Experiments with farming

[Stoneface]

I started a roman campaign (M/M) recently and after I had secured the italian peninsula, Sicily and Messana I found myself pretty rich and my citis growing fast. I had two armies (4 Hastati, 4 Principe, 2 Triarii, 2 Equites, 4 Archer and a General) and probably had the money to field a third. Looking at my financials I found that I earned 10K from trade, taxes (low everywhere) and farming each. In Arretium I was barely able to build a large temple, a market and a armorer before the city grew again. Even on M/M with low taxes everywhere and some slaves from foreign cities this was too fast for me.
The Mod:
I gave each province a new hidden resource fertile1 for farming level 1-4, fertile2 for farming level 5-8 and so on. Next I reduced the farming level of all provinces to 3. I edited the farms so their new farming bounus is fertility level times the building level of the farm. The last farming level gives no further farming bonus but two points of trade and health. My hope is that this gives me more control over growth rates and the time to build some serious upgrades and that the AI will use the time to build more military buildings and better units. I have tested this only with fifty turns of british isolation but it looks promising. At the start the growth rate in Alexandria is 3% rather than 8% and I have seen some higher level units earlier than I expected. I have not played the 4.x versions of XGM much so I am lacking comparision.

[Sammur-amat]

easier solution : taxes highest you can get, lot of extermination & plenty expansion..hehe
ps -you think you have vaste number of armies?...just wait to see what gauls have...