Continuing on this... 

Planet Class/3 = Food

+

Extreme Planet Class/5 = Food

+

Occasional resource improvement

= Total food supply

Techs give some bonuses to the formulas. Rebalance the city food costs, etc.

Lower pop to production bonuses since we've reopened so much land for development as factories etc. As desired .

S'all good. I just agree with Frogboy about it currently being tedious. 

And yea... It's mostly not fun and not interesting to place farming improvements. Special resource tiles don't force a interesting decision really... So like... What's the point of placing at all? 

There is still some interesting strategy to where you put your cities though, just like now. 

I'm interested in what you come up with though!

I think that would be fairly difficult to communicate to players.

Let me think about how to mix your idea up with mine.

Gauntlet03 makes a fair point: it's a bit strange that you can have a population on a planet but that population can't make any food. Should there be a certain level of food production that's automatic? I think the idea of food production being tied to Planet Class makes sense (further tied to planetary types and traits).

Obviously, if you want to grow your population - and obviously increase production - that's the reason for farms etc.

One little mechanic you might like - or might like not - to consider if you're talking about food as a resource:

Food is now a global resource - you can have Food Planet 1 and as long as that's making enough chow, you can food your 8 planet empire.

Except if the Drengin destroy the ships that are transporting it...

I appreciate this might be difficult to implement (should a player have to build Food Ships? Have to build Escorts? Hit Points? etc) but it's another path to conquest: starve Planet 5 out by killing the Food Ships from Planet 2 and wait for the white flag. A much more aggressive version of Embargo, which just stops trading with other civilizations. It means you don't need to invade - or at least buys time to get ready to invade and obviously weakens Planet 5's defence.

I don't understand the food mechanics at all so I just play synthetic.  

Like when I build farms my population still won't grow past 3.  Does food do anything at all? 

I'm of two minds. First, I'm fine with the system as is. However the AI doesn't handle it well and I often trade them food tech just to see if they'll put it to use.

City building is a two step process and the first step brings you no value at all so I think that stalls the AI. I can build a semi-circle of farms around a tile in preparation for the city I'll then be able to build within them and get the pop cap bonus from having farms around the city. This is backwards to how other hubs work.

I think the only thing having specific tiles for food will do is make the AI incapable of building anything else there, so they'll be forced to build for food. This could also be done by making the AI think of city placement first and be inflexible in that decision. Pick a tile either with a population bonus and/or a lot of surrounding tiles (consider future terraforming if there's not good options) and decide this WILL be a city and god damn any improvement that gets in its way! Then either build farms around the tile or use some isolated tiles for farms. The AI may have an easier time with food if it ignores the fact that it is empire wide and assumes a planet will need its own supply rather than waiting for somewhere else to produce it.

Ok i understand the food mechanic. I think it makes it unfair to be organic. I even liked it better in 3 classic where farms increased population with a little bit of food per turn. I stopped playing the krynn over this. I basically play the slyne. Needing to mine promethium over a period of turns is a lot easier than flat food. I dont like the ops suggestion of not fixing this by making food a resource. I think that a farm producing 0.1 per turn at least puts this on par with 0.1 promethium per turn with the starbase concept. Having to build a constructor for this is minor. 

I think the supply chain has to remain abstract unless we want to return to constructor spam days lol.

But you can represent it in small ways... For example a siege mechanic for planets that lowers or servers their connections to the empire etc.

Allow every planet with oceans one or more tiles of water developable uniquely for fishing or fish farming based upon the size of the planet. The AI would only have one choice with the development of the tile- Food.

You could name the improvement a Fishery, it Stocks the worlds oceans with Fish.

The solution also brings a little more realism into the game considering the amount of reliance Earth has upon her oceans for food.

How about you get a minimal amount of food with the capital.  Each tile has a certain amount of food capability which would work as a multiplier for whatever food building you put on it.  Some tiles are real low or zero (desert or similar) and some are high (good farmland).  As you build food capable buildings on it, you get more but based on the original food capability.  So a desert planet will have few tiles that can make food and each one does not have a high capability.  Gaia planets would have mostly farmable tiles and each one would have a high capability.  You might even have some planets with no food capability beyond the capital itself.  Here you might could build very special buildings that gave some food or add the ability to grow food as part of the economic space stations.  You can build other buildings on the farmland but you get no food, only whatever the building is made to create such as production.  If you destroy the building, you could go back to farming on the land maybe at a reduced level since you may have messed it up giving it a reduced food capability from the original amount.  You could even have technology that improves this food capability over time.