In Civilization 7, mastering the art of food production is your fastest route to a booming population and unstoppable empire growth. Unlock key technologies, harness fertile tiles, and choose leaders who boost food yields to accelerate your cities’ expansion and dominate the map with thriving settlements. Ready to turn your civilization into a powerhouse? Here’s how to get more food and watch your population soar across Nintendo, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms.
How to grow population with Food in Civilization 7
In Civilization 7, growing your population hinges on maximizing food production, as food is the essential resource that drives settlement growth. To increase population, focus on expanding your city’s worked tiles to those that yield high amounts of food, such as farms on meadows and plains, fishing boats along coasts, and pastures or plantations near livestock. Building food-enhancing structures like granaries, fishing quays, and gardens further boosts food output. Additionally, researching technologies like Agriculture, Pottery, and Sailing unlocks improvements that increase food yields. Selecting leaders and civilizations with bonuses to food production accelerates growth, while policies and social institutions can provide extra food bonuses. Monitoring your city’s food income allows you to reduce the turns needed for the next population increase, enabling faster expansion and development of your empire.
Every settlement in Civilization 7 starts with a population of one and grows as that settlement generates Food. The population doesn’t actually require food, though. Instead, you’ll hit thresholds – once you generate a certain amount of Food, you’ll get a citizen and can grow your settlement. The game calls these growth moments.
This means that increasing how much Food your settlement generates determines how fast your settlement grows into more tiles that have other yields like Production, Happiness, or just even more Food.
You can track your current population and how long you have until the next growth moment by looking at the numbers next to the settlement’s name. The number in the circle directly right of the name is the current population and the number below that is how many turns before the next growth moment.
How to increase Food in Civilization 7
In Civilization 7, increasing food production is key to growing your settlements and expanding your empire. You can boost food production from the beginning of the game by choosing leaders like Ashoka or civilizations like the Mississippians that offer automatic food bonuses. Focus on improving tiles with farms and fishing boats, and construct food-producing buildings such as granaries, baths, and fishing quays, which can be enhanced with adjacency bonuses. Technologies like Agriculture and Animal Husbandry and civics such as Clan Networks and Castes can also substantially increase your food production. As your towns grow, you can specialize them into farming or fishing towns to further increase food yields, which can then be transported to nearby cities. Additionally, food resources like Cotton, Dates, and Fish in the Antiquity and Exploration Ages, and Spices, Sugar, Wine, and Truffles in the Modern Age can provide significant food boosts.
Food and Production are the two most important yields when growing a settlement. And if you want more of either of them (or any yield), you’ll need Food to grow your settlement.
You can start improving your Food yield with your choices in starting a game. Leaders like Ashoka, World Renouncer and Pachacuti get an automatic bonus to Food, and the Mississippian civilization gets an extra Food yield for certain tiles.
None of those are going to make a huge difference in your yield, though. Let’s talk about the more practical ways to improve your yield.
Food tile yields
Like any yield, increasing the amount of Food you get each turn starts with the tiles your settlement expands into. You’re looking for tiles that give you things like farms and fishing boats. As your Tech and Civics improve, and as you grow your settlement and get adjacency bonuses, those early tiles with small yields will only keep improving. Don’t worry about how much the early tiles produce. Just get the farms established.
Food Buildings
The first building you unlock will be a granary – your first Food Building. As you continue your game, you’ll unlock more like baths (unlocked with Currency), fishing quays (unlocked with Sailing), and gardens (unlocked with Irrigation). These buildings all generate Food on their own and tend to come with a lot of adjacency bonuses that will keep driving your yield up.
Food Tech, Civics, and Policies
Researching Tech and some Civics will get you a lot of bonuses to your Food yield. In the Antiquity Age, the first four nodes in the Tech tree – Agriculture, Sailing, Pottery, and Animal Husbandry – all give you more Food. After those, you’ll have to wait for Navigation Mastery before you get another bump.
None of the Civics in the Antiquity Age give you bonuses to your Food yield, but a couple unlock Policies (that you can enact after Celebrations) that do.
- Clan Networks from Mysticism Mastery gets you a 2 Food to every settlement
- Castes from Citizenship gives you 25% Food in towns
Remember that each Age has its own Tech and Civic trees, so check for new ways to produce more Food with each age transition.
Food farming towns
Once you start expanding your civilization beyond one city, you’ll have another option for feeding your people. Once you grow a town’s population to seven people, that town can focus on producing something. One of the options will be either a Fishing Town or a Farming Town depending on the location.
Selecting this stops the town’s population from growing any further. However, the town gets a bonus to all Food yields and then sends that Food along roads and the coastline to any nearby Cities. For the most part, nearby towns and cities will get connected automatically, but you can also build roads with a merchant unit.
How can I maximize food production to rapidly grow my cities in Civ 7
To maximize food production and rapidly grow your cities in Civilization 7, focus on several key strategies:
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Settle in Fertile Locations: Choose city sites with tiles that naturally produce high food yields, such as meadows, plains, and coastal tiles with fish or other aquatic resources.
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Improve Tiles with Farms and Plantations: Build farms on meadows and plains and plantations on resources like cotton, dates, and fish to boost food output. Farms arranged in triangle or diamond patterns yield exponential growth, especially after unlocking Feudalism.
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Utilize Food Resources by Era: Prioritize acquiring and improving food resources that provide significant bonuses depending on the era-Cotton, Dates, and Fish in Antiquity; upgraded yields in the Exploration Age; and Truffles, Spices, Sugar, and Wine in the Modern Era.
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Construct Key Buildings: Build granaries, water mills, and other food-enhancing structures early to increase food storage and production. These buildings often benefit from adjacency bonuses when placed near farms or pastures.
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Leverage Internal Trade Routes: Establish internal trade routes between your cities to funnel extra food to growing settlements, accelerating population growth.
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Choose Growth-Boosting Leaders and Policies: Select leaders and civilizations that provide bonuses to food production or population growth. Adopt social policies and institutions that increase food yields, such as Clan Networks (+2 food per settlement) and Casts (+25% food in cities).
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Manage City Focus and Population Allocation: Adjust city focus to farming or fishing to boost food production when appropriate, and assign new population to tiles that yield high food to sustain growth.
By combining these approaches-optimal city placement, tile improvements, resource exploitation, infrastructure, trade routes, and leadership choices-you can significantly increase your food income per turn, reducing the time needed for your cities to gain new population and expand rapidly.
What are the most effective ways to increase food output quickly in Civ 7
The most effective ways to quickly increase food output in Civilization 7 are:
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Settle in Fertile Locations: Found cities on tiles with high natural food yields such as cotton, dates, fish, or fertile plains and riversides to maximize base food production.
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Build Farms and Arrange Food Triangles: Improve tiles with farms, ideally in triangle or diamond patterns unlocked by the Feudalism civic, to exponentially boost food yields.
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Construct Food-Boosting Buildings: Prioritize early buildings like granaries and water mills, then advance to baths, fishing quays, and gardens that provide additional food and adjacency bonuses.
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Acquire and Improve Food Resources: Target resources that provide high food yields per era-Cotton, Dates, Fish in Antiquity; upgraded yields in Exploration Age; and Truffles, Sugar, Spices, and Wine in the Modern Age-to significantly raise food output.
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Use Internal Trade Routes and Town Focus: Set newly founded towns to Farming or Fishing Town focus to funnel their food surplus to nearby cities, accelerating growth in your main settlements.
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Research Food-Enhancing Technologies and Civics: Prioritize techs like Agriculture, Sailing, Pottery, and Animal Husbandry early on, which increase food yields from tiles and buildings, and adopt civics that boost food production.
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Assign Citizens to High-Food Tiles: As your population grows, allocate citizens to work tiles producing 2 or more food to generate surplus food for growth rather than just breaking even.
Combining these strategies-optimal city placement, tile improvements, resource exploitation, infrastructure, trade routes, and tech progression-will maximize your food production and speed up city growth effectively in Civilization 7.
