Small farm & herb garden as embarking blueprint

[Haryûu]

Hi !

EDIT : of course I will never take TWO of then in one expedition embarkation !

I was playing and started wonder a lot when drafting on a P6 run (this is where my overall progression is about).
I obviously know the benefit of each of these blueprints but I'm wondering really if taking these are worth the tons of points they ask at embarkation ?
Moreover, I don't like the idea of just going for something because it's an habit because this game tends to punish habits on drafts.

Short story long, is this a solid choice to take either of these plan ?
Flour production / Ranch / trade and various usage of herbs such as secondary ingredient of bakery + dew etc... are all the criteria where each type of farm are quite better at some degree, making a good decision hard to pick.

So I wanted to know from people who played a lot more (and who plays lot better than me !) if there was something I was missing or if just i could go with more materials and draft or just go like "yolo I want to play this building". I often tend to boycott plantation while I do like what yields it gives !
I know that higher prestige might be the element I lack so i would be pleased to be enlightened !

Thanks a lot for the pieces of advice you'll provide me ! :)

[Alexander]

For me an extra blueprint is worth more than pretty much any resources. Especially a blueprint of a building which is a foundation of several production chains.

I usually prefer to take small farm since it is more versatile, even though herb garden is good for trade and advanced goods production.

[Haryûu]

So in a nutshell I shall go for what my starting biome / species need (for instance if I see a lot of pie eaters and beavers with wine, plantation might be a good choice on a biome that easily provide flour materials).
Otherwise just go for the cheapest since both are good (i've been looking why cost sometime change, discovered it's rng based so going herb garden could allow me to bring stones for glade events).
Thanks !

[Samseng Yik]

Farming is usually less efficient unless you have the right race + really really out of food node.
If there are available food node, you are better off just manually harvest them instead of thinking farming.
It is also much better if you farm something that is not nature to a certain biome.
But if asking me to pick farm building vs delivery line.
I will take delivery line always for the majority of my race

There already some post where people overly rely on farming and started to forgot what is the real resource provided to you end up ccausing more problem to settlement.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

If your main goal is to not lose, it'll help with that.
If your main goal is to win quickly, there are better options.

[kory]

Originally posted by Spacesuit Spiff:

If your main goal is to not lose, it'll help with that.
If your main goal is to win quickly, there are better options.

Yeah, I think this is a major point of farms. I tend to play a slow game, and farms are excellent for that style, but if your goal is to do fast wins then farms are ok, but not great.

[UltiBand]

Originally posted by Spacesuit Spiff:

If your main goal is to not lose, it'll help with that.
If your main goal is to win quickly, there are better options.

For 5-6 point spent farms feel like a waste, you can spend just 2 points to get Amber which is much more valuable at the beginning of the game until you have trader price increase from Prestige Difficulty.

Faster start = faster blueprint obtaining = faster access to efficient recipes = less resources wasted for uneffective recipes. Like a snowball. And yeah, resource nodes are much better than farms in first 2-3 years, as was said above. Farm is just a dead weight in first years; you want to find at least 2 Fertile Soil to rely on them; and sometimes you don't even have enough staff to work on farms to begin with, you want them to work on resource nodes which grant more resources.

[Beowulf]

Personally I rather take the advanced camps over the farms. As useful as farms are there is no guarantee that you will find a glade that will have them unless you have humans which than leaves you with a useless blueprint and you have far better odds of getting some kind of blueprint as a reputation reward or from traders than with camps.

With camps while there is a chance you will open up a glade without that resources you are very likely to find it at some point when you expand and you will get a benfit from even the small nodes while without the upgraded camps you won't be able to access the large ones which can be hundreds of units of the resources sitting around uselessly.

[Samseng Yik]

Like Beowulf said. Big nodes (or big food nodes) are so good.
If you got 2 big food nodes, you can harvest for years, and produce much more than farming, less risk of waste also.

1 very important key to manage in ATS is, do not over populate your settlement.
Once you see important building has enough workers, you should stop taking new people in.
If you win faster, you avoid the hostility of bigger population and yearly hostility.

I see a lot people being "fans of farming" because how it can support huge population or "sustainable production" for more than 10 years. That is not really the right way to play this game.

[kory]

Originally posted by Samseng Yik:

I see a lot people being "fans of farming" because how it can support huge population or "sustainable production" for more than 10 years. That is not really the right way to play this game.

To quote the brilliant Samseng Yik, in the thread https://steamcommunity.com/app/1336490/discussions/1/4301572010782607667/#c4301572010778938783
he said "There is no "correct way to play a game"
Anyone can say anything.
You can plan your own way to enjoy."
So, I guess I'll let you think about that.

[Samseng Yik]

Ah yes true, I am a bit flickery

[Haryûu]

I won't answer individually to every message since i'm quite surprised it got about 10 answer during EU night ahah.

As a matter of fact i'm not the kind of player that over/perma pick farms.
My last run in royal woodland was a good example, 7 glades open, 4 dangerous, 2 forbidden 1 normal through human talent, got only 1 fertile soil in "high" setting lmao.

However, I quite frankly never pick a farm on the marsh, best case scenario I find ONE node.

Regarding camps I've always been quite unlucky yet. I've sometime bringed an herbalist camp because it's my only unlock, and it was indeed a good decision because the biome had these 2* nodes as possibility. Well I found only wheat veggies meat and eggs.

I think i'll just go for meat 2* when I unlock it, I feel like the greenies one are just wanting to troll me.
This is why bringing one of these makes me uncomfortable : on medium settings it's rare to at least not benefit one patch of farming, while camps are subject to your map RNG way harder (density vs kind of ressource odds). However I would LOVE to get more situation with camps since I still want to see how snowbally can a clan hall + mass gatherers in the marsh can be.

I have an other question however :

Originally posted by Samseng Yik:

Once you see important building has enough workers, you should stop taking new people in.
If you win faster, you avoid the hostility of bigger population and yearly hostility.

I've never tried to stall newcomers too long because I thought at somepoint I'll get punished like some queen impatience for not picking people. Is my "only" punishment the fact I'm not ticking the newcomers timer ?
And If, for an extreme example I stop taking newcomers at year 4 and restart at 9, will the newcomer pack size be like it was, so a 3-4 personn or a BIG lategame pack of like 10 people ?

Thanks a lot for all your answers !

[arjensmit79]

They are only worth taking if you still have points available after you have:
-Extra people
-Stones
-All 1 point food options
-Amber if its 3 points
-Fuel if its 3 points

So The blueprints are usually for seal games when you may have saved up like 30 reserve points. In that case, you can take one of those blueprints and a training gear delivery line.

[Haryûu]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

They are only worth taking if you still have points available after you have:
-Extra people
-Stones
-All 1 point food options
-Amber if its 3 points
-Fuel if its 3 points

So The blueprints are usually for seal games when you may have saved up like 30 reserve points. In that case, you can take one of those blueprints and a training gear delivery line.

When you are talking about saved up reserve points you mean the option you get from crates which give +4 embarkation points ? Isn't that limited to 1 or 2 next runs ?

[mostly willing]

Originally posted by Haryûu:

When you are talking about saved up reserve points you mean the option you get from crates which give +4 embarkation points ? Isn't that limited to 1 or 2 next runs ?

if you have done the first couple of seals - yeah. later on you can get a lot of points saved up for the seal bc the cycles get longer with each beaten seal

[hardy_conrad]

I never spend embarkation points on blueprints myself. Farms in particular seem to get throw up pretty frequently by traders, and for very affordable prices. A delivery line for something exotic on the other hand strikes me as extremely useful. Great for dangerous and forbidden glade events, and otherwise also ideal for making packs of trade goods. Probably tied with extra villagers for utility, to my mind anyway.