9.3 - The Economy of Farming

By: Dreamweaver    Read Original Post: The economy of farming

I don't pretend to know the exact truth about farming. The following findings are based on repeated simulations run once the game has stabilized, i.e. church, hospital, entertainment have been built.

1. Farming will slow down once your people start attending church, going to clinic and entertainment.

2. Permanent crops (coffee, banana, papaya) are always more efficient than temporary crops (after they start to bear fruit).
A farmer will provide an average of 0.6 food per year on temp crop and 1.2 food per year on perm crop. This is because the farmer does not have to reseed the farm for perm crops.

2a. However, perm crops are less flexible than temp crops. Weather can be very fickle.

3. A typical set of 4 farmers can manage ~15 squares of crops. (This is a generous estimate.) Allowing more space for temp crops allows the farmers to grow stuff on the greener areas. But I would rather space the farms appropriately and shut farms down during dry spells until rain comes. In a situation where the greenness of the squares are equal, a big perm crop plantation will produce as much as a reasonable sized perm crop plantation.

4. Do not let your farmers grow too many squares of perm crops per farm. Once the farm starts to bear fruit, your farmers will never be able to reap them fast enough, hence, leading to waste. When farming perm crop, I always fire everyone after 15 or so squares have been seeded. And then I watch the plantation closely. When they start bearing fruit, I reopen the plantation to the farmers. This way, you save on the wages and prevent the farmers from planting too excessively. I have observed that 15 squares will keep the farmers busy harvesting. Occasionally, I see the farmers planting a few more squares after they complete harvesting and none of the trees have yet to regrow their fruit. Based on this observation, I always try to arrange my farms to be tight and compact.

Based on the above numbers, the profitability of crops are listed below. (Gold is added for comparison.)

Crop Profitability Crop Profit per Person per Year Pineapple $550 Tobacco $600 Sugar $500 Coffee $1550 Banana $1000 Papaya $700 Timber $720 (approximately like perm crop) Gold $1200 (0.4 gold per miner per year)