FARMS AND ROADS

OK folks, obviously this is all about Farms and Roads. Less obviously, it's about when, where and why you should or shouldn't buy them. First of, I'll look into the basic facts of these two things and then I'll come back and give the main evaluation. More information on the minutiae of using Farms and Roads for travel purposes can be found under Movement.

FARMS

The purpose of Farms is to feed the populations of the Cities. If you have been paying attention, you probably realise that food comes from Farms and it is produced at a rate of 1 unit per turn per farm next to a city. If the population of a City starves, it costs you to keep order and the people don't pay Tax at all! This means that you could easily wind up losing $10 a Turn off your total income if you fail to prevent a City from Starvation. Additionally, you lose 10% of the population of that City as they go somewhere else.
        So how much Food does a City require per turn to feed its population? Well, I could be a bitch and tell you to look at the MK help files (because the information is in there you lazy bastards), but I won't. Instead look at this little chart that shows exactly how many units of food are consumed each turn at each population level. Handily, it also shows exactly how much it would cost to buy enough farms to supply that amount of food each turn. You'll notice that it costs increasingly large amounts for each additional Farm. Note that a City starts off with 3 units of Food when first captured. It is also capable of storing excess Food.
        A few of final notes on Farms. It only costs 1 Movement point to move onto a Farm square. When you buy a Farm, you cannot choose where it will turn up, but it will usually follow this rule: The first Farm will be in the square to the right of the City it is bought in and further Farms will go in clockwise around the City. If you are fortunate enough to get a Farm that is adjacent to two or more different Cities, it supplies one unit of Food to each City and counts against each city for the number of Farms when purchasing new Farms.

ROADS

        There are two different kinds of Roads. The first is the normal road/bridge which you will see on Grass, Forest and Ocean. It allows Ground Units to proceed at a pace of 1 Movement point per square (of Road natch). The second is the trail which you will see on Desert and Snow. This allows Ground Units to proceed at a pace of 2 Movement points per square. Both kinds have the effect of markedly improving the distance covered by Ground Units.
        Often, there will be roads in just the right place to begin with. If there are not, you may build some. This is done with a Bulldozer and costs $2 per square that you build in. However, if you plan it correctly you may actually get 2 squares worth of Road for the price of one. This is because it looks ugly to have single squares of Road all over the map, so Skyven coded it so that if you build one square of Road diagonally from another and an "open" square adjacent to both of them, then a Road corner would be built in that square. You then have a nice pretty road without the added cost of actually moving into each square along the way and paying for every square.
        Building a road is usually not as good as using pre-existing roads, farms, resources and or cities. All of these also cost only 1 Movement Point to move into and cost no cash at all.

EVALUATION

        There are a few things that hold true for both Roads and Farms (and just about everything else in the game):

1. Don't buy them if you don't need to use them.

2. Don't fail to buy them if you do need to use them.

        The real question is. How do you know when you do and don't need to use Roads and Farms? The general answer is slightly different in each case.
        For Roads, you should buy one whenever you can afford to and it would speed up any Ground units trying to move through the area or collect resources. You shouldn't buy one if you are no longer using Ground Units (you have the Hercules) as the primary mode of travel, you don't expect your Ground Units to need to move through the area or return to collect resources, you are totally broke or you expect the enemy to be coming through soon enough anyhow.
        For Farms, you should buy one only if you cannot drop the population of the City you are attempting to save from starvation to 990 in that Turn (else you actually lose money in the short term), you are attempting to make a metropolis or if you need to get some extra movement out of an invasion force that is going for the kill and you absolutely cannot build a Road there. You shouldn't buy a farm for any other reason. Farms are expensive and the time you need to invest in the city and Farm means that you will almost certainly be dead before the investment becomes profitable (against someone who can expand as well as you and not wasting money on Farms).
        Having said all that, there are of course some situations in which you would disregard these instructions and do it some other way. The primary situation in which you would choose to do this is on highly special maps like Typhoon (where you can put all cities on 0% tax until the fighting begins because the enemy is so far away) and Topologies (where you can build as many damn Roads and Farms as you please because it is so rich! The secondary situation in which you would throw these rules out the window is when you have the game well and truly in the bag and can't be bothered to do your Taxes properly any more.
        And now for a special tactic related to Farms and going for a Metropolis. If you have enough spare cash, you can buy 2  farms straight away in a City that you want to become a Metropolis. Because of the time it takes for a City to reach the Metropolis level, you will probably be producing quite a bit of food. Shortly after you got the Metroplis, you can expect the game to end. This is very interesting because under normal circumstances you would have to buy a 3rd Farm to feed the population of a Metropolis ($30) before the end of the game. In effect you are investing are putting in that $20 a little bit earlier so you never have to pay the additional $30. If you are trying to get several Metropolis then you could save yourself hundreds!

INDEX