In this guide I’ll discuss which of the infrastructure that helps with food yields is worth building. We’ll start with a general overview of how food infrastructure is helpful and then we’ll go through each of the eras and discuss each infrastructure individually.

First starting with an overview of food and food infrastructure. Food grows population in cities. It takes food per turn to maintain population so to keep growing population you will need to keep growing the food per turn of a city. Each population incrementally consumes more and more food making larger populations harder and harder to obtain. Food infrastructure boosts the food yields in a number of ways, such as increasing food tile yields, adding more food to farmers quarters base yields as well as the adjacency bonus, giving more farmers slots and increasing the food per farmer, providing food per strategic resource, food on harbor and providing percentage based food bonuses to cities. Watch out, some infrastructure also increases pollution which can impact the stability of your cities. Next, we’ll discuss each piece of infrastructure for each Era. We’ll consider whether the industry investment for the infrastructure is worth the yields it provides.

Starting in the Ancient Era, the Animal Barns are usually worth building, especially if you have access to horses. I rarely fund myself building many farmers quarters early, so I usually just focus on the food per horses. If you have 4 horses that is often enough to grow an additional 2 or 3 population in your cities which is a big boost in the early game. The Fishery is usually not worth building, unless you have a lot of Harbors. Flood Irrigation is usually worth it, especially if you tend to build cities on rivers. Watch out though, if you build farmers quarters on rivers you will lose the food yield on those tiles. The granary is worth building if you need to extra farmers, the additional food per farmer is nice but not significant unless you have at least 10 farmers.

In the Classical Era the Artificial Reservoirs are worth it if the Flood Irrigation was worth it for you because it adds even more food to revers. In the Early Modern Era the Grain Silos are worth it for the additional farmers slots if you need them, the food per farmer is also nice especially if you have 10 or more farmers as this can add 2 more population to a city.

In the Industrial Era the Fertiliser Plant is worth it due to the percentage based bonus. Industrial Silos are good if you don’t have many farers quarters. Otherwise, the pollution per farmers quarter can eat into your stability significantly and means it’s not worth building. The Whale Fishing is quite strong, especially if you have many Harbors, which provide the yields from not only 1 but every 2 adjacent tiles. This can theoretically add 20 or more food per Harbor depending on the number of coast tiles within 2 tiles of the harbor.

In the Contemporary Era, the Drone-Assisted Fertiliser Plant is again worth it adding a percentage boost to food yields, factory Farming is conditional on being able to deal with the pollution via a stability surplus and Pisciculture again is quite good if you have many harbors providing a theoretical boost of 40 or more food per harbor.

In summary, usually the food infrastructure that provides additional food yields to tiles is worth it provided you are working those tiles for food, the boosts for the harbor is quite good if you have at least a few harbors, the infrastructure adding more farmers slots is good if you need the slots and the percentage bonuses are excellent because they scale nicely.