First let me say that I'm an Xboxer, so that implies things like 500 pop limit, etc.

I'm curious if others think this way: farms take 6 people and ranches take 2. I feel strongly that it is beneficial to ranch beef vs farm since beef sells well, upgrades without consuming power or land, and since it invollves fewer farmers, it therefore requires less support people from your population. This should lower costs and raise $, since non-production workers are at best a $0 net income (if you recoup through rent/fun). Also, it seems that my income per pop is the same or higher than when I build nore sophisticated industries, since they increase the support required. I.e., a rum setup requires 6 plus farmers and a bunch or workers. If all those people ranched, I think its as good or better $.

Love to hear anyones analysis of this...

-j

It sounds like an interesting idea to have an all cattle ranch economy.

Some down sides though would be that it takes up a lot of land. I think goats or llamas would be better since, from my observations, they require only about half as much land since their grazing dosn't seem to ruin the land nearly as fast as cattle.

Another downside would be that it would become harder to employ everyone since the ranchs use so few people. If your lacking in people then that might be ok but I find that to be rare. I often have more people then I can find work for as it is.

Be that as it may I think I will try an all ranch economy and see how well it works.

I've started to do this very recently. Usually when you start a game, the corn farms are too close to the 'city' and as you expand, you tend to build on crops and destroy the farming land. By this point in the game, I'm usually low on people to fill up work spaces, even if I have Open Doors policy and lets not forget the Llama pandemic brings no people. What I do, is demolish the corn farms, and on average 3 brand new ranches produce a bit more meals than a corn farm... When developed, it takes just 2 ranches (4 workers) to produce the same amount of food as a farm would without taking up too much land with crops.

I've found this an effective way to manage over-population, provide better food, use up less space and most of the time I get profit from 'smoked beef' being exported since it's too much for my islanders to consume. It's the best value-for-money way to feed your people and doesn't require any real resources.

Make sure you dont get that mad cow disease epidemic. That would kill your ranch only economy lol.

Using Ranches is quite good, however you must remember a few points when deciding on how dependent you are when it comes to ranches.

1.
The epidemic event is quite possible when it comes to ranches, I do believe that food and health quality will be negatively effected when this occurs for a set period of time, affecting it more the more dependent your population uses ranches.

2.
They constantly need pastures, and also soil quality decreases over the years as ranches are used for pastures, cattle especially over time deplete soil and as a result the land becomes unsuitable for even versatile crops such as corn in you choose to chance in the future.

3.
If your really tight on land, using ranches helps with this, however at the expense of food quality over the long run with a growing population. Being mainly dependent on only 1 source of food even with double rations edict enable will not increase your food quality unless you have a high variety of food available to your population. (Can't imagine how vegetarians would survive in a meat only country lol)

(22-06-2010 12:55 PM)Sent by Royalty Wrote:  Can't imagine how vegetarians would survive in a meat only country lol

Cannot imagine how vegetarians could survive at all under my dictatorship!!!

To address some of the comments...

One of the biggest challenges facing xbox players is the pop cap. Of all the game resources, people are the tightest. I went to using ranches to improve the ratio of population that is money generating vs not. I see the 500 ceiling as ultimately a fight to optimally employ rather than fight unemployment; if more of that finite resource are used in support, you generate less income. Doesn't that give ranches the edge?

Disease: it occurs to me that I might be playing with events turned off *cough*

Food quality: I haven't had any issues as long as I build a papaya and banana or two.

Soil: I haven't seen the ranches degrade in production very much. I think its been offset by the farmer's skill increase, but I'm not sure.

I've had no trouble eclipsing any of the minerals, save maybe gold, with beef. I just see that it compares roughly to other 'crops' in terms of land use, but favorably in pop use and support services required. The income is very comparable, too, as far as I can tell.

(21-06-2010 03:19 PM)Mike Langlois Wrote:  Make sure you dont get that mad cow disease epidemic. That would kill your ranch only economy lol.

Definitely not a base to build an economy on, but that point was for feeding your own people, not for export. More ranches with 2-3 farms and fishing is enough to sustain a huge population with minimal export. I've never had food quality drop below 90 with this method.

i found the ranches to be the #1 solution for the islands food problems. there was a time when i used to have people dying from starvation every year. and the marketplaces wasnt helping to distribute the more than enough food production evenly at all. now i just used the tactic of placing ranches dotted around my city. covers all food problems PLUS they actually pumps money into the economy. yay.