They use both - root veggies and also grain.
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Ah ok thanks! Should be experimenting with cattle a bit more soon, so itâs good to know 
Ah ok thanks for the compost/size feedback and yes definitely not worth a remake for that - but will definitely keep it in mind for the future.
With regards to efficiencyâŚ(I know it wasnât directed at me), is there not something to be said for the amount/variation of crop rotations you loose by creating a smaller quantity but larger fields?
If Iâm producing too much/little of something i have found it more beneficial to have more/smaller fields to customise my output 
Not always the most efficient use of yield per worker 
but I also suggest only extending fields when your population can support it
Root veggies are better utilized in sending them through the Preservists, turned into long shelf-life rations for people
Granaries placed next to (touching) Barns are the best way Iâve found to keep animals fed in the Winter as the Herders donât need to search for fodder.
Using a Root Cellar in place of a Granary next to a Barn would attract the populace to use it for a food source, while I try to keep them away because of the volume of raw meat that Barns produce, a very short shelf-life item.
Placing your Windmills next to your Granaries can burn through an entire crop, turning several thousand units of grain into flour, which has a shorter shelf life, in just two or three months.
There is no dial or setting to tell the Millers how much grain to leave for the animals, so spacing the Windmills and Granaries apart is the only way we have to regulate production, beyond micromanagement with constant monitoring to turn them off and on.
Automation of a production system to free up the userâs time for other tasks.
I would say itâs never worth sending your root veggies to the preservists, even when you donât have any cattle! 
Dig sand, dig coal, make glass, chop logs, chop firewood and the preservists themselves, all that extra labour - for what? If youâre producing surplus food, why are you expecting to produce too little food in the future, to need those preserves? Putting all those workers to more food production is far more efficient to solve your food problems then anyhow. And all you get is an extension from 12 to 18 month of shelf life, right? Not counting the bonus from brick cellars and barrels, that is.
If you put this much effort into preserving root veggies that already last longer than it takes until the next harvest, then you should instead go for beans/peas, which already last 18 months at base, I think.
Or you donât hire that second miller and this many bakers. Then your grain will last 24 months (base), or 16 months as flour, and only gets turned into bread when your villagers actually need it.
Still a lot less efficient than simply feeding your population leek and peas all the time, but much better than all that effort required to preserve your carrots.
I understand your problem of the way-to-fast-working miller, but you suggested adding a second miller, and move the mill further away to lower their efficiency. Why not stay at one miller and a mill next to the granaries? Works great for me.
And again, root veggies are great fodder for cattle and a terrible waste of effort to preserve, as it stands currently in FF.
Yes, definitely. It lets you avoid crop diseases more easily - but only if you place them not next to each other but a certain distance apart.
And you can ensure a more constant production of something. But when grain lasts two years at base, and flax three years, why would you need to produce it every year? All you need is a few more granaries/storehouses, which donât require labour.
Plus, you only really need 3 alternating fields for producing something every year while avoiding diseases, not more. But again, with a bit of extra storage space, you donât need more than one or two fields to ensure a constant supply of all crops you want.
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Yes, it was specific reply to the video about the grain, not you suggested it, the video did! 3x 50 tiles fields is not that much, it requires 6 labor only. Obviously you donât place these fields on the other edge of the map, relatively close and itâs all good. Some diseases can decrease your crops by 40% when not handled at all and can spread to other fields - I wouldnât call it not significant.
But 1x 150 tiles requires no more labour than 3x 50 tiles, right? Thatâs what I was getting at.
Iâve never actually seen 40% losses ever, but when even those are less than giving up 50% to a less efficient rotation, Iâd still take it.
Yes but if you need 2 labor for 5x5 field, go for 10x5 - it still requires only 2 labor and trust me, they still have plenty of time to wank around.
Or go for 30x5 instead with 6. 
But seriously, you can also run your 5x5 field with a single farmer.
Thereâs nothing about a 5x10 field thatâs inherently more efficient than a 5x11 field.
The real reason why your farmers arenât busy is because half of the time, youâre growing clover, which needs zero imput. And growing clover + buckwheat leaves over 70 days completely unused on top of that. If you only have a crop that requires work growing for 100 days out of the year, and only need labour at the beginning (planting) and end (harvesting) of that, they of course wonât be busy.
Yes but if you go for 11x5, game will pick 3 labor. You and me can see it, people for whom this guide is wonât. While for someone it doesnât really matter, for me thatâs an extra soldier!
I donât usualy plant buckwheat, I usualy rotate rye over 6 fields. 3 fields with Rye early of the year and 3 late and pray it lasts till next crops. I usualy do Rye, flax and veggies+peas.
If you donât plant clover you end up losing fertility and need to plan maintenance works every now and then, and then last thing I want to do with these fields is more micro.
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Even without preservation Root Veggies keep longer than Greens.
But they produce lower outputs per square than grains do.
It is less food to share between people and animals.
A single worker-operated Windmill can reduce every speck of grain to flour from an entire 12x12 fieldâs harvest in less than a monthâs passing, giving you 16 months to consume 1500+ sacks of flour, which two Bakeries, if they are also close by, can cook the flour to bread even faster than the Windmill can render it.
Giving you two years-worth of bread in two months and having 90% of it lost to rot.
Or it can last both worker and two barns of animal populations for the entire two years, when metered through the Windmills slowly by the only way of regulating it possible, spacing it out.
Long shelf-life foods are needed because populations in excess of 500 can burn through thousands of units of food in the blink of an eye, and I have seen all my fields turn to rot at once, by what seems to be an incredibly vindictive AI in even the âlet me take a peekâ levels.
When adding the second Miller, that usually means one runs while one stocks, magnifying the output greater than a simple x2.
But itâs most often at the stages of population that require much more overall area developed.
Spacing means I donât have to constantly monitor my grain/flour levels to prevent waste and loss to rot, or keep my animals fed.
The AI will try to exploit any crop maladies, along with other interruptions violent or otherwise, in any combination it wishes, to try and end your settlement.
Long shelf-life food items can be the difference between survival and failure.
Feeding your population leeks and peas all the time will never see your Shelters advance to Manors, as more food types are required.
Only if you had infinite fertility. If you have to put in clover into your rotations, because wheat gives you -6% fertility and carrots only -2%, then carrots turn out to give you almost 3 times the yield as wheat does.
(If you want the maths: A single tile gives 0.0631 units of carrots per growth day per percentage point of fertility invested, while only 0.0229 units of wheat per growth day per point of fertility.)
Wheat is attractive if youâre always at 100% fertility without peas/beans/clover, only from composting. But usually, you gotta put in something else to replenish the field - instead of growing more root veggies.
And if you had such unlimited fertility, leeks would still outproduce wheat.
The rotation I suggested in this thread provides you with greens, beans, root veggies and bread. Add to that meat and dairy and Iâm pretty sure you can upgrade to manors.
The difference is you choose different crops as staple food. You donât need for everyone to eat 50% bread.
To me, bread is a byproduct of the leftover from feeding the cows.
Itâs ultra-short shelf-life means that production levels should never match the machineryâs capabilities to produce, even at max population, because it can outstrip all need or want.
I keep a couple of hundred sacks of flour on hand by spacing the Windmills far from the Granaries, then place my Bakeries at the far edges of the housing areas, making the Bakers run three to five times further than the Millers do.
This usually keeps a couple of hundred units of bread on hand at all times.
And keeps my cows fed.
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Just came here to say I was a bit wrong about diseases stating you can lose up to 40% of your crops. Some can fook you over for even 90% of your crops (rye/wheat) when not dealt with 
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I have used Celebrindanâs idea of spacing the miller away from the Granaries and it works perfectly. I get about 200-400 sacks of flour in reserve and have about 8 bakeries in my town which produce enough bread to keep a small amount of bread in storage but not losing a huge amount in spoilage.
Thanks for your great work Celebrindan.
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Right, rye and wheat rust at full magnitude⌠forgot about those, as I never grow either anymore. Never got such high losses ever either. Doesnât take that ten years of keeping the field infected with that? Did you actually achieve that?
No, because after rye, itâs always veggies or flax so it doesnât last longer than a year
Thatâs why you shouldnât do 3x same stuff on 1 field, like I said above when commenting the vid. Then you have some crops that share diseases, if you learn what is what you can plan each field just once and forget about it till the very end of your game.
I agree! Once set, I rarely have to monitor my fields and workers unless Iâm applying fertilizer or making a specific crop change like adding wheat.
Gonna definitely explore/evaluate the disease factor when revisiting the guideâŚhopefully the current guide still serves as an adequate introduction/foundation to learn/improve from 
I appreciate all the insight/feedback
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