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Starting Farms

Started by rkelly17, August 22, 2014, 12:15:47 PM

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rkelly17

A discussion came up in the "Here's how to use the priority tool" thread (http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=238.0) on how late you can open a field and still get a crop. So here are some experiments I did. I'll divide them over two posts.

rkelly17

Experiment One: Beans in Early Spring and Spring

So, I started a new town on Medium with peppers and pumpkins. Eventually I added beans and wheat and decided to run the experiment first with beans since they grow faster than anything else in the game.

I created a 4 times 9X9 farm and devoted two fields with 1 farmer each to beans. The first field was planted at the beginning of Early Spring and the second opened at the beginning of Spring. The second field was behind the first, but both were planted and harvested and produced 588 beans, the max (I think) for 9X9. Here are some pictures:

rkelly17

Experiment Two: Wheat, Pumpkins and Peppers in Early Spring and Spring; Beans in Early Spring and Late Spring

A few years later I was ready to set up four 4X9X9 farms and extend the experiment. These began building just as a group of nomads arrived, so some of the farmers are uneducated (I also forgot to build a second school, but we won't go into that). One farm was 2 fields of wheat, one was two fields of pumpkins and one was two fields of peppers. On each of these I had one field all set up when Early Spring started and one field closed but then opened when Spring started. The fourth farm was beans and I had one field set up for Early Spring and opened the second at the beginning of Late Spring. In this experiment all four farmers began work in Early Spring but the Pepper and Wheat farmers both decided fairly quickly that they needed new tools and took off for the market. The pumpkin and bean farmers toiled away. The wheat and pepper farmers made it back right at the beginning of Spring as I opened the new wheat, pepper and pumpkin fields. As a result the new wheat and pepper fields were not far behind the first fields. Two of my farmers had been laborers and were still carrying inventory: Firewood and fish. The fish-carrying farmer put his in the barn next to his field. The new pumpkin farmer was carrying firewood and so had to go farther to put it in a storage yard. Note that both of these farmed for awhile before storing their inventory (this may explain some of the weird numbers you sometimes get for field yields). The pepper farmers behaved somewhat differently than the others. All of them left work to eat or get new tools, but the pepper farmers were the only ones who seeded their fields and then went and idled in the market. Their harvest was also lower than everyone except the Early Spring bean field (all were 420). The one field that seemed most affected by the late start was the Spring pumpkin field. That farmer couldn't wait until the crop was at 100% yield to start harvesting and came in with less than 588, though still with a respectable 527. Both wheat fields, the Early Spring pumpkin field and--surprisingly--the Late Spring bean field came in with 588. Part of the surprise on that one was that the person who became the farmer was far away from the field and idled a bit longer before heading back to begin work, so got a really late start. I guess beans are just that fast to grow in Banished. I'm not sure why the ES bean field was so low or why the pepper farmers both thought that they had time to idle. Here are the pictures:

rkelly17

A footnote.

Here is a picture which illustrates the kind of situation where if you build the road first or delete the field after the road is built and try to rebuild it you lose the full field or orchard. I marked the road as close to the hill as possible, which causes some earth moving. Note how the field side of the road is now steeper than it would naturally be. If the orchard or field is marked to be built at the same time as the road, even if the builders finish the road first (as they did here) the field or orchard is still OK. I assume that this is true for other construction as well.

mariesalias

Good job @rkelly17! Beans do seem like the most reliable crop.