Sugar, Tobacco, Papaya, Pineapple, Banana ?

[DK]

From reading many informative posts I can see that many people prefer their own types of cash crops but I just can't seem to find a handle on any of these. Reading Banana Baron's report on his banana map bananas really seem like a good cash crop but I really don't know. At first I thought that papaya was the BEST type but when i looked at it i noticed that the dang farm takes up so much space! I'd really like to hear peoples strategies on using different cash crops for different situations.

[Mercator]

I usually go with what my island gives me for soil.  When the game first starts, I check the soil and change my farms to what would produce the best and most crop.  Then I add farms to the areas with the best soil.  But I also try to grow the most cost productive crops (tobacco and papaya seem to 'crop' up in most my games).  I usually only have one or two corn farms, (I ratio 1 farm per 25-30 people)  since they corn sells too cheap for profit.


But really, its all about what the island gives me.  

[Chris]

I agree, if one farm can go with pineapple, go for it. If another is in a rich banana area, switch to a banana farm, watch out thogh, as banana farms take a lot of space.

[Mercator]

Yeah, but don't they also produce alot of crop?  Or does acres vs. crop production actually exist as a debate?  

[ueriah]

for me at least it depends on what the soil has to offer.
initially you only need two corn farms.  if the other 2 farm are crowding my food producers, i will destroy them and reloate them nearby in an available open space.  i'll select what to plant there after checking the average rainfall per year, the drainage (ie hit 'g' on keyboard and see if there is slope or not), average soil wetness, and soil quality.  i don't go by that "easy" farm highlighting since that only shows the current status of the soil, and all too often i've placed a farm that looked to be in a great spot but actually petered out due to lack of a needed component to make the ol' garden grow.

always remember your people need to eat!  i leave a farm per 30 people for food-- i wish i had the exact #s for how farms work, if anyone who knows 'em would care to post it would be a big help!:) -- and be sure to build extra farms for the explicit purpose of feeding your population as it grows.  also, your people will be healthier if they eat a varied diet, which means they will live longer to toil for you more.  goat meat and fish are great dietary supplements, whereas people seem to sell cattle more oten then eat it (which is good, since a cattle ranch placed at the very start of your reign will built up a respectable herd in little time with little effort).

if i had equal conditions available for all the listed crops, i would take pinapple.  they can be eaten should food run short, they can be sold in cans for a respectable industry profit (which will appease the capitalists on the island as well) and according to an episode of gilligan's island i saw once you can also use them to power a subatomic fission reactor.

[flagator_]

I think of papaya and banana as food crops, like corn; I plant them if my population is growing and I'm going to need more food. If there's excess to export all the better. As for cash crops, my favorite is tobacco, because your people won't eat up your exports; it isn't as picky as sugar about growing conditions; and the industry it feeds (Cigar Factory) is the cheapest of the five. Next favorite is pineapple, I usually have 2-5 pineapple farms on every map I play whether that's my focus or not, because pineapple not eaten can be canned for good cash. Sugar's my least favorite, because as rain patterns shift over time (something I discovered only recently -- not only are indiidual rainclouds random, but *average* rain changes too!) you often end up with stunted crop in red soil and have to switch to corn, and until a new sugar crop comes in at a new farm, your rum distillery sits idle.

[BananaBaron]

I noticed recently when play testing something, that Ricardo was yelling about my people starving..yada yada yada.  Initially, when I played, I did the pavlovian response of immediately building a farm.  This time, and I'm sure others have noticed, that many times its due to:

1.  Teamsters doing a bad job picking up food.  I had a couple of places with 7, 8 and even 11 units to be picked up.  

2.  If you have an apartment building that the game considers "too far" from a marketplace.  I had 2 marketlplaces both with 17's and farms all with 2's or 3's and Ricardo was still whining.  I build a marketplace near that apartment...he stopped whining.  (the closest marketplace previously was about 15 grids away, up a steep hill).

In this particular case I had 3 pineapple, 5 corn, 1 banana, 1 goat and 2 wharfs, a population of 227 and he was still whining.  So, watch the marketplace placement.

Food for thought.

[Sal_]

It's good to rotate your crops. If the farmers have started to harvest one crop, you can switch the farm to a different crop and have more than one crop type growing at the same time. As the game progresses, the amount of rain changes, and that can have a big effect on some crops. If you monitor these changes, you can switch crops when one type becomes less productive. The game knows what types of crops you have in the store, and will pay you accordinly. For example, if you are harvesting tobacco and you switch to corn, the portion of the output store that was tobacco will still count as tobacco when it gets to the dock.

[El_Coronel]

I noticed this in my last game also.  Will have to use it to switch to corn when a drought hits in tight games.  This past one, the cigar scenario, I switched a couple early tobacco farms over to corn when my population got up and I had access to less marginal tobacco soil and saw the transition happen.

Finished that one 7 years early.  Took me two tries to beat it though.

[Mercator]

Mother of all Cigars!  The best scenario to PopTop has made yet!  It took me two tries as well.  But I love it.  You can really rake in the dough!  And the island itself is well laid out. (READ: tough to build properly)

[suedenim]

The problem I've noticed is that by the time you get the "Your people starve!" message, the problem has already reached potential-downfall-of-government level crisis stage.

I generally keep a close eye on Food Quality rating.  If it drops below 69, then I build more farms and/or fishing wharves.  I've had a couple of games where a food shortage kicks in, and it's really hard to recover from.  

[Quisquam]

Just as ueriah does, from the beginning I like to get rid of any surplus farms taking up space and labor.

When it comes to feeding my population, I try to rely on farms as little as possible. Instead, I resort to fishing wharves: they take up less land space and produce food more consistently. A conveniently located teamsters' office works wonders for food distribution, so long as I have markets near all my housing and working areas. This setup apparently allows me to feed 40 residents with each wharf.

Granted, the tradeoff is losing beachfront property. But since I don't place all my tourist sites on the beach (inland tourism seems to work just fine for me, provided I add a swimming pool or spa to the amenities), I seem to manage rather well.

Tobacco always works out reliably for my exports. Twelve tobacco farms around the volcano in the Mother of All Cigars scenario, along with three factories (each with a dedicated teamsters' office and dock, so distribution time wouldn't be wasted wandering through the highlands), earned me a victory by 1992. Of course, like El_Coronel, it took me several tries: third time was the charm.

My first attempt at running a rum distillery met with disaster. I couldn't even get enough laborers to work in the farms: they all kept jumping over to the factory. That'll teach me not to build that high school a mere five years into my administration.

I haven't tried canning food for export.

I agree with suedenim that, once my hysterical advisor starts panicking about famine, it's hard to recover.

As an aside, I find that building a teamsters' office for each factory, mine, farm group or marketplace, each set to 2-4 teamsters, seems to do the trick for me. Not that they challenge my patience any less with their lazy attitudes; but at least I never see any stock rot for ages in any given workplace. I wish I could always say the same about my docks...

[Coconut Kid]

But before the quote --

The verbal alarm about starvation is a horrible BUG which counts the cows and goats the same as people -- so it is worthless for gameplay.

Variety of food is good, but it works best if Marketplaces are plentiful. The "Food" edict has the most effect.

...  I don't go by that "easy" farm highlighting since that only shows the current status of the soil, and all too often I've placed a farm that looked to be in a great spot but actually petered out due to lack of a needed component to make the ol' garden grow. ...

The game fooled you into seeing something that is not there in the game world. Soil quality is not that complex (such complexity came in the sequel T3). Soil quality is degraded by pollution of all kinds. The Farm building radiates a low level pollution to mimic crop depletion, but that makes crops almost equal. Rain is most variable over time.

The lead developer, Phil Steinmeyer, has reported that crop rotation is NOT worth the effort.