How exactly do farms work?

[King Doom]

I'm reasonably sure they need raw food harvested from the map somewhere to start growing stuff, but do they need new raw food adding, or is it just the once after you build the farm?

[Rayvolution]

One you "seed" the farm with some wild food, it'll continue to regrow in the farm. ;)

Although in the Summer it'll grow slower, and the Winter it may stop growing entirely if its too cold.

[Aeris]

Oh!!! I didn't know that. So building multiple farms seems very sensible, am I right? Because I'm in summer right now, and I don't have much rations in my top HUD being displayed. I suppose I didn't store enough in spring.

Another question, am I doing something wrong: I'm in autumn now, have 2 upgraded farms + 1 kitchen, and 2-3 people assigned to each.
However, the storage of carrots in the farm is always zero. I see my people bring carrots/turnips there, but the storage amount stays 0.
And my HUD says I have 16 raw food or so, but it doesn't seem to get transported to the kitchen to make rations out of it. Where is the raw food? And why don't they bring it to the kitchen?

[OKOK]

Wrong.
Upgrade farm to max is important to get thr growth bonus.
Add more farm just delay food getting people as food become seed for new farm.
Motivite wild food is more important in spring as backup plan for summer and winter.
Create a very big patch. If u food drop. Tell farmer to start farming this wild food

[Tiberiumkyle]

Originally posted by Aeris:

Another question, am I doing something wrong: I'm in autumn now, have 2 upgraded farms + 1 kitchen, and 2-3 people assigned to each.
However, the storage of carrots in the farm is always zero. I see my people bring carrots/turnips there, but the storage amount stays 0.
And my HUD says I have 16 raw food or so, but it doesn't seem to get transported to the kitchen to make rations out of it. Where is the raw food? And why don't they bring it to the kitchen?

Sounds like you have so little food, the villagers have it all. Assign more wild food for harvesting to get everyone fed in the short term, long term, more farms.

That top bar counts what villagers have in their inventory, plus what's in storage and on the ground in village range. If food is less than or equal to your population, you have a serious food shortage. No rations are going to be made when there's so little raw food.

[OKOK]

We need an alarm when food is less then pop. A big alarm.
Most of the time we r trigger when people r starving

[Aeris]

Aaaaah I thought I cannot - or that I shouldn't - send my people across the whole map for food, but only if it's nearby to my influence region and my farms! Yeah okay, so they instantly collected a lot of raw food and made a lot of rations.

[Happy Camper [NOTACON]]

What about where the farms are located? Do farms on rock produce less than farms on greener land? I've been unable to see a difference, but I wonder if there is any.

[Tiberiumkyle]

It makes no difference, base terrain is purely visual atm.

[Shrinkshooter]

Originally posted by OKOK:

Wrong.
Upgrade farm to max is important to get thr growth bonus.
Add more farm just delay food getting people as food become seed for new farm.
Motivite wild food is more important in spring as backup plan for summer and winter.
Create a very big patch. If u food drop. Tell farmer to start farming this wild food

This is horrible advice and no one should follow it.

Make 4-6 upgraded farms and 1-2 kitchens with plenty of storage space, you'll always have plenty of meals and your productivity will go through the roof. Do not use wild food patches as your main food source or WASTE massive amounts of energy on them you could rather use for defense.

Originally posted by › Happy Camper NOTACON:

What about where the farms are located? Do farms on rock produce less than farms on greener land? I've been unable to see a difference, but I wonder if there is any.

The terrain isn't important but you should still have them close to both kitchens and a water source to improve workflow.

[Tiberiumkyle]

Originally posted by Shrinkshooter:

Originally posted by OKOK:

Wrong.
Upgrade farm to max is important to get thr growth bonus.
Add more farm just delay food getting people as food become seed for new farm.
Motivite wild food is more important in spring as backup plan for summer and winter.
Create a very big patch. If u food drop. Tell farmer to start farming this wild food

This is horrible advice and no one should follow it.

Make 4-6 upgraded farms and 1-2 kitchens with plenty of storage space, you'll always have plenty of meals and your productivity will go through the roof. Do not use wild food patches as your main food source or WASTE massive amounts of energy on them you could rather use for defense.

That's exactly what I'm doing with my now day 71 nightmare village. 2 established farms, and a giant wild food patch.
https://i.imgur.com/z88HIfW.png

My own reason for doing this is to free up a few extra building slots for other things. I generally use god powers a ton anyway, so it doesn't require I have extra essence collectors, I was going to have a bunch of them anyway.

[CoyoteTraveller]

What does tending do to the farms? I think I saw some mechanic about tending them resetting a countdown, and some mention that it's still useful to do that in winter so they'll grow fast when spring comes. Is that accurate, or is it good to disable all farms during winter?

[Rayvolution]

Originally posted by Traveller:

What does tending do to the farms? I think I saw some mechanic about tending them resetting a countdown, and some mention that it's still useful to do that in winter so they'll grow fast when spring comes. Is that accurate, or is it good to disable all farms during winter?

Tending makes them grow faster, and helps keep them growing in the Summer. The tending action is also needed to actually use the water the farms have in their storage, to water the crops.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

The only real use I've found about farms is that farmers are those who will go to the other side of the map to harvest those fields you've selected for harvesting. What I usually do is build one or two farms max, and next to a big food patch which is close to my town hall. Then build a food stockpile (or severals) nearby. Then of course later on build one or more kitchen next to the food storage, etc.

Then, if I ever seem like I'm going to run out of food... Motivate land on the patch of food will regrow most of it. You immediately, in the span of the quarter of a day, suddenly quadrupled your food reserves.

The farm itself is only there to provide me with the farmers who exclusively do this job. Secondarily, they provide a small but steady income of food so it don't suddenly all drop down in one fell swoop.

But yeah. Never ever really sustained my towns with farms. Early game you don't have the manpower and late game your God powers are ten times more efficient.

[Aeris]

Originally posted by Tiberiumkyle:

That's exactly what I'm doing with my now day 71 nightmare village. 2 established farms, and a giant wild food patch.
https://i.imgur.com/z88HIfW.png

Eeeeeeeerrrrr, how do you get such a huge food patch? I only have 5 small to tiny patches in my map.
Feel like I'm missing a huge part of the game.... *head scratch*

Originally posted by Shrinkshooter:

Do not use wild food patches as your main food source

What else to use?

[John Hadley]

When you cast motivate near a resource like food or wood that can grow, it will replentish sites that already possess the resource, but it can cause more patches to grow in adjacent tiles. After you cast motivate a bunch of times on your starting patch that only contains maybe 20 food squares it will grow if there is room and it'll probably be 100 squares by year 2 as long as there was empty tiles for it to grow into.

The more you cast motivate the more your food patch will grow and if you chain cast it without harvesting the food that is already there it will grow much faster because none of the energy of the spell is being used to replentish.