Straw & farming.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Doing the numbers on balancing out farming for 30 day seasons.

How does one gather enough straw automaticly to produce enough feed for the pigs?

->
PIGSTRY :
**I presume that a pigstry without it's 5th spot free cannot generated piglets, correct?
**if I add the numbers together.. the optional setting for self-sufficience is 2 male pigs, 2 female ones.
-> chance per season on a piglet with 2F2M = 51%, with 1F3M = 45%, with 3F1M = 39%
**this will give 1 piglet every 2d season, on average once a spot is free, that will age in 4 seasons, so if you always have a piglet growing/being born, it should suffice to rejuvinate your pigs continuesly by killing/selling the oldest one, once you have 5 adult ones.
**Am I correct this killing/selling can not be done manual, so once every 6 seasons, I will have to give my pigstry the order to sell one, or go to it and slay 1 pig.
**
This will mean we have permanently 4 pigs, 1 piglet.
with years of 120 days, this means they will consume :
675,576 animal feed a year
->
the pigstry if managed like this will than output 4800 manure per year, per skill level of the pig breeder. (with a maximum of skill level 10
-> thats enough to in turn fertilise 4800-48000 farm fields a year.
**with maximum field size 16x16 = 256 fields, thats WAY more manure than one ever needs.

QUESTIONS :
-am I correct in that piglets can ONLY be born if at least 1 of 5 spots in the pigstry are free?
-am I correct in the above numbers?

BARN
-> to produce each year 676 annimal feed
675,576 rye a year
675,576 oat a year
3377,88 straw a year

FIELD
-> if done manual, we can cycle rye & oat on the same field, but villagers not get that.
-> a field produces 4 stalks
-> farming skill gives +75% chance to gain 1 extra stalk upon pickup (manual only) meaning the human player gets on average 7 stalks from a field, where the villagers get only a flat 4.
-> each stalk when trashed produces 1 or 2 seeds (50% chance, so 1.5 average)
-> this means that the human player gets 10.5 grains per field (9.5 gain, if the 1 is subtracted for reseeding), while a villager gaains 6 grains per field (5 gain, if the 1 is subtracted ror reseeding.
***so player based farming is almost twice as effective versus villager run farming.
->
to produce the needed amounts of rye and oat by a villager, to sustain our pigs, we need 136 fields of rye, and 136 fields of oat. (thats enough for 680 each a year)
-> a human player who has a bigger yield and can crop rotate, needs only 72 fields (684 each a year)

QUESTIONS
-> am I correct that crop rotation (using 1 field for 2 types of crop) is not possible when letting villagers do the work?
-> again are the above numbers correct?

STRAW
however this leaves me with a deficiency in straw for the feed. (since I presume trashing will yield only 1 straw per stalk?)
->
so to get upto our amount of straw
-> so I need to grow more rye , oat or grain.
339 aditional fields (or 169 aditional crop rotated ones) -> to get the staw manual.
673 additional fields -> to have the villagers make the straw.

***so JUST to keep our pigstry supported with feed
-> we will need 241 manually managed crop rotated crops
-> we will need 945 villager managed fields

those are VERY large farmplots basicly, 1 full 16x16 field when done manual, and 4 of them when done by villagers JUST to maintain our pigs.

[Ele]

You can set your miners to "mine" straw (using a pickaxe!) which will help with making animal feed.

As for crops, I tried to micromanage crop rotations but it was too annoying after my village got larger. Instead, I just made fields for each crop--they are not always in use, but unless you have very limited farming land, this seems the easiest way to manage crops.

[hubbemattsson]

Straw dont take a pickaxe , no. No durability loss in the excavation shed.

[BanDHMO]

And that is why you don't play 120-day years. :)

But, yeah, more seriously, if you are going to play very long years, you are going to have a massive amount of fields, because each field still gives you one harvest per year unless you micromanage it (and even then it'll be twice a year).

The other thing to keep in mind is that you don't have to have pigs to get manure. Other animals generate it too and you can collect it manually, but only pigs can have workers automatically produce it.

EDIT: Also, yes, of course it's possible to crop-rotate fields that are worked by villagers. All you do is watch when the field is harvested and immediately designate it with the new crop to rotate to.

[rebekaktus]

Wow, that's detailed! I did not check all the numbers. But:

Pigsty:
**correct, it takes one free spot to get a piglet.
But you don't have to kill/sell them if you don't want to, I think they will just die of old age at some point. So theoretically it should work that the remaining 4 pigs generate a new one automatically to fill the free spot - unless you are so unlucky to get 4 of the same at some point.
**Each F has a 15% probability (or was it 20%?) per M to reproduce. So 1F + 3M = 45% probability. The other combinations I'm not going to check because probability is a ***** and I totally failed that maths test. But it seems to me that you would have enough manuer with just 1 or 2 pigs, so why not sell the rest of the piglets at the beginning of every season to save animal food?
**selling can be done in the management tab. But why every 6 seasons? They can live for 15 years - minimum! (as far as I understand, each species in this game has a mimimum life expectancy. And after that they don't just die but have a certain probability to die at each season turn. So if you're lucky, your pigs will live much longer than 15 years...)

Fields:
As suggested above, you only have to change the crop tipe in the management tab. You don't even have to wait until it's harvested, you can do it at the beginning of the season when it is ready for harvest. (So assign oat at the betinning of spring and assign rye at the beginning of autumn. They will still harvest normally - as long as it's the right season.)

But wouldn't it be easyer:
If you play 30-day seasons, why not have a herbalist collect some berries and mushrooms and let them rot? (The berries and mushrooms, obviously, not the herbalist!) Seems to me like far less effort than to cultivate a huge number of fields just to feed the pigs who produce fertilizer for those fields...

My solution:
When I play 30-d-season, I usually focus the fields on something I don't need and only want to sell aniway, like flax --> clothes. One fisherman allone can feed a decently sized village by producing dried fish.

Edit: Also, the pigs don't die when they run out of food. They just produce less manuer. And stop reproducing, I think.

[invivo4u]

Gather reeds!

[Morri]

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

QUESTIONS :
-am I correct in that piglets can ONLY be born if at least 1 of 5 spots in the pigstry are free?

Correct. No new animals will be born if you have no free spots in their building.

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

FIELD
-> if done manual, we can cycle rye & oat on the same field, but villagers not get that.

You can change the crops you want planted in the management of the field. Default the crop you planted there last, will be in the planning, but you can change that and your villagers will follow the planning. (You'll have to change it every time though, no seasonal settings)

Originally posted by rebekaktus:

Edit: Also, the pigs don't die when they run out of food. They just produce less manuer. And stop reproducing, I think.

That is correct.