Farming is in efficient

[Korovo]

Am I the only one who finds farming insanely inefficient? I saw a bunch of other threads that were complaining about farming bugs such as plowing OX being brought to the field and then returned without doing anything or a very strange pattern in choosing the plowing path, but I bet that is hard to fix for now.
I would suggest tweaking the farms efficiency and yield amount until these issues are fixed. That should be fairly easy in terms of development work.

[Liberator48]

My main town is farming specialized, i got 10 fields now and about 20 families working them across 4 farms. They can't even finish harvesting before October and then they start to plow over fields which still are unharvested xD

Even with 10 fields (all >1.0 and <1.4 morgen and roughly 1/3rd fallow each year) and only 270 pop, the yields are just barely enough. Getting bakery burgage increased bread production insanely over communal oven, so I do get plenty of bread and a lot of flour leftover even with 2 level 3 bakeries, but I always quickly run out of barley and flax, so Ale and linen production is harsh.

My point here is i guess that it works at this low pop still, but the farmers are working soooooooo inefficiently atm. I feel like this should be manageable by half as many farmer families, especially since I have 4 plow oxen.

[CatPerson]

I use a system where I build, say, six wheat farms, 1 or so morgen each, kinda square. All close to each other if possible. Two farmbuildings, each maybe 4-6 families in it (eventually).

I make two of fields be plowed/used right away. I set two to be active the next cycle, then the last two for the 3rd cycle/year. This way I have two fields each year, while the other recover/fallow. 1-2 windmills close to fields. I generally don't let granaries stock flour, I plan for 2-4 bakers to be closeish to the windmills instead.

Seems to work pretty well for me, I usually end up drowning in bread after a few seasons. I do use the plow/assigned ox. Oh and that's with fertile land, of course. If I want barely, I'd do similar. Six fields, only two active each year.

That said I don't tend to try to get farms up and running until later when I have a bit more population etc. Edit: and yes it's all kind of wonky, but it can still work fairly well if you work within its wonkiness. :)

[madpraxis]

Y'all are killing me. Even with the systems wackiness and weirdness that needs to be ironed out (I'm looking at you, plow field just to plow it again months later), farming works pretty good. Most peoples 'problems' with farming is...well, they aren't playing THIS game. They are trying to force *this* game to play like some other game. And guess what? That doesn't work. A good chunk of those complaints OP mentioned are people along the lines of 'I built fields so large, they can't finish working on them before the year ends, so farming is broken'.... Lets think about that. They didn't think about that... 1 morgen fields is about the max you should build, since 1 morgen is about what 1 family can work, see? Yet, because they don't want to play this game, and use this games mechanics, the system is broken...

Person above me groks it too.
I've never, ever, had a problem with farming. Ever. Release version and beta test. 1 family per 'active' field, fields near the farmhouse, houses near the farmhouse. Throw an extra one in if I didn't go Ox plowing. Never. A. Single. Problem. Even with the wacky hijinks.

[CatPerson]

To be fair, the first couple times I tried farms I did it all "wrong" too. Fields way too big, kept trying to alternate crops on same field (I didn't find that to work very well, YMMV).

Since the fallow setup is 3 slotted, and 2 fallow cycles essentially = full fertility again, I just went with that. It allows me to set it and forget it, basically. I don't want to have to mess with/think about altering what crop grows where/when, doing the sheep pasture stuff etc.

I've also drowned in flax/linen before. In towns with 600-850 ppl.

Barley farming is a bit more annoying because of the (pre-betapatch) silly ale consumption rate vs. growth cycle downtimes. I tried a few times to just import malt (not barley). If you're good at making money relatively quickly, thru trade or house-levels, it works with a lot less hassle and over time, as a steady trickle, you can get away with importing surprisingly/relatively little malt even for very large populations. At least on Normal/Easy approval/tolerance settings, I didn't try harshest.

[rochetjeremy]

Since the patch, farming is op because you can harvets in march even if growth is less than 50%, you still have the maximun capacity.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by rochetjeremy:

Since the patch, farming is op because you can harvets in march even if growth is less than 50%, you still have the maximun capacity.

It won't be OP'd for me, because I also can't be bothered to do even that one micromanagement feature. I just like to set them up and forget all about it. Hahaha.

But yeah, it sounds like it could be OP if that's the case/it remains that way when patch goes "live."

[madpraxis]

You are as bad as me. I don't even care. Like, once I figured out how things work, I just set it and literally forget it.
Last time I did that I couldn't figure out why people were complaining about not enough food types.

Bread.
And flour.
Everywhere. Rapidly solved by dedicated bread and flour granary next to the ONE windmill and the bakers, while shutting it out of everywhere else...

Also, why the hell people building multiple windmills, hah. I had one, for 4 active wheat fields, and it kept on trucking all winter long, nice steady supply of flour (and then bread) all year long >.>

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Also, why the hell people building multiple windmills, hah. I had one, for 4 active wheat fields, and it kept on trucking all winter long, nice steady supply of flour (and then bread) all year long >.>

I'd guess because they get the windmill pantry is full message too often, or think it'll speed up production time. Which it does, if you're farming and feeding enough to really warrant it vs. the extra workers. Usually it just means you end up with that 2k surplus bread that you can't even trade enough of it away, a bit earlier.

I think somewhere around 800-1000 population you'd have to increase # of fields/workers some perhaps. But it's also possible by the time you need more than 4-5 *active* fields per year (per crop) most avg. people's PC's would be down to a crawl anyway.

[firestorm]

Originally posted by rochetjeremy:

Since the patch, farming is op because you can harvets in march even if growth is less than 50%, you still have the maximun capacity.

You didn't need the patch (or the test version) to be able to harvest in March/April.
Game allowed you to do that since the early access version launched!
Been getting harvest in March and September of every year for awhile now.
Harvest grain (emmer or rye) in March & replant with Barley for the September harvest.
And I haven't downloaded the new test version.

Mix a single field of Flax in occasionally based on the need for Flax or fertility without ever needing to let a field go fallow for a season.
As a general rule barley makes good fertility conditions for either type grain and wheat/Rye does the same for barley, Flax makes decent fertility conditions for Rye & resets the Barley/wheat loop so to speak.
Somewhat work's in the real world that way too, My parents used to plant Rye in the fall just to plow it under in the spring & the reasoning behind it was for the natural fertilizer.

Helps if your fields are all on land with decent fertility for all emmer, barley and flax to begin with, but works decent even if one of those fertility is a bit low. Rye perk helps a lot as well.

[ᛟᚠᚾᛁᚱ]

Farming in this game is broken and it doesn’t work, there is very little millet, it is extremely unprofitable to build huge fields because in this game it is tied to the month only when they sow, and a maximum of 8 families work, in the end you will be harvesting from large fields, about two years

[madpraxis]

Its...Why would you build huge fields? Thats the worst thing to do. Make something so large your people can't even work it.
1 morgen= 1 family.
Hell, 1 ACTIVE morgen= family.
Building big is, frankly, a horrible idea. Which people keep doing. With fields. With veggies. With orchards...and then complaining that they can literally SEE things not working that big, yet it's somehow the games fault...

Farming IS broken. But even broken, it still works pretty damn well.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Its...Why would you build huge fields? Thats the worst thing to do. Make something so large your people can't even work it.
1 morgen= 1 family.
Hell, 1 ACTIVE morgen= family.
Building big is, frankly, a horrible idea. Which people keep doing. With fields. With veggies. With orchards...and then complaining that they can literally SEE things not working that big, yet it's somehow the games fault...

Farming IS broken. But even broken, it still works pretty damn well.

I agree. I'm not even all that good in the game, yet my .4 or .5 morgen fields are working really well. I regularly build 4-5 small fields for one family, so that I can set them to fallow at different times. That way, fertility gets kept, and I have steady flow of grains. Since fields don't cost anything, it's just a matter of finding the balance between fallow fields and grain fields.

[Kedryn]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Lets think about that. They didn't think about that... 1 morgen fields is about the max you should build, since 1 morgen is about what 1 family can work, see? Yet, because they don't want to play this game, and use this games mechanics, the system is broken...

Person above me groks it too.
I've never, ever, had a problem with farming. Ever. Release version and beta test. 1 family per 'active' field, fields near the farmhouse, houses near the farmhouse. Throw an extra one in if I didn't go Ox plowing. Never. A. Single. Problem. Even with the wacky hijinks.

Mine's a little nuts, but a herd of oxen plows it all fast. My way isn't ideal, but it works for me; just a lot of "force harvest" then some "unforce harvest".

Harvesting starts in May and ends around July/August. I think I'm going to leave everything fallow next year because I have too much everywhere. 800 bread here, 2.5k bread next door because I used the bread to barter for berries. Poor bakers are exhausted.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3246393411

[madpraxis]

Oh dear lord. I thought my 1k plus city with a half a dozen fields was nuts.
You, my friend, have problems.
And I applaud you for those problems, because that is completely gonzo, hah.

Eh, wot? I just noticed, low pop, high houses. You go for single wides for everyone?

[Kedryn]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Eh, wot? I just noticed, low pop, high houses. You go for single wides for everyone?

Mostly, yeah. I had a problem early on with markets when I made a bunch of doubles level 3, and have been afraid to use them much ever since. ;)