Soil fertility and pastures

[bobcoof0]

Wondering if the soil fertility percentage effects the output of pastures? Like, if the grass grows better, will it make healthier animals who graze on it?

[Gamatron]

It determines how many animals can populate the pasture. It's fertility * size basically. More animals -> more workers -> more meat.

[Fant]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

It determines how many animals can populate the pasture. It's fertility * size basically. More animals -> more workers -> more meat.

@Gamatron is this still the case? i did a couple of experiments and in none of them i can see any bonus because of sweet water / canals whatever. The amount of animal per tile doesn't change at all. I compared maximum size pastures in the barren land (low fertility) with ones with surrounded canals and at fresh water rivers with no differences at all.

[Wilhelm]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

It determines how many animals can populate the pasture. It's fertility * size basically. More animals -> more workers -> more meat.

well if i understood that right the fertility doesn´t matter much except for the physical size of the pasture.
you can make a bigger pasture with the same amount of workers per animal efficiency and get as much meat per day as if you made it smaller on better fertility.

thats different for the fields where fertility does increase worker efficiency.

[Great Lakes Wildebeest]

when doing experiments with fertility on pastures I determined that fertility caused by sweet water does not boost animal capacity in a pasture so only the raw base fertility of a location increases the animal cap so in low base fertility area you need to zone more space for the same outputs of a high fertility space. Seems to be true will all pastures except balticrawlers as they are just pure space calculation.

So its kindof a waste to put it near a water source when that spot would work better as farmland rather than pastures.

The sweetwater modifier that appeared in v65 seems to boost output though but I don't understand how it works. Sweetwater still doesn't boost the animal capacity AND I seem to eventually get the max output for sweetwater without actually putting the pasture near water when people start working it. Balticrawlers still get 1.25 (which seems to be the max) regardless of where I put them.

For those wondering my methodology I found a high base fertility spot placed a pasture until it gets to 1 worker, let it get built. Copy the blueprint and paste it somewhere with less
base fertility, and one more copy with sweet water that would be technically *Higher fertility* but low base. You'll notice that if you open either the blueprint you can't save it because it will in both copies have less than the minimum required worker of 1 and would need more space added to get up to the minimum.

That does show that fertility does effect pastures but not irrigation so no need to put the pasture near water(Unless the sweetwater buff is just buggy)

[salzlaender]

TL;DR:

The higher the base fertility, the higher the number of animals on the pasture, the higher the "harvest".
Sweet water has no effect (all pastures automatically get 125% in the stats)

[Great Lakes Wildebeest]

Originally posted by salzlaender:

TL;DR:

The higher the base fertility, the higher the number of animals on the pasture, the higher the "harvest".
Sweet water has no effect (all pastures automatically get 125% in the stats)

Thanks for laymen terming that,

I tend to use a lot of info that is unnecessary for most people but I am all about the semantics in my day to day as generalities don't make sense to me without the process behind it.

[Raydell]

And what does the "Efficiency" stat do for pastures? When I add huts to a pasture (which raises efficiency), the predicted output doesn't change.

[Fant]

Originally posted by salzlaender:

TL;DR:

The higher the base fertility, the higher the number of animals on the pasture, the higher the "harvest".
Sweet water has no effect (all pastures automatically get 125% in the stats)

Important here is really the mention of "BASE fertility" and that water isn't affecting it at all. After you wrote this, i did some tests again. I build various onyx farms. Then wrote down the numbers for area and animals and production in a table and it showed a minor variance:
- The pasture with the LOWEST fertility: 0,014183206 food / tile or 83% of the best.
- The pasture with the normal/average fertility: 0,014860814 food / tile or 87% of the best.
- The pasture with the HIGHEST fertility: 0,017084906 food / tile.

So for me: it does affect the production measurable, yes. But, on average only about 10%. In min-max scenarios like 20%.

[Wilhelm]

Originally posted by salzlaender:

TL;DR:

The higher the base fertility, the higher the number of animals on the pasture, the higher the "harvest".
Sweet water has no effect (all pastures automatically get 125% in the stats)

thats not 100% correct. only more harvest per tile, not per worker. so it doesn´t really matter that much.

[Great Lakes Wildebeest]

Originally posted by Wüstenfuchs:

Originally posted by salzlaender:

TL;DR:

The higher the base fertility, the higher the number of animals on the pasture, the higher the "harvest".
Sweet water has no effect (all pastures automatically get 125% in the stats)

thats not 100% correct. only more harvest per tile, not per worker. so it doesn´t really matter that much.

You can see it as a measure of space efficiency rather than production as you need less space to match production if the pasture is on a higher base fertility spot