suggest that you stay in Neolithic era until you get the legacy trait and pick Science. It makes a huge difference.

The short answer is: you don't.    

The long one: you somtimes need them to unlock leadership or for population stars. But with out a specific reason,u should prioritise other slots over it and get food from terrain 

This is one of the reason why Multiplayer is dominated by harrapans

dzony8 wrote:

I see you are aware of Influence and other bonuses from population. I would argue that those bonuses, especially Science, are more valuable than Money generated by merchants. I usually prioritize workers and scientists, then farmers.

I would also suggest that you stay in Neolithic era until you get the legacy trait and pick Science. It makes a huge difference.

Thank you for the suggestion. I always try to get the science star in neolithic and get the science bonus from it. I also give more priority to science, but you also need money for army maintenance and upgrades. I usually set my city to expert and go with the Science -> Industry -> Gold -> Food population order.

komodowaran wrote:

The short answer is: you don't.    

The long one: you somtimes need them to unlock leadership or for population stars. But with out a specific reason,u should prioritise other slots over it and get food from terrain 

This is one of the reason why Multiplayer is dominated by harrapans

Thank you. I suspected as much.

With the Harrapans - you mean people go for them because of the +1 food on food tile? I would imagine it translates into let's say 10-20 food early on so extra 1-2 pops per city with the food formula limits still applying. I would imagine Mycenians with their industry and unit buffs, Egyptiand with Grand planners or Zhou with basically 20% stability reduction and rather brutal early game science bonuses would be more appealing.

Luzifly wrote:

" I usually set my city to expert and go with the Science -> Industry -> Gold -> Food population order. " I can hear that and understand. But its not very "realistic".

Regarding the history, humanity always need food first to be able to growth and then, when food is in a plenty situation, population can migrate from farmer to oher jobs. This is what happennend in modern country.
If you look the pop% of the farmer in modern country, the % is rapidly decreasing since the industrial era, but before the industrialization, there was more farmers than other jobs.

So, the logic would be that until we reach the industrial era, we should focus on farmer first, and manage the 3 others jobs as best as we can. And when we reach the industrial era, the farmer pop can be decreased thanks to tractors, and then we can focus on others jobs.

 I'm a begginer to this game (20h of playing), but I think its too easy to have a lot of food. Maybe its normal, for balancing aspect.

I completely agree with you how it should be and what is more realistic. First you need to get food and then, after you have a surplus, you can have more people in the city (or in other words, people NOT contibuting to food production).

The priorities I wrote are a result of what I believe is most beneficial in this game.

Personally, I always max out food slots first. I want population to grow as quickly as possible. The more people I have the more science I can get the more industry I can get. At least that's the way I use it. I will min/max it and look to see how much population I get a turn. If removing a farmer or two doesn't lower it I'll move them to industry tell that is full then I move toward science. While yeah I can force science and make it super fast, I really don't need it to out pace the ai. They are usually behind me in that. Though I do play on nation so there is that. Personally the Babylonians are my favorite culture and they do have my favorite EQ. As I get to make a bunch of farms and get science from growing my farms and putting units into science grows my population even more. So maybe I'm playing wrong ?

In theory food is a nice wildcard yield since you can assign pops to whatever you need. It falls off but not necessarily as fast as you'd think by looking at the formulas. The other benefits to high population are YMMV since the religion/culture systems aren't too fleshed out.

Real issue with Farmers is building one inflates the cost of future quarters. That's more of a problem with the scaling (building a quarter other than Makers early causes you to fall off the growth curve and stall out), but this is why the Harrapans and their tile yields are recommended.