In my personal, never-finished mod, I have made a radical change to food production.
Advantages from this:
So far, I haven't found any drawbacks.
- Raised the food bonus for irrigation to +2 for Plains and Deserts
- Allowed irrigation on Hills with +2 food
- Raised the production of Jungles to 2 food and 1 shield
- Allowed irrigation without fresh water with an early Medieval tech
- Increased the base cost for irrigation to 12 turns (from 8)
- Removed the Wheat bonus
Advantages from this:
- Makes the starting position less decisive, because you can mostly get decent food production
- Favours slow expansion because you need more time to develop the land
- Makes Despotism worse because other governments get 3 food from irrigated Plains
- Makes more of the world inhabitable after some work
So far, I haven't found any drawbacks.