Farms a few and far between...

[Pearo]

Are farms meant to be as rare as hens teeth on the first three islands? When they do come along they are stuck right next to a wall point, or a vagrant camp, as in my last game.

Clearing trees to make way for meadows on the 'frontier' funds my whole kingdom - I make sure there is plenty of meadow space beyond my 'frontier' walls.' I would be lucky to see one farm building spot on the first three islands.

I admit I still have much to unlock in the game, and I am having a blast - It just appears typical to have great seas of grass land between walls that you can build NOTHING on.

Would be great to have more opprtunity to farm.

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

In my first playthrough of Two Crowns I noticed that no farmland spawned close to the keep on Island 4 and I assumed, kind of how like the merchant stops showing up and vagrant camp start getting further away, it was meant as a challenge but I've come to find it's more a random thing than anything else in subsequent playthroughs.

Ultimately farms aren't very useful anyway. Archers simply generate more gold than farmers ever could and contribute to nightly DPS. The way you set up archers to be even more productive than farmers is to have a large grassy meadow on the exterior of your borders -- like you have been doing -- but also keeping as much forest unforested within your borders. Rabbit bushes might only spawn outside of your kingdom's territory but deer will spawn within your territory so long as trees are around. It's nice because you basically wedge your archers between rabbit and deer spawners and they just hunt like crazy.

Literally bought zero farmers in my last 1 reign run. Then again I never buy farmers anymore. The only instance I can think of in which I'd actually use farmers is if I got exceedingly poor map generation that prevented me from reasonably expanding without deforesting and instead of having that bit of land be deer spawners have it be farmland to make up for it -- but it hasn't happened to me yet.

[Magnus]

Originally posted by Crusher Von Splattenheim:

In my first playthrough of Two Crowns I noticed that no farmland spawned close to the keep on Island 4 and I assumed, kind of how like the merchant stops showing up and vagrant camp start getting further away, it was meant as a challenge but I've come to find it's more a random thing than anything else in subsequent playthroughs.

Originally posted by Crusher Von Splattenheim:

Literally bought zero farmers in my last 1 reign run. Then again I never buy farmers anymore. The only instance I can think of in which I'd actually use farmers is if I got exceedingly poor map generation that prevented me from reasonably expanding without deforesting and instead of having that bit of land be deer spawners have it be farmland to make up for it -- but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Farms are indeed borked. The farmer AI and water stream placement would both need a substantial buff for farms to be viable. Anyone else notice 9/10 water streams spawn under vagrant camps? That is if they spawn at all. I've had 2 playthroughs in which Island 3 had ZERO streams on the whole map.

I mentioned this in my [COMPLAINTS] thread. The map generation is just plain inferior to New Lands, which, unfortunately I think is something that only players that have put a lot of hours into the preceding titles will really notice.

[Zeke]

Originally posted by Magnus:

I mentioned this in my [COMPLAINTS] thread. The map generation is just plain inferior to New Lands, which, unfortunately I think is something that only players that have put a lot of hours into the preceding titles will really notice.

i've noticed and i agree, i've all but totally given up with farm now, in a big part due to the farmers tossing the tools away every winter, its just not worth it really, i had a good map for farming spots once, i had 3 farms nice and close to my castle so i build my wall out to bring them all inside it and had all my shops to spawn between them so i would of needed to build out and cover that area in walls anyway, so i built up the farms since i had them in the area anyway and got around 5 farmers to each, then winter came and they all tossed them away, now thats 4 coins a tool, so about 50+ coins, farmers make about 6 gold per harvest, and it did take a while to get them started (since the farmers seem to take ages to actually go to the farms for whatever reason), so on average i think i only got about 1 harvest out of them each overall in total, all before winter started (so maybe i got 3-4 harvests out of the first one that went to farm but by the time i got them all going, i dont think the last few even got to finish making a single harvest and collects the crop before it froze over, so yea, i say 1 on average with the first getting several and the last getting none at all)
so i arrived in the summer, maybe late summer, it was mid autum before i got the farms built up and started, so not many harvests
so yea, lets total that up, 5 farmers, x3 farms blocks, x6 for the gold they make each harvest = now thats 90 gold made from each farmer farming 1 harvest, take 50 out of that just to get the tools, you got 40 coins profit, or do you
remember you still had to built the farms too, so 3 coins for each to get them started as tier 1, 9 gold, 31 coins left, and if you upgraded them to teir 2, (which is ether 8 or 10 coins to do that, i'll go with 8 as i cant remember right now, so i'll go with less)
which takes away from the profit even more, so now you have what, 31-24 = 7
i made a grand total of 7 coin overall from farming
and now its winter and they toss the tools away
rolling on and now winter is over and its spring again, you'll need to spend another 50+ gold to get the tools for the farms again

now long term, you might think, well this time you'll make far more profit from farming as its already built up, ready to go and you have 3 full seasons before winter again
BUT, think about it, in this game, are you ever really going to stay on the same island for 3 seasons straight????
nope, you'll be off to another island before spring is over most likely, half the time you'll be waiting for winter ending to leave, so even if you do get the farmers again, well, you'll likely get what, 1 or 2 harvest before your off, maybe 3 if your going to clear it completely and reallllllyyyy take your time at it
so then you leave and "if" you come back before winter, most of those farmers, if not all, will have tossed there tools again due to decay, and if you come back after another winter, well, they will "all" be gone again (same with spears actually, even if i sail away and sail back within 2 days, you'll never have a spearman still walking around when you return, no matter how many you had before, when it comes to decay, the spears all go as soon as you leave it seems, then the farmers start losing them, followed by your builders and then a chunk of your archers, altho maybe farmer/builders/archers decay at the same rate, you just have so many more archers next to everyone else that it just doesnt seem like it)

so yea, reading that, do farms seem worth the effort even building in the long run?

(now at the start i said i've all but given up on farms, so i'll clear that up and say that there is only 1 time i still built them and its not to farm, its so i can get a stable with the hermit, providing its in a good place for it mind, otherwise, i never even bother anymore)

[IAmSquidget]

As a long time Kingdom player, I concur with that. Farms are very situational, and rarely worth building. You are typically bottlenecking on villagers, not money, anyway. I'd almost always rather have 4 more archers.

[Jerry]

farms are very useless. If your making money from farms then your going to be playing this for years before you can beat it lol.