Thoughts On Optimizing Agriculture

[Timberwolf]

I have a town with nearly 300 population on a small map. This is my first town so I have been using it to learn and see what I can do. I have noticed a few things and I would like some feedback.

First of all, when I had about 220 residents I accepted a group of 17 vagabonds. It has now been five years since the vagabonds arrival, and I have been struggling with food ever since.

And, since I am on a small map, space is getting tight. I no longer have any wide open spaces to put up new hunter/gatherer "villages". I have like 5 each hunters and gatherers, each fully staffed. But as my town has grown, I find my workers seem to be living further and further from their work, even though I provide homes close by. This causes a drop in efficiency and production, right?

I have also been thinking about farm yield, which you can read directly from the farm popup. I am guessing that housing proximity plays a major role in yield, but this is just a guess, steel tools are also a factor, I think. Can anyone confirm this?

I am now trying to build farms for some extra food and avoid a disaster in starving residents. The past few winters I have had food reserves below 200 and a few starvations, but still less than 10 altogether.

But I have a dilemma. I can either build farms with no additional housing and have low efficiency and yield, or, I can build housing nearby, but this spurs further growth, thus prolonging the problem of food availability. Has anyone figured a way out of this?

[Lady Rose]

Farm yields work in a pretty predictable manner. Educated workers will harvest 7 food units per tile, uneducated will harvest about 5. So an educated worker on a fully harvested (ie, got it all before the frost) 10x10 field will bring in 700 food. (It can vary a bit here and there, but not enough to make it unpredictable.)

Things like distance to house and tools affect yields indirectly in the sense that both can cause the farmer to be away from the field for more time, increasing the possibility that not all food will be harvested from the field before the frost gets to it.

You can use the destruction tool to tear down houses before building some near the farms. That's what I would do in your situation, to avoid a little population boom. If you do it one house at a time (tear one down, build one) you should be able to avoid creating any new pairs. (It's not foolproof, but the result will still be far less new babies than just building more houses.)

[adobo]

Weather plays a major role on crop yields. A bad year could cut your crops as much as 50% and you can even lose them to frost.

Other tricks to maximize food per worker.
One Hunter can average 800 food.
Fisher with a barn directly on its entrance can average 1600 at average placement and as much as 2400 at optimal placement.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=253542725
15x15 farms with 2 people can get get 1500 or was it 1600. Note that barns must be at the left or right side since they harvest side to side. Use beans or peppers for quick growth. They'll be done by summer usually.

Honestly you should only have 2 or 3 hunter/gatherer areas before moving to farms. Just claim one of your hunter/gatherer areas and turn it into a farming area.

[Timberwolf]

Good suggestions, both of you. I appreciate it. Any more efficient farming tips?

[adobo]

Find a place to put down 4-6 max size pastures and fill it with sheep. You'll be swimming in wool and mutton now and churn out wool clothes. Place 2-4 traders and buy everything you ever need, forever.

Sheep is life. Sheep is love. All hail the mighty sheep!

[Lady Rose]

Originally posted by JesusLover:

Good suggestions, both of you. I appreciate it. Any more efficient farming tips?

I got tips. I LOVE farming in Banished. :) I'm not happy unless I have every single seed and animal in each town.

You don't always need as many farmers as it automatically assigns. A farmer can easily handle a 10x10 or 10x12 on their own in fair or mild climate. For beans, you can even go a little bigger because they have a shorter growing season. If space is tight and you need odd sized fields, try to go tall and skinny (so the longer side is north-south) for fastest planting and harvesting because there is less distance to get back to plant / harvest the next row. (Actually, you can do that even when space isn't tight, but I don't because I like my nice square farms whenever possible.)

Roads really do speed up travel, and though it doesn't seem like a lot with dirt roads, that time saving adds up, so make sure you have roads every so many fields. You don't have to put them between each if you don't have the space, but there should be enough roads to facilitate travel to barns, houses, and to town for supplies from your farming area. (If you have enough stone, go for stone roads where you can.)

I'm playing a small map right now for the first time in a long time and I've gotten used to big maps so it's interesting. :)

[Grace1957]

I think you're ready for a bigger map.You have more room to experiment.Good Luck!

[Rafein]

If your in need of food with little land, fishing docks are yourt friend

[Timberwolf]

@Grace1957 I think you are right, I have been thinking a lot of how I might do things on a bigger map, but before I leave this one I want to try switching one or two hunter gatherer outpposts to farming communities and see how that goes.

@Rafein Yes, along with lots of hunter/gatherer outposts I also have 4 fishing docks. With all those along with 5 pastures total, I have a lot of food coming in year round, enough that on several occasions I have seen my food reserve below 200, momentarily, and no starvations. I have also seen a few starvations with food reserved over 1000, which I attribute to poor distribution.

I still wonder how I will maintain log/firewood production as I change a hunter/gatherer/logging camp over to farming.

[adobo]

You can import logs or build tiny forests on those hard to build places. In small maps, you have to rely on imports if you want to grow beyond a certain size.

[Pirate Queen]

I've removed all workers in a location for a few seconds and put new workers on when the workers are living far from their workplaces. The laborers who live closer tend to pick up those jobs when I do this. (Not foolproof, but it helps!) Sometimes they'll switch on their own after a bit too.

[Grace1957]

Most people think that starting out small is the way to go but in this game that lack of space will bite you in the butt!

[Timberwolf]

Wow! Just two years after repalcing the space for a forrester/gatherer/hunter with farms I am seeing a late autumn food peak of over 12,000!

Now I am working on moving the housing from an old burned out stone pit to a new one.

Question: My average health is 4.5 hearts and I seem to be very near equalibrium in population, births and deaths are evening out. I am in mild climate and most people have hide coats as I do not produce enough wool for warm coats. Will my people live longer with warm coats so I can get a little more population?

[adobo]

Technically, you actually want people to die earlier so they can make room for young couples.

Lack of warm coats is probably the only reason you're not at max health.

[Ardith Prime]

One of the most common suggestions is to do long, but thin farm strips of 15/20x5. because the banished AI takes the farm row corners like a Reliant Robin on an ice-lake.