Chinampa

“The lake feeds us as the field never could.”

Unique building of the Aztecs — replaces the Granary.

The Chinampa is a floating garden: a rectangular plot of fabulously fertile soil built up from lake mud and rotting vegetation, anchored by willows at its corners. Ringing an Aztec city with chinampas turns shallow water into the most productive farmland in the world, yielding several harvests a year.

Stats

Effects

• +3 food per turn in the city (an ordinary Granary provides +2).

The Chinampa counts as a Granary for all purposes; the Aztecs cannot build an ordinary Granary.

Strategy

The Aztec war machine runs on population — cheap Jaguar Warriors and units that heal on kill still need cities that can absorb losses and keep producing. The Chinampa is what Aztec cities build between wars: +3 food is half again as much as every rival’s Granary, letting Aztec cities outgrow neighbours founded earlier. Build it early and everywhere. The growth it compounds is the difference between a raiding tribe and an empire.

Historical Background

Chinampas sustained Tenochtitlan, one of the largest cities on Earth when Cortés first saw it in 1519. Built in the shallows of Lake Texcoco, the plots were so productive — up to seven harvests a year — that a few square kilometres fed hundreds of thousands. The “floating gardens” of Xochimilco, still farmed today, are the surviving remnant of that system, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.