Passive Food Production Guide

Updated for Patch 0.7.975 - Efficiency tips for producing a lot of food without assigning workers.

Benefits of Backyard Food Production

• Does not require assigned families, so it has minimal impact on your labor pool.
  
• Does not rely on land fertility, so placement is not limited.
  
• Can be the largest source of food for your population.
  
• Increases food variety, leading to faster population growth and fulfilling tier requirements.
  
• Provides excess goods to sell for regional wealth.

Vegetable Gardens

Planning for passive food production starts with choosing the size of your burgage plots. You will want different size plots based on what you plan on using them for.

The only burgage plots that benefit from a large backyard are those you want to use for vegetable gardens (or orchards if you have that development upgrade). For this you don't just want a long plot, but a wide one. Once you have chosen the outline for your plots you will see options to rotate as well as a + and -. Click on the - until you see expansion housing for each plot.

This will result in a wider plot for more vegetables to be planted and allow for a housing expansion to be constructed. That expansion adds room for another family to live and help manage the garden. Having a large 2 family burgage instead of 2 single family burgages also saves you from having to purchase as many vegetable garden upgrades. These do require some upfront labor for plowing and planting, but after that there is only labor for harvesting. Growth is individual by plant and each takes 6 months to grow. This usually results in a spring harvest.

One decent sized vegetable garden (about 0.75 morgen, or 3 corpse pits/logging camps in size) can provide more than enough vegetables for 20+ families to benefit from the extra food variety. These plots do need more families to manage them, so make sure to add the housing expansion. They also benefit from extra storage space, so upgrading them is important, so make sure they are not too far from your market. The Market supplies burgage plots closer to it first. If there are not enough resources to supply all burgages only the ones closer to market will be upgradeable.

Unlike artisan housing, the extra families on these plots can be assigned to work other places, but don't assign them to jobs that require constant whole family labor, such as foraging, farming, and malt house. I usually assign them to a Church or Corpse pit for their first year of planting due to the extra labor involved in plowing. Those buildings have no labor requirements if there are no bodies to bury, and assigning them there will prevent the families from being distracted with construction work. In later years when labor is lower, you can assign them to low labor jobs like a Sawpit or Tannery.

Chicken Coops

Backyard size does not impact egg production in any way, so it's best to use small plots just big enough to have a back yard extension (about the depth of a tavern). Eggs are produced per burgage, not per family, so having a burgage with a housing extension or upgrading it to tier 3 will not make it produce more eggs.

Since egg output can't be increased you will want roughly 1/3 of your burgages to have a chicken coop to benefit consistently from the extra food variety. How quickly you accumulate enough to get a happiness bonus depends on your overall food variety. These burgages will house your main assignable labor force. Since managing a chicken coop requires no labor, it is best to assign these families to jobs that require constant labor, such as foragers, farmers, miners, etc. There is minimal benefit to upgrading these to tier 2 or 3. Tiering up gets you a negligible amount of gold and tier 3 gets you more family space, but you can get more family space by building another burgage instead (with another chicken coop), and this will not impact your happiness demands. Since they are the ones you want to upgrade the least, they should be the furthest burgages from your market.

Bonus Tip

A Tavern is the perfect size for 2 burgages with a small backyard. You can place a row of these to draw roads around and then delete them, then fill in the gap with burgages.

Orchards

Orchards follow the same rules as Vegetable Gardens, but can be about twice the size for the same amount of labor.

They take 4 years to reach full growth. During that time they will have 1/3 normal output. Harvest time is in September. If they are planted at least 2 full months before harvest you will get a harvest the same year. As with vegetable gardens it is a good idea to build the housing extension for the extra labor, as harvest time is only one month long.

These families are a great option to employ as Foragers, since their harvest times are different. Do NOT employ them as Farmers. They can't be two places at once.

Custom Plot Layouts

Here are a few example plot layouts that are very labor efficient with great food output. Each of these can be managed by only 2 families.

Vegetable Garden

This layout gives you 4 single housing slots that include backyard expansion space and 1 duplex slot that is 0.7 morgen in size for vegetables.

To construct this you do the following:

• Place down the labeled buildings
  
• Wrap it all in a road
  
• Delete the Malthouse and Corpse Pits
  
• Fill the empty space with a burgage
  
• Delete the Taverns and do the same

Put your 4 plot points in these locations to maximize usable backyard space.

Orchard

This layout is nearly identical to the Vegetable Garden, except it has double the corpse pit depth, doubling the planting area.

Additional Guides

Optimal Start for Early Population Growth
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243093273

Efficient Town Layout and Market Supply and Demand
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3241178063

[Cpl Gunner]

"Every industry except mines and quarries has severe diminishing returns on extra families, so it is better to have 1 family in each instead of 2 in the same one"
Is this statement still accurate with the release of version 0.8.004? I have not observed this in game. Great guide! Thanks!

[Lucifer]

Thank you so much for this guide. I made 3 of the bigger plots, and then in the tavern size areas put two smaller homes on each side one side for goats the other chickens. All my food needs have been solved. I actually make way to much veggies but it’s helpful in the long run.

[Fortigan]

@alexschulzweil I meant that only those you have the most of in the market will reach to them.

Don't pay attention to "population" when calculating market supply or consumption. Market gets supplied based on number of burgages and consumption is per family. For 10 burgages with 4 families each, that 10 meat would be enough to satisfy 120 population instead of 30.

It's important to know that your market has nothing to do with the consumption of goods. It is only a happiness system. They will consume food even if you don't have a market. My market guide above explains further.

As for the benefits of having more food types, since they are eaten at random, the more types you have the less each one gets eaten. This makes it easier to maintain food variety if there are some types you produce less of.

[alexschulzweil]

@Fortigan
" Essentially, they eat whatever food type you have the most of."

AFAIk not anymore. If I got it right it was changed in one of the last patches, that there there is a complete equal change for every avaible food to be consumed. This means that if you have e.g. 100 veggies, 100 apples and say 10 meat is enough for a population of 30 to qualify for "3 different foods". If you add in say 10 eggs, it qualifys for 40 people.
So adding as much different sources of food as possible, even in minor quantity is needed if you want to qualify for Lv.3 buildings

BUT I think it will be changed in future updates, because currently there is little value in producing more complex food like e.g. sausages when it is consumed at the same rate as meat.

[Fortigan]

@alexschulzweil Thanks for the pigs vs butcher ratio information.

You can mitigate food variety issues by having a few T1 burgages as the furthest from your market. They only need 1 food type, but their existence increases the market cap for all food types. It functions as a buffer. Essentially, they eat whatever food type you have the most of. Every extra T1 home you have furthest from the market increases the amount of food variety shortage you can be short on without it harming approval.

[alexschulzweil]

Pigs = 2 meat passive
goat = 1 skin and 1 meat passive.
Helps if the map lacks wild animals and/or you don't want to invest your development points in trapping/advanced skinning. If you have abundant game and invested in this points, I would not use pens, as you have enough meat (it spoils now) and skins.
Also nice synergy with the new butcher who either produces additional meat out of the animal cadavers (like logs a "temporary ressource" when you slaugther a animal) or produces long lasting sausages from meat and salt. you can have 4-5 backyards with pigs and one butcher for a decent meat income even without hunters.

In general: as food is now eaten completly random you need ether a very large quantity of 3 different types or multiply different sources of food that there are always enough sources avaible to keep your people happy, especially at lv. 3...

[Fortigan]

@Jean Lannes
I've not had a chance to try out the latest content so I'm not sure what form the animal pens take. If it's an addon like the goat pen, then it probably functions the same way, where size does not matter. If it's a different building that is not a part of a burgage then it would not fit in the content of this guide, as it would not be "passive food production", and be an assigned job instead. Regardless, if you want meat to be one of your maintained food varieties then you want your monthly meat production to be equal to or greater than your number of families divided by the food types you produce. 100 families with 4 food types needs at least 25 of each produced monthly.

[Fortigan]

@TonyStark™
The vegetable gardens do require labor from the people that live there. The first planting takes longer because they have to plow the garden, so I don't assign that family to any other jobs during that time. Afterwards I assign them to jobs with low labor. Once planted, each plant takes 6 months to grow. You are likely getting more than 1 carrot a year, they are probably just eating more than you are growing. You either need more people living there to plant, more garden area, or both. Limited storage can also be an issue, so I upgrade those burgages for extra space. If you are doing everything right and still only getting 1 carrot it must be a bug.

[TonyStark™]

I always get only 1 carrot once a year. Didnt work at all.. really a bummer

[Jean Lannes]

Thanks for the guide. I ahve a question: now you can have animal pans that passively generate meat. How does that impact the guide?