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Help for farmers

Started by rkelly17, May 12, 2014, 11:12:26 AM

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rkelly17

We've been carrying on a discussion of farm layout over on the Shining Rock Software Forums which might be helpful to anyone planning farms: http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum/discussion/3511/a-small-tweak-to-the-18x18-farm#Item_23

I'm going to do a bit more work and then post here a summary of findings on farm output.

nmid

That's awesome... we'll end up having the best posts from all the other places, here :)

salamander

+1 to nmid's comment.  There could be some extensive cross-links between the two Banished-devoted sites.  Anyone using this forum as their first for Banished should also check out the ShiningRock Software site.  Especially pay attention to the thread mentioned by rkelly17 if you're interested in efficiently setting up farms.  Not only does he show some good arrangements for farms, orchards etc..., but some of the other posts in the thread give some interesting alternatives.

But ... be sure to come back here for rkelly17's results.  From what I've seen so far, they're certain to be useful.

mariesalias

Yeah, that discussion had me start a new town just to play around with farming. I think it is going to take me multiple towns though to figure out flexible and efficient layouts. I am hoping you guys will figure out some good layouts!

rkelly17

@mariesalias, be sure and post details and pics! I can hardly wait to see what you are doing.

My farming research is a bit behind as I'm working on some "historical" materials. It is slow work, but I'll do some farming research in tandem.

slink

#5
I just finished harvesting 1008 beans from a field farmed by one person.  I admit I was lucky with the season, but that was an amazing yield.



Here is the field just before harvesting began.


mariesalias

That is a great yield!

My farmers are too lazy to do some of the larger fields alone, even though the calculator says they should be able to. Though I haven't specifically tried with just beans....

irrelevant

I just find a nice big flat spot and put down 15x8s on a grid. Start out with one farmer each while the area is being built up, then go to two farmers per farm once the area is established

mariesalias

@irrelevant  How do you get by with so few farms by your fields? I always end up needing so many.

irrelevant

#9
 
Quote from: mariesalias on June 21, 2014, 12:57:37 PM
@irrelevant  How do you get by with so few farms by your fields? I always end up needing so many.

You mean barns? I don't need so many barns cause so much of the food is in houses and markets. Also, I have barns all over, not just by the farms. I have a couple of areas where the barns fill up every couple of years. Oddly enough, it is right where I have a large number of them. When they get full I just demolish them all, and all the food gets moved to the food-bare barns nearer the industrial area. I keep all the demolition panels open, and I stop them when they get down to like 5%.

edit:  Just took a quick count, I've got about 90-100 barns, that's roughly one for every two farms. Since the barns aren't all right by the farms, the laborers do get a workout putting up the harvest, but I've got scads of those guys.

mariesalias

Yes, I meant barns. I see that you have them, just not all near your fields. Doesn't that make the productivity go down for the fields? Making the farmers walk further away to place the food in the barns, I mean.

I had forgotten that you move food around in barns like I do logs in stockpiles!

irrelevant

@mariesalias  I'm really glad you asked that. I started to write something but I realized I didn't really know, so I spent an entire growing season watching my farms and following my farmers, instead of making new ones.

I had thought that farmers reaped and laborers came along and did the storing, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Farmers reap, and farmers store, so yes, by having the barns farther away I am slowing down the harvest. Doesn't seem to matter in a good year like I just had, but I can imagine that with an early frost in would. Going to re-assess my storage situation.

A farmer can carry 84. The optimum yield in my 8x15 farms seems to be 840, so with two farmers on a field that's 5 trips per farmer per season. I didn't follow anyone to see how much time that takes, I'll do that next year.

One thing I saw that I did not know was happening was that a farmer will store directly at the market if that is the nearest storage. I wish they would do that more!

salamander

Quote from: irrelevant on June 22, 2014, 05:10:15 AM
@mariesaliasOne thing I saw that I did not know was happening was that a farmer will store directly at the market if that is the nearest storage. I wish they would do that more!
If that's a hard and fast rule, it could lead to some interesting layouts for communities concentrating on farming.  Rather than having a barn for every small group of fields, have several barns near a central market.  Let the farmers store harvests in the market (if it's closest), and then let the market vendors move the excess market food out to the barns.

solarscreen

Quote from: salamander on June 22, 2014, 05:31:40 AM
Quote from: irrelevant on June 22, 2014, 05:10:15 AM
@mariesaliasOne thing I saw that I did not know was happening was that a farmer will store directly at the market if that is the nearest storage. I wish they would do that more!
If that's a hard and fast rule, it could lead to some interesting layouts for communities concentrating on farming.  Rather than having a barn for every small group of fields, have several barns near a central market.  Let the farmers store harvests in the market (if it's closest), and then let the market vendors move the excess market food out to the barns.

It could impact the harvest though because the distance to the market or centralized barn is farther than a barn adjacent to two or three fields.
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irrelevant

#14
Sparked by @mariesalias' question about my barns, I've spent the past year studying my farmers activities more closely. My barn placement does result in them having long walks from their fields to storage and back, but beyond the farmers getting a good workout, there seems to be no problem with this. Getting full yields on 90% of my fields.

I can see no way to quantify efficiency of farmers in gathering. There are too many variables to even know what an optimum might be. For example, they have to stop working every little bit to go back home and get something to eat. So gathering is affected not only by the distance to storage, but also by the distance to home.

I also noticed that gathering is not the only bottleneck. At the start of the season, the farmers appear to be doing what you could call "planting." They move through their field, more or less systematically, making hoeing motions. If the farmer(s) don't get enough hoeing done by a certain time, the crop will not come in at all, or only partially.

One change I did make, I have changed my crop mix so that fully one-third is growing corn, and another third is growing beans. These seem to be the crops that grow fastest, and as long as citizens get grain (corn) and vegetables (beans) that's all they need from the fields.

Right? There's no such thing as these guys being bored with their diet, is there? As long as they're getting their 4 food groups?

At harvest time I did notice a few underperforming fields. These are easy to spot at harvest, with all the neighboring fields cleared, and the crop rotting in this one here and that one there. I didn't notice that the underperformers had anything in common, but this one field was very strange. I tracked down the farmers, and both were clear across the map. One, a woman named Herminda was "gathering resources," which in her case meant walking halfway across the map to a tailor, picking up two wool coats (intended purely for export) and carrying them back to her field. The coats weren't for her or her family, they all had warm coats.

Anyway, it took most of "autumn" for her to do this. She went to her field, hacked at it once, and then went over to a barn (right next to her field) and stored the 2 coats. She was carrying nothing else. Then she went to her nearby house to get something to eat. After that she commenced to idle in the adjacent market, then wandered back off towards downtown where the tailor is. I think she may be having an affair with the tailor who is (I'm not making this up) a 69-year-old woman named Hell.

This field's other farmer finally did show up. His house was two market circles away (there are 5 laborers living just doors away from this field). He took two hacks at the field, then headed back home to get a bite. The field yielded 252 of 840. There are 12 other fields in this market circle, all yielded 840. Both farmers have been replaced (by the game, not by me, I didn't change a thing) and are now laborers.

I wonder if Herminda's poor performance was somehow related to the fact that her co-farmer was basically a no-show for the year; she got discouraged and lost interest. It wasn't health or happiness, both are 5s.

Poking around, looking at the storage situation, has got me wondering: what is the storage capacity of a house? I've seen houses with a couple hundred storage points of stuff, and others with 400-500 points. I'm just wondering how much stuff I can push towards a market and reasonably expect to have the houses in its circle soak up?